Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper

496 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: The yellow wallpaper and the struggle with self expression

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the reader gets to experience a roller coaster of emotions and events throughout the short story. The author gives details about the characters and the narrator's situation, however the story remains unclear, but I believe that that the narrator is not driven into insanity by her husband or by the rest cure, but that she is already mad and in an institution. At the beginning, we are introduced to the Narrator of the story. She begins to question her own health. She mentions to herself that she does not get better, informing the reader that she is ill. Wanting to understand the causes of her illness, she writes in her journal that her husband, John, “is a physician, and ( . . . ) perhaps …show more content…

She makes remarks about the house they're staying in for the course of the summer. The narrator cannot exactly say what surprises her but finds that “there is something queer” about the house and the wallpaper in her room. She describes the house in romantic terms as a “colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, or even a haunted house” and questioned how they could afford it. As the story goes on, the narrator begins to describe her room. She says her room must’ve been a nursery for young children. She says that the wallpaper is torn off in some spots, there’s a nailed down bed, scratches and gouges on the floor, and the the windows have bars across them. With the evidence the narrator describes the house as, I do believe she wasn’t staying in an actual house. She is actually in an insane asylum getting treated with Rest Cure which was a popular treatment in the 19th century. I think that John’s sister is actually a nurse there because she takes care of the narrator and tried to persuade her not to write. In addition, the narrator has noticed the gates that lock and there are separate little houses for gardeners and other people. This is a hint that there are certainly some other patients around because she sees several women in the garden and behind certain windows. In addition, it has to be clearly discerned that the protagonist has “a schedule prescription for each hour in the day” like in a hospital and that John regards her as a “nervous

Show More
Related

  • Misogynistism In The Yellow Wallpaper

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    The narrator begins the story by recounting how she speculates there may be something wrong with the mansion they will be living in for three months. According to her the price of rent was way too cheap and she even goes on to describe it as “queer”. However she is quickly laughed at and dismissed by her husband who as she puts it “is practical in the extreme.” As the story continues the reader learns that the narrator is thought to be sick by her husband John yet she is not as convinced as him. According

    Read More

  • How Does The Yellow Wallpaper Reveal About A Woman's Gradual Descent Into Insanity

    1013 Words  | 3 Pages

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about a woman’s gradual descent into insanity, after the birth of her child. The story was written in 1892 after the author herself suffered from a nervous breakdown, soon after the birth of her daughter in 1885. Gilman did spend a month in a sanitarium with the urging of her physician husband. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about herself, during the timeframe of when Gilman was in the asylum.

    Read More

  • Escape Through Dementia in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    1044 Words  | 3 Pages

    John, the husband, serves as a metaphor for masculine views of the time, and for the masculine side of humans, the side of reason and logic. "John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horor of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures" (1658). His character is almost stereotypical in its adherence to reason and its attittude towards his wife. He negates her intuition; "there is something strange about the house - I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window" (1658) He attributes her condition to "a slight hysterical tendency" (1658), which is, etymologically speaking, just a polite way of saying that she is instable due to being a woman. He is not interested in his wife's actual condition, rather in his diagnosis; "John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him" (1659). His best advice is to not use her imagination (though trapped in an ugly room), but to become more reasonable and to resist her condition through willpower. When he does put her to bed and asks her to get well, he asks, not for her own self, but with him as the motivation; "He said [. . .] that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well" (1663).

    Read More

  • Shades of Madness and Insanity in Yellow Wallpaper, A Worn Path, and Mulatto

    1948 Words  | 4 Pages

    The setting of this story is a room in a house in which Jane lives for a summer with her husband John, who is a physician. The room is large, almost the size of the entire floor. She is on medication, "phosphates or phosphites-- whichever it is," for her condition, and she has been forbidden to work (Gilman 491). Unfortunately, she was also not allowed to write, which was a deprivation of the only outlet she had. Therefore, on most days, she spent her time in that room with nothing to do except look at the four walls. In the beginning of the story we can sense that maybe she is a little crazy. She describes the house as if it is a castle. Then she says that "there is something strange about the house-- I can feel it" (Gilman 492). Next, we learn of the intriguing yellow wallpaper.

    Read More

  • "The Yellow Wallpaper": a Search for Meaning in Everyday Signs

    657 Words  | 2 Pages

    Upon entering the room, the narrator comments, "I don't like our room one bit" (367). The windows are barred, there are rings in the wall, the wallpaper is torn in certain spots, the furniture is bolted to the floor, and the floor itself is splintered and scratched. The narrator mistakenly identifies the signs she sees in the bedroom as belonging to a former nursery, playroom, or gymnasium. She believes the "windows are barred for little children" (367), the "great, heavy" bed is nailed down to the floor so that the children would not have hurt themselves. She also believes that the gate at the top of the stairs serves the same purpose-- the previous owners of the home did not want the children to injure themselves by falling down the stairs. A closer reading of the different objects, however, reveals a room that once housed mental patients. The barred windows and gated stairs were to stop the patients from escaping; the torn wallpaper was a result of patient's fits of madness - after which they would be chained to the rings in the wall. These surroundings serve as a sign of the narrator's imprisonment. While she is not literally chained to the wall, she is confined to the room by her husband.

    Read More

  • The Analysis of Jane’s Insanity

    743 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tells the story of a woman struggling with her insanity. While the insanity is obvious, where it comes from is allusive to the reader. It is possible that her environment could spark the changes in her mental state, but her husband is not innocent in the matter. When environment and marital pressure are combined, Jane tries to escape from it all by trying to free herself.

    Read More

  • Free Yellow Wallpaper Essays: Oppression of Women

    1089 Words  | 3 Pages

    By closing her off from the rest of the world, he is taking her away from things that important to her mental state; such as her ability to read and write, her need for human interaction, her need to make her own decisions. All of these are important to all people. This idea of forced rest and relaxation to cure temporary nervous problems was very common at the time. Many doctors prescribed it for their female patients. The narrators husband, brother, and their colleagues all feel that this is the correct way to fix her problem, which is practically nonexistent in their eyes. Throughout the beginning of the story, the narrator tends to buy into the idea that the man is always right and makes excuses for her feelings and his actions and words: "It is so hard to talk to John about my case, because he is so wise and because he loves me so," (23).

    Read More

  • A Feminist in Action in The Yellow Wallpaper

    1794 Words  | 4 Pages

    "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a woman in isolation, struggling to cope with mental illness, which has been diagnosed by her husband, a physician. Going beyond this surface level, the reader sees the narrator as a developing feminist, struggling with the societal values of the time. As a woman writer in the late nineteenth century, Gilman herself felt the adverse effects of the male-centric society, and consequently, placed many allusions to her own personal struggles as a feminist in her writing. Throughout the story, the narrator undergoes a psychological journey that correlates with the advancement of her mental condition. The restrictions society places on her as a woman have a worsening effect on her until illness progresses into hysteria.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis

    1626 Words  | 4 Pages

    The narrator admits she “disagrees with their ideas” (129), She believes that “congenial work, with excitement and change” (129) would help her feel better. In the story, she starts to admits that sometimes, she thinks that if she had “more society and stimulus…” and abruptly digresses and stops herself from finishing her sentence as if john knew what she is writing, she suddenly agrees that John often tells her the worst thing she can do is be thinking in her condition; this, is just another illustration of how even in her mind she is scared to break John’s rules by expressing her opinions. Barbara A. Suess in her article, the writings on the wall, remarks how in the story, it is evident the “unhealthy relationship between woman and medical language” (80). It is clear how there was not enough comprehension nor advancement on women’s health as it is

    Read More

  • Effect Of Oppression In Yellow Wallpaper

    902 Words  | 2 Pages

    Even though her husband treats her with what seem at first as love, it becomes clear she is nothing more to him than a piece of property. Every time he talks to her, he asks her to get better for his sake and the children's, and only after mentions hers interests. He doesn't think that she has any normal human feelings or worries and attributes her behavior to minor nervous depression. He doesn't see her true suffering since he believes "there is no reason to suffer" (574). He could never understand that a woman can be unsatisfied with the role imposed on her by society. Even though the heroine recognizes that her condition is caused by something other than John's theory, she is too scared to voice her opinion.

    Read More

  • Entrapment Theme

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    Her husband John is a physician and brings her to this place because of her illness. The narrator believes that John does not think she is sick, but this is obviously not true. Her room inside this sanitarium looks like a typical mental house jail cell with barred windows and bolted down furniture. To make matters worse for the already mental woman, the walls in her room has impractical yellow wallpaper. There is one difference to her room and a legitimate mental hospital, and that is she is free to leave her room.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Delusion In The Yellow Wallpaper

    1140 Words  | 3 Pages

    The house is described as, “The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people” (251). However, Jane’s delusion is just that, a delusion encrypted by her mind to have her think she is living in quiet luxury. She goes on to talk about how the bed is nailed down to the floor, the walls are covered in scratches, the windows are barred, and there are rings in the walls. Obviously, Jane, despite being told by her husband that she is fine, is slowly beginning to lose sight of reality. The reader should know at this point that this “mansion” is nothing short of an insane asylum John has taken Jane to so she can rest and calm her troubles. But Jane and John’s troubles are only beginning when she is forced to sit in solitude with the awful yellow

    Read More

  • Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

    1290 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the very beginning of the short story, it starts off by slowly introducing the main protagonists, the narrator and her husband John. The husband and narrator took a summer vacation to a house that the narrator describes as an aristocrat estate and somewhat of a haunted mansion. (Norton) As the story goes on the narrator starts to feel curious about the house and what is all in it. As this situation goes on, it leads into the conversation of her illness. The narrator mentions that she has a nervous depression because she feels as if there is complications in her marriage with her husband John.

    Read More

  • Conflict between the Narrator and Her Husband in The Yellow Wallpaper

    427 Words  | 1 Pages

    The woman suffers from depression and is prescribed a rest cure. John believes that she is not sick, but she is just fatigued and needs some rest. John took her to a summer home and placed her in a room upstairs. He then instructs her to rest and not to do any writing. John's views as a doctor forbid any type of activity, even writing, for he feels it will only worsen her already fragile condition. The woman believes she would feel better if she could write: "Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good" (470). The woman did not like the room that John put her in: "I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear of it" (470).

    Read More

  • How Is The Narrator Trapped In The Yellow Wallpaper

    725 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Yellow Wallpaper is a very astonishing story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that daringly reaches out to explore the mental state of a woman whose mind eventually begins to be broken down to a state of insanity by the appearance of a creeping woman who is trapped behind a revolting yellow wallpaper. This short story takes a look at the causes of the narrator’s insanity by how she was confined in a house alone, trapped with only her mind and a dull wallpaper; while dealing with depression and consuming strong

    Read More

More about Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper

Open Document