“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1899. One of the major themes is the cultural perception of women during this time. This short story is semi-autobiographical in the sense that Gilman went to the doctor that is mentioned in the story. She had similar struggles and feelings to the narrator of this story who is facing the controlling nature of her husband. While women of this time were trying to be kept in their private and domestic sphere, it left women feeling hopeless and full of depression.
There is even a time where ... ... middle of paper ... ...pressing herself and her story of insanity. "The Yellow Wallpaper" presents readers with story of a woman's insanity. It tells how women were disregarded at times and treated like frail children at others. Ultimately, Jane realized that she held control over her own life. It was her responsibility to relieve her stress and tell her story.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist, was one of these women who used her writing to express the differences and hardships women went through. One of her more famous works, the Yellow Wallpaper, is known as both a feminist piece and a depiction of Victorian life and indifferences for women. It is a piece that can have controversial meanings that can be taken to heart to why Gilman ever wrote it. "The Yellow Wallpaper" has a simple enough story, the woman is taken to a rented house to recover from a nervous depression that she was experiencing. The depression was something common in women of the time, especially in more upper class women with little to do.
Because of her experience with the rest cure, it can even be said that Gilman based the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" loosely on herself. But I believe that expressing her negative feelings about the popular rest cure is only half of the message that Gilman wanted to send. Within the subtext of this story lies the theme of oppression: the oppression of the rights of women especially inside of marriage. Gilman was using the woman/women behind the wallpaper to express her personal views on this issue. The two common threads that connect Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the narrator in her story are depression/postpartum depression, and entrapment within their roles as of women.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a woman suffering from postpartum depression is prescribed a “rest cure”. She is forced to stay in a room with yellow wallpaper which She says is “committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 419). The woman convinces herself that there is a woman trapped in the yellow wallpaper, and it is her job to free and catch her. She begins to mix reality with fantasy and she unknowingly becomes suicidal and drives herself mad. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” uses dialogue, narration, and symbolism to show that women are not taken seriously when it comes to mental health.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" was written to criticize Dr. Mitchell's cure for women's depression. After Olley 2 Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," she submitted her essay to Dr. Mitchell. He changed his treatment after reading the story (footnote in Gilman 431). "The Yellow Wallpaper" was inspired by Gilman's own experiences with the depression (Seymor-Smith 979). Knowing the symptoms of postpartum depression is critical for a young mother's discovering that she may have the depress... ... middle of paper ... ...s like not being able to write or going outside.
As human beings, we play the cards that are dealt to us in this world. In life, every person goes through their individual ups and downs and occasionally may break down to the extent of not knowing what to do with oneself. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” which takes place in the late 1800s, focuses on the first person narrator who is an infatuated woman. The disheartening story concentrates on a woman who is suffering from postpartum depression, and as well had mental breakdowns. The narrators husband John, moves her into a home isolated in the country where he wants her to “rest” and get better from her illness.
This statement is saying that she thought God would understand and see that she was struggling with her parents and with her life. Obviously, connotation is one important aspect that Anne Sexton uses in this poem to show the theme of suffering depression. Although Anne Sexton uses a ton of literary devices in her poem “Young” to prove the theme of suffering depression, one of the most important devices is attitude. She uses atti... ... middle of paper ... ...es of trouble. To reiterate, Anne Sexton uses shift in her poem “Young” to prove the theme of how she suffered depression.
A Woman Trapped Within Herself “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is a short story that was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1899. The story is used to show many people a treatment of a mental illness that deals with depression in women after they give birth. It is a very common illness but because of new technology is treated much different in todays medical field. The illness is now treated with medicine but when the medical fields lacked technology the illness was treated in a way that many people would say is mentally ill as well. The treatment was offered to the author of this short story and she explains her opinion by publishing “The Yellow Wallpaper” telling the story from the narrator’s point of view, which is a woman trapped within herself resulting from the treatment.
Clearly Gilman had a great deal to say about the restrictions placed on women in the early 20th century. “The Yellow Wallpaper” explores a young woman’s gradual psychological demise. In doing so, however, readers may also observe the gradual liberation of a woman. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator who is suffering from depression, takes a trip to the country for the summer, with her husband and their baby. Her husband has diagnosed his wife’s condition as merely “a temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 4) and he decides to move her to a nursery that is located at the top of the house.