It represents the narrator’s mind set at the time of the story. It also mimics the way women were looked at during this time. The wallpaper isn’t any certain type it has patterns, curves, and angles. The same is shown with the narrator’s emotions during the story. The ugliness of the yellow wallpaper can be compared to the ugliness of her life at the time of the story, the way her husband doubts her illness and her not being able to break free from his grip.
Deep down the narrator knows that she does not have a temporary nervous depression. She is uncertain in all her actions. Her husband wants her not to do any kind of
Katie Stephens English 1102 Dr. Strickland 9:30 TR Symbolism, Irony, and Theme in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of a husband's attempt to do away with his wife's insanity by keeping her isolated and restrained from expressing herself through writing. Gilman includes an abundance of irony and symbolism to describe the thoughts and actions of the narrator. The author uses these elements to help the reader come to the conclusion that the narrator feels oppressed and controlled along with other women who were felt to be “confined to womanly roles” in society in the 1800s. The theme of the story suggests that women during this time were imprisoned by the male dominated society. There are many uses of irony in “The Yellow Wallpaper.”.
The Feeling Perspective: A Look At Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” In the “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes the tale of a woman that is secluded and without activity. Moreover, that because of these things she goes mad. Gilman uses this story to show that seclusion and inactivity are harmful to a person’s mental health and that being social is one of the things that keep people sane. She uses a first-person perspective making it seem as if the woman is writing the story. In writing the story this way she can delve into the characters mindset.
Erdrich uses character to show that blood relation doesn’t mean love. The birth mother of the narrator shows no love to her child from birth. When asked if she wants to try and save her disfigured child, she answers with a swift “No!” However, Betty, the janitor at the hospital, nurses the child, Linda, and decides she would keep it with out even being asked. Betty and her husband Albert begin to try to raise and perfect Linda. They wake her up early and help her stretch her legs in hope that they will one day be straight/normal.
The writer, Charlotte Gilman, presents the negative effects of unequal treatment of the sexes and the cult of true womanhood through fictional narrative – for this reason, The Yellow Wallpaper is regarded as a significant early work of feminist literature. The short story is a series of diary entries from an isolated, and mentally unstable woman who has been enclosed in an upstairs bedroom by her husband, John. Her husband’s motives are to cure her from what he calls a “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency”.1 This cure was known as The Rest Cure, which was first introduced by Dr Weir Mitchell, who believed that a female suffering from depression was “physically unfit for her duties as a woman”.2 Gilman herself had suffered from depression, in 1886, and was referred to Mitchell where she was forced inactivity. In her autobiography she explains that her condition only improved after abandoning The Rest Cure, and that “the real purpose of the story [The Yellow Wallpaper] was to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways.”4 Due to Gilman’s personal experiences, The Yellow Wallpaper can be seen as a semi-autobiography. Though Gilman was able to free herself from Mitchell’s cure, the narrator of her novella was not.
The Role of a Single Mother in “I Stand Here Ironing” Burdened with her circumstances, the narrator looks back at the choices she has made as a mother. She reveals the dark side of being a parent and discusses the difficulties that often affect low-income families. She gives the reader a straightforward understanding of motherhood that is typically not a part of the image of the self-denying, perfect mother that the world expects women to embrace. The mother begins to tell the story over the phone about her own responsibility for the problems in Emily’s life. Even though the narrator admits to partial responsibility for her part in Emily’s unhappy childhood, at the same time she excuses herself of full responsibility because of environmental and social circumstances.
Prescription for Madness “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that portrays the plight of a woman in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s trying to find her sense of self and breaking the mold that society has created for middle class white women. The story is about Jane, the protagonist, who is on the verge of madness after being misdiagnosed and prescribed the “rest cure” for her suffering from postpartum depression. Her husband John, who is a physician, is treating her according to the fashion of the famous nerve specialist, S. Weir Mitchell, which includes total bed rest, isolation from family and limiting intellectual activities such as reading and writing. This story of mental health was written by Gilman, who herself was prescribed the rest cure, to demonstrate how this cure was used by patriarchs of the society to keep women “in line,” that is, intellectually deprived and submissive so that they can be easily controlled but which could backfire and lead to psychosis. In the Victorian age, women were perceived as physically and emotionally inferior to the male-dominated society and this was illustrated by the rest cure.
William Miller February 27, 2012 “The Yellow Wallpaper” A Critical Analysis Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded. The un-named woman is to spend a summer away from home with her husband in what seems to be almost a dilapidated room of a "colonial mansion" (Gilman 832). In order to cure her "temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency" (Gilman 833) she is advised to do no work and to never to even think of her condition.
Besides, 'wringing of hands' and 'ceiling without a star emphasize her concerns to her child and explicit her disappointment towards this horrible world. Disappointment here actually describes a sort of vulnerable status of women in some specific situations relating closely to their children. Furthermore, Plath's Mirror also reveals women's disappointment, but which is different, from aging and her sense of loss. The subject matter, mirror, is personified, symbolising women's constant desire to remain young. .