The woman is writing the story to express her insane thoughts against her husband's will. "The Yellow Wallpaper" begins with the narrator talking about her illness. She informs the reader that her husband, John, is a physician and he believes she is not even sick. “I did not intend to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy…” said (Gilman).” Indeed this story could very easily drive one crazy. However, as Ms. Gilman stated, I do not believe that was her goal in writing this story.
Puzzle pieces begin to fit together, or so it seems, when the narrator states “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…” (425). For a moment our minds are eased, grateful that there is not something more serious wrong with the main character of our story. However, it becomes increasingly apparent throughout the story that the narrator is more mentally unstable than her husband and perhaps even herself, believe. Being mentally unstable causes the narrator to be unreliable and have an inaccurate point of view. Due to the fact that the narrator’s point of view is first person, some of her remarks draw more attention than others.
The yellowish color is affiliated with the weakness, and the powerlessness that she is feeling. The actual pattern of the wallpaper at first symbolizes the twists and winds of society and the difficulties of fitting in and following the rules. Eventually, once Jane studies the pattern and finds the order, she believes she understands it’s meaning. As the nights go on and she continues to study the paper, she finds that the pattern is like a prison, trapping everything inside it. She reflects her feelings of imprisonment by her husband, onto how she interprets the wallpaper.
The women are casualties of a domestic prison, a prison for the mind, created by society and their husbands, who are victims themselves in their own way, of a Gilded Age mindset. The women have no voice and no authority. Their intellect and creativity is considered a frivolous obstacle and a distraction from their jobs as homemakers. There is irony in the endings of these stories in that the victims, the women, adjust to their lot and turn the tables on their oppressors. In Trifles, the women come to a realization that they must bond together against their clueless husbands to see justice done.
The story could be recognised as one woman’s descent into madness. This can be illustrated through the protagonist’s unusual obsession with the wallpaper. Throughout the story the woman devotes many hours studying every aspect of the wallpaper, commenting on its colour, appearance and even the smell. The first sign of the woman noticing the wallpaper reveals that she has strong negative emotions towards it. “I never saw a worse paper in my life.” As the narrative develops, her later feelings start to contradict her initial emotions and her behaviour becomes more irrational.
Esther didn’t do what most people would expect, and hound Ishmael for the things that he’s done, but instead to encourage him. “I am your nurse and that’s all. If you want to be friends with me, you will have to ask me and I will have to trust you first”, she said. I smile, because I was thinking the same thing.”(153) With Esther being straightforward with Ishmael, it gave him a sense of trust that he could relate to her. After more visits to Esther, Ishmael began to open up and tell her about his constant migraines, and nightmare from the war.
Women are generally treated with contempt through the course of the novel and as a general theme. Steinbeck depicts females as ‘trouble makers’ who bring ruin on men; Curley’s wife who walks the ranch as a temptress, seems to be a prime example of this destructive tendency. ‘Of Mice and Men’ offers limited, rather misogynistic descriptions of women; such as the females in the cat houses, and others in 1930’s America. It suggests women were looked upon as inferior; and incapable of the skills men were, so a women’s role was majority housework and nothing with manual requirement. This raises the question as to why an incongruous character such as herself was situated on the ranch house.
There is also the fact that she has a dissolute feeling when she knows the people that she mailed the letters to will read them. Yet one could make the argument that Miss. Strangeworth is not evil but simply has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). OCD is where she must have everything perfect, “She found doing things exactly right” (Jackson 210). This would cause her to see the imperfections within people but not herself and cause her to think that she had to be better than anyone else.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gilman tells the story of a husband attempting to cure his wife of a nervous condition using the “rest cure” developed by Dr. Weir Mitchell, which assumes that intellectual encouragement damages a woman mentally and psychologically. The story is told in first person narrator form and at the beginning the narrator appears sane and creditable, but as the story continues you begin to realize that the narrator is unreliable because she starts to give perplexing information. It is clear at the end of the story that we have witnessed the slow unraveling of a mental breakdown. The story beginnings when the narrator is taken to a temporary home by her husband John in an attempt to cure her of her disorder. John is a physician and believes that his wife is only suffering from a “temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency” (70) and due to this condition she should obtain plenty of rest, air and exercise but absolutely no work.
A door that once kept her shut-off from the outside world, not shuts out society’s view of women and their place in the world. “Iv got out at last...in spite of you!” (70). The narrator of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' has been driven into psychological madness through the imprisonment of male dominance. Gilman's use of symbolism to portray patriarchal dominance, through locked doors and bared windows, has been an effective way to communicate the suffering and trapped feeling of women during the 19th century. While many women would be to afraid to question their role in society and in marriage, Gilman has created a strong female protagonist who overcomes her husbands authoritative