Literary realism’s goal is to invoke compassion within its readers. By learning and experiencing something of the characters’ lives in the story, one of the hopes for realism is that by invoking sympathy within the reader, social injustice may be dealt with. Two examples that use form such as imagery to reach the end goal of compassion are Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills uses an embedded narrative to tell the story of Deb and Hugh, and the daily struggles of Deb’s life. Life in the Iron Mills was written in 1861, two years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. The goal of this story is to feel compassion for those in the lower …show more content…
The grim conditions under which the factory works do their jobs is unhealthy, and a bad place to work. Change needed to be made in the social class system, and workers needed to be given federal work laws, which would not be enacted for several more years, but Harding’s Life in the Iron Mills was a step in the right direction. Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper was written in 1892. The story takes place in the late nineteenth century. The story is told from a first person narrator, a young woman of upper class status who is suffering from post partum depression after she gives birth to their child. The Yellow Wallpaper seeks to invoke sympathy from the reader by allowing us an inside view of the narrator’s life as she tells it. We are witness to her struggles right from the very beginning of the story. “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? . . . So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again” …show more content…
Her husband, a physician, as well as others in her life, urge her in a passive way to be silent about her health matters. Her husband John believes that he is superior to her, in both intelligence and in general. Due to their “concerns” about her well being, she is confined to a single room in the house and is not allowed to move freely about the estate. We see her gradual descent into madness as the narrator struggles to find a way to adapt to her confinement of the one room. She has nothing to keep her entertained, so she finds herself becoming fascinated with the yellow wallpaper. “"It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper – the smell! ... The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell” (140-141). The narrator’s descent into madness deepens as the story progresses, and eventually she imagines women in the wallpaper, and that she is one of them and is among them. “For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way” (144). By this point, her sanity is completely gone and her reliability is considered nonexistent by the story’s
All through the story, the yellow wallpaper acts as an antagonist, causing her to become very annoyed and disturbed. There is nothing to do in the secluded room but stare at the wallpaper. The narrator tells of the haphazard pattern having no organization or symmetrical plot. Her constant examination of and reflection on the wallpaper caused her much distress.... ...
It is clear that in their marriage, her husband makes her decisions on her behalf and she is expected to simply follow blindly. Their relationship parallels the roles that men and women play in marriage when the story was written. The narrator’s feelings of powerlessness and submissive attitudes toward her husband are revealing of the negative effects of gender roles. John’s decision to treat the narrator with rest cure leads to the narrator experiencing an intense feeling of isolation, and this isolation caused her mental decline. Her descent into madness is at its peak when she grows tears the wallpaper and is convinced that “[she’s] got out at last, in spite of [John] and Jennie… and [they] can’t put her back!”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, is a first-person narrative written in the style of a journal. It takes place during the nineteenth century and depicts the narrator’s time in a temporary home her husband has taken her to in hopes of providing a place to rest and recover from her “nervous depression”. Throughout the story, the narrator’s “nervous condition” worsens. She begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper in her room to the point of insanity. She imagines a woman trapped within the patterns of the paper and spends her time watching and trying to free her. Gilman uses various literary elements throughout this piece, such as irony and symbolism, to portray it’s central themes of restrictive social norms
In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator weaves a tale of a woman with deep seeded feelings of depression. Her husband, a physician, takes her to a house for a span of three months where he puts her in a room to recuperate. That “recuperation” becomes her nemesis. She is so fixated on the “yellow wallpaper” that it seems to serve as the definition of her bondage. She gradually over time begins to realize what the wallpaper seems to represents and goes about plotting ways to overcome it. In a discussion concerning the wallpaper she states, “If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.” “There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.”
Golden, Catherine. "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and Joseph Henry Hatfield 's Original Magazine Illustrations." ANQ 18.2 (2005): 53-63. Web. 28 Oct. 2015
The Yellow Wallpaper is poignant. The heroine is in desperate need of attention, a need that is never adequately met. Although the dramatization of her development may appear extreme, considering the fact that she probably had a preexisting condition of mental instability permits the outcome to be acceptable. Although the average reader may not be able to relate to the demise of the heroine, most can understand the frustration and anxiety which accompany restrictions, the feeling of not being understood, insecurities and loneliness.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through expressive word choice and descriptions, allows the reader to grasp the concepts she portrays and understand the way her unnamed narrator feels as the character draws herself nearer and nearer to insanity. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator writing in a journal about the summer home she and her husband have rented while their home is being remodeled. In the second entry, she mentions their bedroom which contains the horrendous yellow wallpaper. After this, not one day goes by when she doesn’t write about the wallpaper. She talks about the twisting, never-ending pattern; the heads she can see hanging upside-down as if strangled by it; and most importantly the
There is far more meanings behind the yellow wallpaper than just its own color. The pattern plays an immense role in causing the woman to become so entranced and obsessed with the wallpaper, as well as the source of her ever diminishing mental health. Gilman narrates, “I never saw a worse [wall] paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns
The narrator makes comments and observations that demonstrate her will to overcome the oppression of the male dominant society. The conflict between her views and those of the society can be seen in the way she interacts physically, mentally, and emotionally with the three most prominent aspects of her life: her husband, John, the yellow wallpaper in her room, and her illness, "temporary nervous depression. " In the end, her illness becomes a method of coping with the injustices forced upon her as a woman. As the reader delves into the narrative, a progression can be seen from the normality the narrator displays early in the passage, to the insanity she demonstrates near the conclusion.
The narrator is trying to get better from her illness but her husband “He laughs at me so about this wallpaper” (515). He puts her down and her insecurities do not make it any better. She is treated like a child. John says to his wife “What is it little girl” (518)? Since he is taking care of her she must obey him “There comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word”. The narrator thinks John is the reason why she cannot get better because he wants her to stay in a room instead of communicating with the world and working outside the house.
As time goes on, she starts getting frustrated and a little bit delusional. She is not just glance at them anymore; she starts noticing the patterns on the wallpaper, and this can be viewed as an indication of hallucination. Moreover, she sinks into her imagery world and seriously thinks there is a woman trapped inside the wallpaper. She believes John is plotting something. By the end of the story she crawls over her husband and this is the point where we ultimately know she is crazy. The strange yellow wall paper greatly contributes to the eerie atmosphere and mirrors the horrifying mood of the story. The author's degree of insanity has gradually increased during the period of living in the room with the yellow wallpaper. By the end of the story, she becomes completely insane and believes she is the woman who is being trapped in the hideous wall paper and finally reaches
Several critics have identified many significant and contrasting themes in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” For example, the contrast of the male-female relationship in the late nineteenth-century, which is an apparent link between the sex roles and seemingly oppressive sexual structures. Another significant theme is the ominous question of what lies behind the meaning of the structure and color of the wallpaper. Does it represent a symbolic realm of imagery, or a linguistic realm focusing on the identity of the spoken and written word?
In Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, she portrays the true importance of individualism in desperate times of need. In the story, Gilman depicts the unraveling of an unstable woman battling what could be postpartum depression. The narrator and her husband John, who also happens to be her physician, move into a rental home for the summer so that she is able to rest and recover. Shortly, she finds herself frequently examining the pattern of a hideous yellow wallpaper that resides in her room. What begins as a curious observation, soon leads to a frightening obsession of the wallpaper. The narrator’s growing fascination of the wallpaper is symbolic because, it portrays how she is slowly
Upon moving in to her home she is captivated, enthralled with the luscious garden, stunning greenhouse and well crafted colonial estate. This was a place she fantasized about, qualifying it as a home in which she seemed comfortable and free. These thoughts don’t last for long, however, when she is prescribed bed rest. She begins to think that the wallpaper, or someone in the wallpaper is watching her making her feel crazy. She finally abandons her positivity towards what now can be considered her husband’s home, and only labels negative features of the home. For example, the narrator rants about the wallpaper being, “the strangest yellow…wallpaper! It makes me think of… foul, bad yellow things” (Gilman). One can only imagine the mental torture that the narrator is experiencing, staring at the lifeless, repulsive yellow hue of ripping
The main cause of the narrator's mental condition is her overbearing husband who stifles her emotional and imaginative impulses and forces her to concentrate on the objects that surround her. Furthermore, this inactivity pushes her deeper into madness. John imprisons her in a room that has no escape with bars on the windows and immovable bed which is "nailed down." But the narrator is not just a prison of this room, she is a prison of her marriage. Her developing insanity is a form of rebellion and a way to gain her own independence. Her struggle to set the woman in the wallpaper free symbolized her fight for independence.