Her husband is gone from the house more often, to take care of the patients with serious conditions, leaving her with Jennie, his sister. She feels alone and her imagination makes up these apparitions in the wallpaper to keep her amused. She starts seeing a woman creeping in the wallpaper. The woman scares her and she wants to move into a different room to escape her phantom presence. Her imagining this woman is representing the narrator subconsciously realizing that she might me going crazy and that fact scares her and she wants to escape the empty room that leaves her to her
Most analyses of this piece have been from prominent feminists, who targeted the patriarchal structure of the society in the 19th century as the major cause of insanity of the narrator. Some of the most extreme feminist critics have even stepped further to claim that the narrator is initially not ill at all, hinting that the societal bonds of marriage imprisoned and twisted the mind of the poor narrator. Though this claim has not yet been verified, there are indeed several conspicuous signs that showcased societal imprisonment of women in The Yellow Wallpaper. For example, John’s overconfidence of his own medical knowledge led to his misjudgment of the narrator’s condition; whereas societal norms seem to force the narrator to believe in that misjudgment: “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do? (1.10)” And under these torturing social rules,[change] the narrator, as a women and a wife, has no control over the pettiest details of her life, and she can do nothing for herself except from asking help from men, who dictates her life: “My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing” (1.11) And it is obvious that the chauvinistic ideas during
Book report 4/19/12 AOE “The Black Box” written by Julie Schumacher is a story about one girls struggle through depression. This novel is different from other stories because it is told through the perspective of her sister, Elena. Elena tells the story of her sister Dora’s depression and how it not only affected Dora’s life but the whole family’s life as well. This story takes place in Elena’s home where Dora one day announced that she wishes she was dead and overdosed on pills. Their overprotective mother immediately put Dora in the psych ward at Lorning Hospital.
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.
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. The nursery symbolizes how women were seen on the same level as children. A woman’s role during this time was one of confinement and the barred windows are symbols of this. The narrator tearing down the yellow wallpaper to find the woman represents her attempt to regain her sanity. The wallpaper is her confinement and by tearing it down she frees herself.
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.
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.
Gilman uses symbols to explain the how women are trapped in domestic life. The symbol that Gilman uses the yellow wallpaper in the room she is confined in. At first, the wallpaper is just awful as she says “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow.” She is disgusted by it and understands why children, who have been in this room, would want to tear it down. Then, the wallpaper becomes a point of curiosity as she wants to discover the organization of the pattern. She said, “...and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion,” as if the wallpaper was made with symmetry in mind.
Eventually, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a desperate woman, constantly crawling and stooping, looking for an escape from behind the main pattern, which has come to resemble the bars of a cage. The narrator sees this cage as festooned with the heads of many women, all of whom were strangled as they tried to escape. Clearly, the wallpaper represents the structure of family, medicine, and tradition in which the narrator finds herself trapped. Wallpaper is domestic and humble, and Gilman skillfully uses this nightmarish, hideous paper as a symbol of the domestic life that traps so many women. Almost every aspect of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is ironic in some way.
(Liukkonen 1) She was largely self-taught. She married her first husband, Charles Stetson, in 1884. Throughout her childhood, Gilman suffered periodic bouts of depression. After the birth of their daughter, Katherine, she suffered from postpartum depression. She sought treatment with Dr. Silas Weir.