Research Paper on Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an icon to the women’s rights movement, and her piece, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is used to show the effects of women’s oppression. Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Jane possesses qualities that Gilman herself has. By doing research on women’s oppression during late nineteenth century, on Gilman herself, and S. Weir Mitchell’s rest cure, it will become evident that Jane parallels Gilman. In the late nineteenth century, women’s oppression led to many women experiencing many different types of mental illness. Oppression prevented women from being able to think and speak for themselves; they couldn’t even go out without their father or husband. Women who were oppressed …show more content…
Weir Mitchell founded the infamous “rest cure.” It was designed to furthermore suppress women, but seem like it was to cure mental illness. Mitchell came up with the cure based on his own history of mental illness. After experiencing a breakdown, Mitchell would go outdoors to rest his mind and not think about anything but the beauty of nature. When came back he felt renewed. He then came up with the theory that this would cure women undergoing mental illness. The author of this book says, “His obstinacy hurt lives and interfered with his effectiveness as a physician, and it cast a shadow over his contributions in experimental medicine and neurology.” People who have done research on Mitchell found that he has problematic views against women. He believed men were all superior and that women should remain minorities. Mitchell also had to charm women into the brutal caretaking. When a women goes on the rest cure they are not allowed to think or speak; they cannot even perform daily activities, such as bathing or feeding themselves. Women became strictly dependant of everyone around them. The rest cure may have “cured” some women, but for others, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, it was severely detrimental. Gilman first reached out to Mitchell by writing him a detailed letter about mental illness in her family. She used words like “” and “” and Mitchell believed that only men can use those words. Ultimately, Mitchell said that Gilman …show more content…
Throughout the story, Jane is always talking about how depressed she is and how she wishes to escape the yellow wallpaper. Her husband, John, desperately tries to convince her that she is not sick, and that she is getting better. When he keeps persisting that she is better, she says “better in body perhaps—“(316). That statement proves that Jane knows there is something deeper than what John sees. Jane knows that there is something wrong, but she keeps it to herself, she writes it down in her journal and hides it whenever she hears someone coming up the stairs. Gilman also uses clues to make one believe that Jane is the woman in the wallpaper. Jane is constantly talking about the woman in the wallpaper, and how she only sees her at night. She is convinced that the woman gets out during the day. The reader can assume that Jane is the woman who gets out during the day because at one point in the story Jane caught Jennie looking at the wallpaper and when Jane asked what she was doing, Jennie said it stained everything it touched and that it was always all over Jane’s clothes (317). In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Jane is convinced that she is confined within the wallpaper. The reader can assume this because she is obsessed with it, and is constantly talking about how it has a negative effect on her. Jane thinks that the paper is a living thing, or has
Due to Jane’s husband enforcing a life in confinement due to her nervous breakdowns, it only takes a little time for the isolation to drive her mad. In the beginning of the story, it is clear that the narrator, Jane, suffers from post-natal depression, which is a common effect after childbirth. The way Jane sees her living quarters is much different than it actually is. She imagines the rings on the walls, the torn up wallpaper, and the bars on the windows as a nursery or a school for boys, when those features actually lead the audience to realize that it is a room for the mentally ill. Her husband, also her physician, believes that in order for her metal illness to be cured is to forbid her from exercising her imagination, working, and to keep her locked away. However, his theory proves to be wrong when her mind begins to see a world inside the wallpaper, caused by the abuse from confinement. Although her husband is doing this for what he thinks is best for her well
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”
Everyone who was once present in the house has now disappeared and Jane is left to cope by herself. All she has left is her bed and her own thoughts. The idea of her trapped will not cure her “sickness” or depression that she is fighting. Jane is
Gilman has stated in multiple papers that the main reason for her writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” was to shed light on her awful experience with this ‘rest cure’. However, she also managed to inject her own feminist agenda into the piece. Charlotte Perkins Gilman chose to include certain subtle, but alarming details regarding the narrator’s life as a representation of how women were treated at the time. She wants us to understand why the narrator ends up being driven to madness, or in her case, freedom. There are untold layers to this truly simple, short story just like there were many layers to Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through such treatments. 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.
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
There are times in the story when John wakes up to Jane wide awake because John makes Jane take the tonics during the day so when its night time she’s awake for instance the things John gave her made her not want to sleep at all that’s why she was acting weird and not sleeping during the story John points out that Jane is looking worst and Jane suggests that she feels fine but little does she know that she is always high and on all kind of drugs. Jane is given phosphates which makes her thirsty which causes her to drink the drugs that John wants her to take. Jane notices that sometimes she feels that the drugs are not necessary, but she does not question John because he knows he is a high-class physician. All these things make Jane hallucinate she starts thinking about why the wallpaper moves and she start seeing people and one day Jane thinks she saw someone in her room, so she gets a rope and ends up tying it on her self because she is so drugged she doesn’t even know what’s going on. Jane also notices that the lower part of the wallpaper is all ripped off and scratched but the wall next to the bed is normal, little does Jane know that all those things were created by her.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can be perceived in a few different ways. Greg Johnson wrote an article describing his own perception of what he believed the short story meant. In doing so, it can be noticed that his writing aligns well with what can be perceived from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story. The narrator Jane, experiences many things throughout Gilman’s story, which Johnson describes thoroughly. It is because of these descriptive points that allow Johnsons article to be a convincing argument. The main ideas that Johnson depicts that are supported and I agree with from the story include Janes developing imaginative insight, her husband and sister-in-law’s belief on domestic control, and her gained power through unconsciousness.
She must take note of the woman that she sees in the pattern to make sense of its mysteriousness: “Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.” Not only is this woman that is a core part of the misfit held in some sort of prison, so is Jane. In the “bright spots”, in view of her husband and other people, she must “stay still” and pretend she is alright. However, in the “shady spots”, when she is alone, Jane allows herself to let go and, thanks to the misfit, is able to be aware of the bars that surround her own life. This exact woman and the misfit that she is a part of, is the exact reason why Jane is even given the opportunity to escape the prison that makes up her current reality. The misfit, the yellow wallpaper, even lets the woman inside of it out of its grasp during the day: “It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.” Just as the misfit is abnormal and doesn’t conform, this woman shares the same traits and she has become a part of the misfit. Jane is aware of the fact that creeping by daylight is abnormal, just like the misfit. In the beginning Jane most likely would not have accepted this behavior. Now Jane even admits to creeping, just not in plain sight.
They both feel trapped within their own lives, emotionally and physically. She saw the woman in the wallpaper as a companion in her days of isolation and self-meditation, and she realized that she needed to break free of her husband’s expectations and live her life her desired way. This gave readers insight to the emotional tendencies of the main character and motivations from discovering the meaning of the intricate wallpaper design. This is achieved when she states, “I’ve got out at last in spite of you and Jane. I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”
As the reader knows, Jane does most of her sneaking around at night when her husband is not around because she knows he would not approve. Jane begins to make it her life’s mission to free the woman trapped behind the pattern of the wallpaper, which could be interpreted as society holding the woman back from freedom. Jane becomes rather obsessed with the wallpaper and taking it down from the walls. She becomes very sneaky and secluded to the room where she watches for the woman to appear behind the
Szasz, Thomas. Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 2007. Print. Braslow, Joel T. Mental Ills and Bodily Cures: Psychiatric Treatment in the First Half of the Twentieth Century. California: University of California, 1997. Print.
Once John gains access to the woman in the wallpaper’s sanctum, he faints. In response Jane says, “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time.” (Stetson 656) Her words carry an implication that she perceives his act of fainting as one of weakness. By refraining from using John’s name, Jane robs him of his identity and places him in a gender group devoid of individuality. Additionally, Jane cannot seem to understand the reason that John fainted. To her the act of fainting seems to be irrational and unwarranted. Jane’s confusion at this juncture illustrates a loss of self-awareness. She fails to realize that “creeping” across the floor in a room where she has just stripped the walls of their wallpaper is frightening. Jane also mentions that she has to “creep over” her husband every time she traverses her path around the room. The fact that she is placed above John, when she is already close to the floor, speaks to the dominance that she can now exert over him, though it is important to note that the dominance is only manifested in the room with the yellow wallpaper and not anywhere else. Whether Jane continues the exertion of this dominance is not written in the story. However, one can infer that since Jane has apparently
Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” to express her opinions about feminism and originality. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman's psychological disorder, her entire mental state characterized by her encounters with the wallpaper in her room. She incorporates imagery and symbolism to show how confined the narrator is because of her gender and mental illness.
The Yellow Wallpaper is not just a short story. It was written from Gilman’s perspective with the purpose of telling people that being confined will only make a person more insane. But there’s got to be someone to blame, right? Well, seeing as Gilman was a feminist, it is only logical to blame the person that put her in the sanitarium, right? There’s a deeper meaning to The Yellow Wallpaper and she used symbolism, setting, and character to help the reader better understand this short piece.