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.
During this time period women aren’t allowed to express their thoughts and are taught to keep them to themselves. Jane would try and write to express her individuality, but her husband scorns her for doing so. He tells her, “that with [her] imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like [hers] is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that [she] ought to use [her] will and good sense to check the tendency”(1686). Even though John tells her not to write, she “know[s] John would think it absurd. But [she] must say what [she] feel[s] and think in some way” (1689).
This ill-fated treatment prescribed by her physician Weir Mitchell, whom she referenced in her story, drove her to the brink of insanity. Gilman illustrates the insanity inflicted on woman by the oppression of their society. Jane, the narrator, has been brought to a country manor by her husband John; being a well know physician, he has diagnosed her with “temporary nervous depression” (531). His remedy is “tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise” (531), and absolutely has forbidden her to work or write. She believes “congenial work” (531) would be good for her but she does not dare go against her husband.
Today’s society Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut. After suffering from depression throughout most of her life, she went to seek advice, and was told to stop doing anything, that she normally did, because it would make her conditions worse. She therefore wrote The Yellow Wallpaper to express herself, and express the suffering she went through. Even though the society of the time period she was from criticized it, she argued that she wasn’t intending to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy by reading The Yellow Wallpaper. Gilman was so far ahead from her time period, so she was criticized for writing about the topic of depression and mental illness, which for that time period was very frowned upon and unspoken.
Susan Smith thought she was being raised by two loving parents, but it turned out to be with a mother that was blind to the fact that her daughter was being abused by a man that played the part of daddy. Susan was forced to become the woman that everyone expected her to become but her avoidance of receiving help for her issues may have caused her to break. There is no known cure for Dependent Personality Disorder, but it is recommended that a person that is diagnosed seeks the assistance of a psychiatrist immediately. Had Susan Smith pursued help from the outside prior to her making the decision of murder, she would have been able to receive the proper guidance that she should have received as a young
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. The narrator is a writer that is forbidden to write because her husband believes that any form of society or stimulus could cause her condition to deteriorate further. As the story continue you beginning to understand the relationship between the narrator and her husband John. John seems to be very controlling and throughout the story berates his wife, while treating her like a small child that needs caring for. Every attempt that is made by the narrator to express her concerns is met with opposition or disregard.
“But I must get to work. I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path” (69). Symbolically the narrator has thrown away the 'key' that allows for patriarchal dominance. Essentially, she is locking her husband out from her new found world, just as she was previously locked in his. 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.
There are some red flags in the plot that illegitimatizes this as genuine love. If the reader looks at Mabel and her situation before the moment of love is mentioned, he/or she should consider the fact that Mabel is a broke woman of a whole 27yrs. with no future prospects to keep her afloat. The time and place she attempted suicide was in broad daylight. The man she fell so hard in love with just so happens to be a Doctor with a stable income.
Typically, a husband who can’t consummate a marriage should be abandoned without hesitation. When Bertrande is “urged by her relatives to separate from Martin, she firmly refuse[s]” (28). This decision reveals Bertrande’s “certain character traits…a concern for her reputation as a woman, a stubborn independence” (28). Bertrande cleverly calculates the advantages she possesses as a result of Martin’s incompetence. “Her refusal to have her marriage dissolved…freed her temporarily from certain wifely duties…gave her a chance to have a girlhood” (28).
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, Oates has described Connie's actions at the end of the story as an "unexpected gesture of heroism," a decision to sacrifice herself so that her family would remain unharmed. Some individuals may read the story as an anti-feminist allegory: Arnold Friend is Connie's punishment for having sexual feelings for boys. Others read the story as a feminist critique of a male-dominated society: the ending is essentially tragic, Connie's submission to Arnold Friend standing for the ways women are oppressed in a patriarchal society. Connie moves us because her situation speaks to our most urgent questions about identity, morality, and sexuality. On the other hand, Carver is trying to show the stereotype among women and men and how they react differently to tragic situations.