The wife’s mental state in the short story “The Hand” is often questioned. She went from loving her husband in the first part of the story to at the end pretending to love him out of fear after all that she did was analyze his hand over a night. This brings up the question was the mental state of the wife in this story, based on the symptoms of delusions, confused thoughts and speech, and paranoia. According to WebMD the definition of delusions is:”Mistaken but firmly held beliefs that are easy to prove wrong, like thinking you have superpowers, are a famous person, or people are out to get you”.This would include thinking of you husband as an oppressive and fierce person only based on observing his hand, as far as the reader knows the husband …show more content…
It may be an aspect of chronic personality disorder, of drug abuse, or of a serious condition such as schizophrenia in which the person loses touch with reality”.The wife shows the delusions of persecution and hints at exaggerated self-importance at some points in the story. She shows the exaggerated self importance when she felt disgusted that she had kissed her husband’s hand.She made it sound like she was above that and should have noticed his hand before she kissed it. She shows the other symptom the delusions of persecution throughout the story. “‘It’s as if i were lying on some animal’...horribly long and spatulate...the hand suddenly took on a vile, apelike appearance… ‘and i've kissed that hand how horrible! Haven’t I ever looked at it?’...Then she concealed her fear, bravely subdues herself”(Collette). The wife’s descriptions of the hand increase in intensity as the story progresses. She goes from describing the hand as large to describing it as vile and apelike. She then acts in fear of the hand at the end of the story and even thinks that she will start her life of duplicity now that she has seen the hand. This is a clear indicator of delusion of persecution, and two of the symptoms of paranoia are also seen by the
The narrator is forbidden from work and confined to rest and leisure in the text because she is supposedly stricken with, "…temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency," that is diagnosed by both her husband and her brother, who is also a doctor (1).
Thehusband's role to his wife is plays a major role in the spiritual suicide of thewife. The reason spiritual suicide and not madness or extreme psychosis is usedis because the wife in her final throes of lucidity recognizes that the paper'spattern holds a woman in its grasp and that by this rude hand the life of thewoman is left to "creeping about" lurking like a disgruntled sha...
The story I have chosen to analyze in this paper is “The woman who drank from her lover’s skull. An in depth analysis of the story presents a very stark method of punishing a woman for any kind of act of infidelity that she may commit.
In the beginning, the narrator talks about her surroundings, and why she is in her current situation. Her state of mind is clear, as she describes what is going on prior to her being set in this room. As the narrator writes about her husband she alludes to the fact that she suffers from an illness that her husband, who happens to be a well known physician, does no...
... by it. This is symbolic of her marriage which started out as happy and desirable and in such a short time she doubts her love for him and starts to see him as undesirable and animal-like. Women are afraid not to submit to the male species in fear of losing what they have and not being able to make it on their own.
The struggles of mental illness can be located anywhere, at any time. The short story ‘’Man From the South’ ’ definitely demonstrates insanity throughout its whole plot. The author Roal Dahl is excellent for disturbing the reader’s mind with his highly creative imagination. Generally, this story that is taking place in Jamaica is about an elderly man questioning another one about his abilities to use a lighter. Consequently, the man comes up with a bet. This crazy bet consists of going up to his hotel room and to watch the young man light his lighter ten times. If the young man succeeds, he wins a brand new Cadillac, but if he doesn’t, the man must condemn his left pinky immediately. In this short story, there are many indicators that the elderly man has some kind of mental issues.
No person is inherently mad; humans have caused other humans to drown their own sanity which can then submerge that person into an ocean of madness. Historically, madness had become a common occurrence with women due to several stress factors they must endure on a daily basis: finding a husband, baring children, raising children, find a suitable job, retaining femininity, and more. Authors Charlotte Gilman and Jhumpa Lahiri explored the psyche of two women who were facing very stressful situations. Gilman’s The Yellow-Wallpaper, introduces her readers to an unnamed nineteenth century woman who is slowly falling into madness. The protagonist must endure the “rest cure” where she must live without artistic expression, human contact, or freedom to go where she pleases. After months of enduring, she is ultimately shoved into madness by her husband, whom originally started her treatment. Lahiri’s protagonist, Aparna, is forced into an arranged marriage, and then moves to Boston with her new husband to live a new life with their daughter, Usha. Aparna is being neglected by her husband, finds it difficult to adjust to Boston culture, and spends most of her time being a house wife. She finally finds a friend, and possibly a love, in another Bengali man named Pranab. Once he was engaged and then married, Aparna revels to Usha that she was on the brink of committing suicide. Both characters were being controlled and had little to no say in what they could or could not do. These restraints with the added on stress that they faced cause both to the edge of madness. Women who had to withstand the struggles of doing what is expected of them while still attempting to do what they desire encounter many restraints that force them to stray away fr...
The controversial topic of insanity manifests itself commonly in Romantic writing, and has been one much disputed over time. Some say that people who seem crazy are so above our own level of thought and understanding that we can’t possibly begin to identify with them and that we can find genius in the form of ordinary lunatics who connect to God and divinity in ways “normal” people don’t comprehend. Throughout works such as “The Cask of Amontillado and “The Castaway”, the authors question insanity with ideas that show the possible outcomes when one looks deep inside themselves for a divine spark or intuition. Both of these stories address madness in different forms, and madness itself is Godly experiences gone wrong; the person who receives the divine vision is unable to handle its raw truth.
There is no one to listen to her or care for her ‘personal’ opinions. Her husband cares for her, in a doctor’s fashion, but her doesn’t listen to her (Rao, 39). Dealing with a mentally ill patient can be difficult, however, it’s extremely inappropriate for her husband to be her doctor when he has a much larger job to fulfill. He solely treats his wife as a patient telling her only what could benefit her mental sickness rather than providing her with the companionship and support she desperately needs. If her husband would have communicated with her on a personal level, her insanity episode could have been prevented. Instead of telling her everything she needed he should’ve been there to listen and hear her out. Instead she had to seek an alternate audience, being her journal in which he then forbids her to do. All of this leads to the woman having nobody to speak or express emotion to. All of her deep and insane thoughts now fluttered through her head like bats in the Crystal Cave.
Insanity is a spectrum of behaviors symbolized by a certain abnormal and mental behaviors. This can be manifested as violation of someone’s right to do something or in other words denial of freedom. On the other hand, feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds either politically, socially or economically equality to men. The theme on insanity and feminism is clearly revealed and in real sense defines the story as a critical feminist in the 19th century. However, feminism right is violated in this
What is fear? Everyone has their definition of the word fear. It could define as something or someone that give us the creeps. Besides that, how could we fear our body or our house? All around us, someone has some rare phobia, from spiders to waters.one of the dominant theme of both stories is that having fears could cause someone to become antisocial and loss themselves. “Hands” is about Wing Biddlebaum who lost everything because of a lie. The other stories “A Jury of Her Peer” is about Mrs. Wright who murder her husband because he takes the life of the only thing that gives her joy. Besides that, Mrs. Wright’s friend hides pieces of evidence that could convict her of the crime of killing her husband. Both characters use their hands to express their feelings, their house represents their lack of love and security, and they both face abuse from others.
Marriage sometimes refers to the happiest time for each couple. However, marriage can lead women to having depression. In the story “The yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, published in 1892, the author is giving out a point of view that women often get depression from their spouses. Gilman is a famous feminist, who believes that women should receive the same privileges as men. In the story, the woman was being controlled by her husband John. John was a doctor and he was educated enough to tell his wife what she needed to do for her sickness; however, she could not argue with her husband because she was not smart enough to reject his decision. Since the sickness has made this woman become a weak person, she also couldn’t fight against her husband in physical ways. The time period of this story was nearly 1800, so the woman in the story must have the idea of male domination. This traditional idea has made this woman afraid to stand up for herself. At the end of the story, the depression has made this woman become mentally insane and respect is one major theme of this story.
Firstly, the reader learns that Lucrezia Smith is currently married to Septimus Warren Smith, whom was a World War I veteran suffering from a type of mental illness. After learning about Septimus’ mental illness, the reader can learn that her husband’s mental illness dominates her. On page fifteen the reader can see at first hand how difficult the...
As Nolen-Hoeksema et al (2009) psychoanalysis developed by Freud, unconscious, childhood experiences are controlled by inner forces. Tumi’s feeling of going crazy is being influenced by what she thinks, feels and her experiences as she had a poor relationship with her mother and sister, passing away of her aunt, her belongings being stolen, ...
In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” author Kate Chopin presents the character of Mrs. Louis Mallard. She is an unhappy woman trapped in her discontented marriage. Unable to assert herself or extricate herself from the relationship, she endures it. The news of the presumed death of her husband comes as a great relief to her, and for a brief moment she experiences the joys of a liberated life from the repressed relationship with her husband. The relief, however, is short lived. The shock of seeing him alive is too much for her bear and she dies. The meaning of life and death take on opposite meaning for Mrs. Mallard in her marriage because she lacked the courage to stand up for herself.