Your Name Name of Class Professors Name Date The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was first published in 1899 and is the journal of Jane who is quite ill with what is regarded as “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman, 1899). She is taken away on holiday by her husband, and kept in a room where she is meant to be healing. However, she finds herself distracted by the wallpaper in the room, and begins a downward spiral into complete psychosis as her perception of and relationship with the wallpaper evolves. The relationship with the yellow wallpaper is not the only thing that changes, as she soon begins to see distinct changes in her husband, her sister-in-law, and herself. She is compelled to unlock the secret of the wallpaper, at any
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
This continues after multiple attempts to tell her husband that she is uncomfortable with the yellow wallpaper. Until her mental break comes her husband is not able to see the extent of the damage he has done by leaving her without emotional and mental stimulation (Gilman 588-600). While this case is different than the other story it is still about missed managed emotions. As a result of being locked away in a room she lost what makes people feel good about themselves their emotional connections with others. Having no one to connect with she is force to focus on her self to the point where she is unknowingly projecting herself as the women be hide the wallpaper as a metaphor for her being trapped by the walls of the summer house and her own
He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennifer has an inexplicable look.” (246), “I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!” (247) Her obsession with the wallpaper gains momentum because she wasn’t allowed to change it. At the end, John faints when he breaks into the room and sees his wife in the psychotic
Towards the end of the story, the narrator begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper that covers the walls of the nursery. She eventually begins to see what she describes as a female figure trapped behind the bar-like pattern and comes to believe that she and the figure are suffering from the oppression of being imprisoned. As her preoccupation of the wallpaper pattern progresses, she no longer has the desire to become who her family wishes her to be and instead thinks only of how she can go about releasing the woman from the wallpaper. She grows more obsessive and insane with the passing of each day. In the end of the story, the narrator has lost all sense of reality, and John discovers her crawling around on the floor of the nursery, following the pattern of the wallpaper.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman has three themes: becoming free, madness, and the dangers of the “rest cure.” The story is written as the secret diary of a woman who is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression by her husband and doctor and is prescribed the “rest cure.” Though the narrator wants to write, she is prohibited from any activity due to her treatment. Thus, allowing her to create a figure in the yellow wallpaper while in the confinement of her room. Gilman writes in "The Yellow Wallpaper" of the narrator who is apparently trying to free herself from her sickness and the room, and she is trying to free the woman in the wallpaper. Throughout the story, the narrator, also known as the protagonist of the story, is trying to free herself from her illness. Readers can see this when Gilman writes, "I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a piece named “The Yellow Wallpaper”, where the narrator of the story is vividly entangled in her imagination causing her artistic impulses to consume her emotions. She is a “closet psychotic” as she does not disclose this infatuation of the yellow wallpaper to anyone around her. Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes a complex story where the narrator is trapped in her secret obsession of unraveling what’s inside this “yellow wallpaper”, which then drives her imaginative creativity, into insanity. The narrator begins by informing the reader how she and her family have recently started to stay in a new house for a little while so she may receive complete rest. This respite was prescribed to her by her husband, a physician.
“There comes John, and I must put this away- he hates to have me write a word.” (4). Besides the secret writing, the only thing for her to do in the room is stare at the wallpaper. The more she stares into the nothingness of the room, the wallpaper changes from just being ugly to having patterns. “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern just as if she wanted to get out.” (11). Eventually, the patterns change to a sub-pattern of a desperate crawling woman who she sees as a reflection of
The story goes by and the setting does not change, that is why the woman goes crazier and starts crawling into the wallpaper trying to help get the woman out. It is not to late before she realizes that she is insane and the woman she tries to get out of the wallpaper is only herself. There is also some kind of irony in the story because her husband puts her into that room without activity or work to help her problem. But the irony is that instead of helping her, it just makes the woman more insane because she imagines more things. The setting impacted the character in the story because the woman was in that lonely room the whole time and the woman just felt more insane.
The husband tries to reach his wife but the door has been locked. After many moments of panic, John gets the door open and sees this constant action his wife keeps doing. Shocked, John faints and his wife comments about having to step over his body. One can argue that being confined for so long and limited to her usual rituals, the narrator has come across schizophrenia. After John is questioning her action the narrator states, “I’ve got out at last, said I, in spite of you and Jane.