The narrator has nothing to do in the room but write secretly in her journal and stare at the wallpaper, which ultimately causes her to go insane. The narrator of the story is forced by her husband to stay in the unpleasant
A repressed women with a desire to be free and happy. The relation between when the woman in the wallpaper and the narrator when the woman is behind bars symbolizes the narrator and how she is trapped in this tiny room with a husband who controls her every word and actions. He undermines her in almost every way. For example the narrator says on page 590 “I am afraid, but i don't care- there is something strange about that house-I can feel it, I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what i felt was a drought, and shut the window.” This shows how john undermines her fears as just a simple shiver from the window being open when she is trying to explain how she doesn't like the place because shes
Suffering from postpartum depression after the birth of her son, “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of the narrator’s struggle with this despair through her journal. Taking place in the 19th century, the narrator is much undermined by males in this time period. With her husband john being in charge of her health, she is unable to speak for herself which frustrates her and leads to further troubles. While living in a beautiful summer house the narrator’s husband, John, who is a physician, confines her to a large airy bedroom which he believes will cure her “temporary sickness”. With no one to talk to and forbidden to engage in any activities (including writing in her journal) she is drawn to the yellow wallpaper that covers the walls.
He controls her to the max. He forced her to sleep in the highest, dirtiest room in the house, knowing the room looked like a prison. The depressed, trapped woman is the narrator in the story, the yellow wallpaper. In actuality she’s a writer, it’s her passion. Journaling gets her feelings out and makes it real for her, but her husband takes the journal away from her and tells her she’s not allowed to write anymore.
Though showing to much emotion is almost always looked down upon not being able to express any emotion can have serous negative effects on ones wellbeing. Like in the story The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator is forced to stay at her husbands summer home and spend time alone in attempt help cure her form her state of depression. While there she is not aloud to write or do any actives this slowly starts to have a negative effect on her mental health. She becomes obsessed with the idea that someone is behind the yellow wallpaper that is in her jail she calls her room. This continues after multiple attempts to tell her husband that she is uncomfortable with the yellow wallpaper.
In the stories, A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner and The Jilting of Granny Weatherall by Katherine Anne Porter both women had different reactions to the similar situations of being rejected by their lover and losing a loved one. In Faulkner’s story, A Rose for Emily, the main character, Miss Emily, acted out irrationally when her lover, Homer, rejected her. All her life Emily was not able to have a chance with any suitors because her father always pushed them away. When she got older she began to loose her beauty and she felt she would never get married
Women were still viewed as being inferior to men and did not have a voice to air their concerns or displeasure. In the beginning of the story, the main character hints to this oppression as she comments “perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” when describing John’s occupation as a physician (Gilman 82). Her husband John is expanding her level of depression by keeping her from the outside. Confining her to one room within a house that was viewed as being “a colonial mansion, a hereditary estate” is symbolic (Gilman 82). It shows that she is trapped within a small portion of a large house, similar to being trapped to adventure the outside world thus forced in to a land of fantasy not reality.
It represents imprisonment and this is made clear when the she says, “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out”. (245) The imprisonment is created from the yellow wallpaper because the Jane repeatedly asks to remove it but isn’t allowed and she is confined to the room she despises due to the stubbornness seen from her husband. You can see Jane slowly descend into her madness with her hallucinations- “The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell." (248) “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!
They had no supervision as their mother began to sulk in her own state of mind. Having no other chose but to fend for themselves, they rebel as they got older. Mocking their mother’s faith in her new book, they named it the “The Church of No Reason”. I believe the children felt neglected and were just craving structure, rules to obey, or perhaps just a parent in their lives. They reached out several times in varies ways, failing each and every attempt.
THE YELLOW WALLPAPER In Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow wallpaper” the narrator undergoes a nervous breakdown and was kept in a room with the intention of curing her sickness. It was quite obvious that the narrator needed people around her. She needed to go outside to see how much love is in the world but instead her husband, and therapist insisted that the only way to cure her from the sickness was to keep her away from the world, in an empty room pasted with horrible looking yellow wallpaper. Julian Fleenor argues that the method of treatment in which the narrator undergoes is not intended to cure her but to punish her. Overall, the narrator was a victim of cultural construction that, from a 21st century perspective appears to be punishment more so than therapy.