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Woman in the nineteenth century summary
Character analysis yellow wallpaper the narrator
Woman in the nineteenth century summary
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Every felt like someone was in control of you to where you went insane? What would you do how would you react, would you get help? Well Jane, the narrator happens to go insane because of being a submissive wife she feels she does not have the mind to think on her own, which leads Jane to find herself in the wallpaper. Yes I said she fines her in the wallpaper! Back in the 1860 women had it hard at least that I believe. Back then women had to stay home and take care of the children. They also had to clean and cook and do as there husband told them. So you can say women didn’t have a mind of there on because they always had to listen to their husband to make them happy. I believe that exactly how Jane felt in the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” …show more content…
He calls me child names-“then he took me in his arms and called me blessed little goose” (gliman92). In the story Jane is talked to like a child in that way by john has somewhat of a control on her. John thinks he controls Jane by telling her that she cannot write in her notebook. But Jane is not having that she still writes in her book she mentions “I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal — having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition. I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition”(Gilman)(page87).He also would not let her be around relatives. She even decides she can’t handle being around her own child. She states” It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” (Dock). At the end of the story Jane has it in her mind that there is a woman in this wallpaper. This lady that Jane says that in the wallpaper needs to be set free. Jane begins to tear down the wallpaper, the next day Jennie comes in tearing down this wallpaper and Jane see her and gets mad. Jane provides this evidence by saying “How she betrayed herself that time! But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me,—not alive!”(Dulaney) So Jane then gets the key and locks herself in this room. Jane takes the key and throw it out the window. “I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper
She begins to tear strips of the wallpaper and continues to do so all night until morning yards of the paper are stripped off. Her sister-in-law Jennie offers to help, but at this point the narrator is territorially protective of the wallpaper. She locks herself in the room and is determined to strip the wall bare. As she is tearing the wallpaper apart she sees strangled heads in the pattern shrieking as the wallpaper is being torn off. At this point, she is furious and even contemplates jumping out the window, yet even in her euphoric state, she realizes this gesture could be misinterpreted.
The narrator finally achieves an authoritative position in her marriage, with John unconscious and her creative imagination finally free of all restraints. Her continual “creeping” over his prone body serves as a repeated emphasis of this liberation, almost as if the narrator chooses to climb over him to highlight his inferiority over and over again” (Harrison). John was a weak person, Jane suffered from a nervous disorder which was made way worse by the feelings of being trapped in a room. The setting of the nursery room with barred windows in a colonial mansion provides an image of the loneliness and seclusion she experienced. Periods of time can lead to insanity. Maybe her illness wasn’t that bad but he made it worse on her part because he was a sick husband. Some critics have argued “Is the narrator really liberated? We’re inclined towards saying “no”, given that she’s still creeping around the room and that her psyche is broken”
In the quote, “I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength” (page 649). Jane saves herself by expressing how she feels about specific aspects of her life in writing. Being with herself, and only herself, in a tiny bedroom, Jane writes to save her strength. As it was common in the ninetieth century for women to be property to men, this made it easy for the husband’s to completely isolate their lives by controlling their lives. Stetson writes, “So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bed-stead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found it on it” (page 655).
In most narratives there is usually a protagonist, antagonist and plot line in which we follow and either believe the speaker or disagree with them; no matter the case, we form a solid opinion based on the progression of the plot. However, in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, there is an automatic problem with the plot line of the story. Is it believable and can we trust the speaker? What is the true nature of why the author wrote the story? The point of the plot line is to understand the progression of mental illness, not to read a narrative about moving wallpapers; it isn’t to try and tell whether the woman is stable enough to be trusted with a possible plot line. From the beginning of the short story she claims that she
There was a time (not so long ago) when a man's superiority and authority wasn't a question, but an accepted truth. In the two short stories, "Desiree's Baby", and "The Yellow Wallpaper", women are portrayed as weak creatures of vanity with shallow or absent personalities, who are dependent on men for their livelihood, and even their sanity. Without men, these women were absolutely helpless and useless. Their very existence hinged on absolute and unquestioning submission…alone, a woman is nothing.
The character of the husband, John, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is introduced as a respected physician and a caring husband who strives to improve the mental health of his wife, the narrator, who is diagnosed with temporary nervous condition. John tries throughout the story to apply professional treatment methods and medications in his approach to helping his wife gain strength. However, his patient, his wife, seems to disregard John’s professional opinions and act as if she is following his advices only during his awakening presence with her. The narrator seems to be in need of John’s positive opinion about the status of her mental condition in order to avoid the criticism even though she disagrees with his treatment methodology. John, without doubt, cares for his wife and her wellbeing, but he does not realize how his treatment method negatively impacts their relationship his wife’s progress towards gaining strength. Although John was portrayed as a caring and a loving physician and husband to the narrator through out most of the story, he was also suggested as being intrusive and directive to a provoking level in the mind of the narrator.
In literature, women are often depicted as weak, compliant, and inferior to men. The nineteenth century was a time period where women were repressed and controlled by their husband and other male figures. Charlotte Gilman, wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," showing her disagreement with the limitations that society placed on women during the nineteenth century. According to Edsitement, the story is based on an event in Gilman’s life. Gilman suffered from depression, and she went to see a physician name, Silas Weir Mitchell. He prescribed the rest cure, which then drove her into insanity. She then rebelled against his advice, and moved to California to continue writing. She then wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which is inflated version of her experience. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the main character is going through depression and she is being oppressed by her husband and she represents the oppression that many women in society face. Gilman illustrates this effect through the use of symbols such as the yellow wallpaper, the nursery room, and the barred windows.
Every 1 of 7 mothers in the world suffer from postpartum depression (“What is Postpartum Depression”). If there are around four million live births in the U.S. annually, then approximately 600,000 women get postpartum depression just here (Wicker). In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is quite mistreated. This novel is about a woman, who we only know as the narrator, who is a new wife and mother. Her husband, John, starts noticing that she’s acting differently, so her husband moves them to a different house to put her on bed rest. During their stay, the narrator’s sister-in-law, Jennie, has to keep her child, because the narrator is too ill. They lock the narrator up in this room, where she starts to hallucinate and she begins seeing a woman stuck inside the yellow wallpaper. In the end she sets the woman free and the narrator herself winds up even crazier than before. The narrator is a creative woman who suffers from postpartum depression, and in attempt to cure it she is locked up, but it fails.
The setting of these two stories emphasize, on visually showing us how the main characters are based around trying to find freedom despite the physical, mental and emotional effects of living in confinement. While on the other hand, dealing with Psychology’s ugly present day behavior showing dystopia of societies views of women during the time period they lived.
As it has barred windows, the gate at the head of the stairs, the scratch marks on the walls and the nailed down bed. Gilman also uses the yellow wallpaper in the nursery to symbolically represent Jane 's mental illness. Yellow typically represents sickness, death and decay. In the story the yellow starts rubbing off on her as declared by Jennie, John 's sister, who said, "Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes" (Gilman 11). Subsequently, Jane discovers the woman behind the wallpaper, who only she can see. This woman symbolizes herself in that she is stuck with her mental illness and confined to her home, just as the "woman" is confined to the wallpaper. She writes, "So I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away." (Gilman 9); she feels trapped in the house just as the woman does behind the wallpaper, and begins to feel as if she is that woman. So when she finally eliminates the yellow wallpaper, she (as the trapped woman or hallucination) feels like she has been released and has a new freedom from John and Jane (herself). In her fragile mental state, Jane has traded places with the trapped woman (who is the freed hallucination). The new Jane feels triumphant and then creeps over John which in a sense symbolizes the freedom she so desperately craves." "I 've
There are notable similarities between Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. These similarities include the treatment of space, the use of a gothic tone with elements of realism, a sense of male superiority, and the mental instability of women.
Finally, the yellow wallpaper presents perspectives of how men control females. As stated previously, In the story, John uses his power as a doctor to control his wife. He encaged his wife in a summer home, placing her in a room filled with barricades and many faults. As a human she is deprived of her rights and her ability to form house duties is taken away so she can rest as he calls it. Without a doubt, she fell into insanity because of the situation she was placed in. When she ripped the paper off the wall, it was a sign of freedom from her husband, and the bars that held her captive for weeks. Certainly she has a vivid imagination and being placed in bondage and unable to write which in turn lead her to mental health problems.
He orders her to complete bed rest and does not allow her to do a thing for herself. “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction”. He does practically everything for her. She even tells of a time when he picked her up and carried her up the stairs when she is very capable of doing so herself. She is also treated like a child. Her husband makes the nursery her bedroom, along with a baby gate at the top of the stairs. John calls her child-like names such as, “blessed little goose,” and, “little girl.” When the narrator tried to talk to her husband about anything, especially her illness, he would tease her, laugh at her, and patronize her. It was like her husband had no respect for her or her opinions at all. The narrator being trapped in this room led to her realize that her husband just wants to control her and how much she wanted to free of his control.
During her isolation, the narrator becomes interested in why it was there and begins to believe it affects her directly. At first, she hates the wallpaper and understands why the residents before would tear it up in the room. She describes the paper looking at her and mocking her feelings, “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had.” (382). Suddenly her interest changes and becomes very fond of the wallpaper because she continues to dissect the pattern it creates. She spends hours on hours just following it until she finds a “some sort of conclusion” (384) as if the pattern could speak to her. After becoming so obsessed with the pattern her mental state begins to dwindle again, and one night she wakes up stands up and sees a figure in the wallpaper from the moonlight. This figure was of a woman a shadowy looking woman, which is actually the narrator’s own shadow. At this time, she has become so unstable that she believes there is a woman trapped inside the wallpaper. The woman begins coming out during the day, creeping around the narrator inside the house and outside. On the last day of her stay, the narrator believes she can save the woman in her prison, pulling and shaking the wallpaper off with help (she believes) from the shadowy woman. While the narrator locks herself in the room, believing she can do whatever she pleases “It is so pleasant to
In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the role of a woman in society is one of domestic duties. Jeenie, the protagonist’s sister-in-law, is a great example of this. The protagonist is forbidden, by her husband, to “work” until she is well again, so Jeenie steps in and assumes her domestic identity of a woman and wife. The protagonist calls her “a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper” and says she “hopes for no better profession” (Gilman 343). Jeenie clearly has no aspirations outside the confines of her domestic role. The protagonist herself worries she is letting her husband, John, down by not fulfilling her domestic duties. She says “it does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way” (Gilman 342). Besides the domestic role, which she is unable to fulfill, the protagonist plays the helpless, fragile, role of a woman where she is deemed incapable of thinking for herself and is reduced to acting more or les...