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Use of symbolism in the yellow wallpaper
Symbolism the yellow wallpaper
Use of symbolism in the yellow wallpaper
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This paper will look at the many symbols hidden in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This is important to prove that Gilman hid many hints implying that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is not merely a gothic story but a story making a connection between sexual roles put down by men and insanity. First of all, the setting of the story is significant. The house the protagonist and John rented has barred windows, hedges, walls, and gates that lock. These all suggest the wife’s confinement to the home. The nailed-down bed is suggestive of the wife who is also unable to move around freely. It can be imagined a house like a dungeon from the description of the house and it suggests the situation of the main character caged like a bird by …show more content…
Is the house really haunted as the narrator suggests in the beginning and is the woman a ghost? No, the woman inside the wallpaper is the narrator’s Doppelganger. A symbolic parallel between the women trapped in the wallpaper and the situation of the wife who is trapped by her mental illness and household, which she has no control over. The woman in the wallpaper could be the representation of a woman who loses her normal mind and becomes impossible to keep and control her by herself. Lastly, although the ending of the story is very ambiguous it is also symbolic. John comes into the room and faints, finding the narrator “creeping.” The very last sentence of the story is, “But he did [faint], and did right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!” (Gilman, 478). John may have been given female characteristics by fainting since women faint at the slightest shock. Nevertheless, there is much debate whether the narrator is the winner or the loser. The main character in “The Yellow Wallpaper” crawls and creeps behind the wallpaper. Creeping could be seen as defeat for she was only left with animal characteristics. She is unable to retain her sanity and her individuality therefore she is a failure. The act of creeping over, being on top of John, indicates her power over John. She is free to do whatever she wants and John cannot stop her because he is
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, is a first-person narrative written in the style of a journal. It takes place during the nineteenth century and depicts the narrator’s time in a temporary home her husband has taken her to in hopes of providing a place to rest and recover from her “nervous depression”. Throughout the story, the narrator’s “nervous condition” worsens. She begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper in her room to the point of insanity. She imagines a woman trapped within the patterns of the paper and spends her time watching and trying to free her. Gilman uses various literary elements throughout this piece, such as irony and symbolism, to portray it’s central themes of restrictive social norms
The setting of this story is described as an old nursery that is located on the top floor of an old isolated mansion that is several miles off of the main road. The narrator’s treatment is “prescribed” by her husband, John, who orders her to stay in bed and separate herself from the outside world in a bedroom that previously had several different identities. “It was a nursery first, and then a playroom and gymnasium, I should judge, for all the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the wall”(730). The feeling the room creates around her slowly begins to alter her mindset. The barred windows create the sense of being trapped within the walls around her which slowly starts to transform the room into the identity of not just any prison, but the narrator’s prison.
The first theme present in the horrific and heart wrenching story is the subordinate position of women within marriage. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator’s wish that her house were haunted like those in which “frightened heroines suffer Gothic horrors” (DeLamotte 5). However, this wish is in essence to empower herself. The narrator is already afraid of her husband and is suffering mentally and emotionally. She desperately wishes for an escape “through fantasy, into a symbolic version of her own plight: a version in which she would have a measure of distance and control” (DeLamotte 6). Throughout the text, Gilman reveals to the reader that during the time in which the story was written, men acquired the working role while women were accustomed to working within the boundaries of their “woman sphere”. This gender division meritoriously kept women in a childlike state of obliviousness and prevented them from reaching any scholastic or professional goals. John, the narrator’s husband, establishes a treatment for his wife through the assumption of his own superior wisdom and maturity. This narrow minded thinking leads him to patronize and control his wife, all in the name of “helping her”. The narrator soon begins to feel suffocated as she is “physically and emotionally trapped by her husband” (Korb). The narrator has zero control in the smallest details of her life and is consequently forced to retreat into her fantasies...
“The Yellow Wallpaper” short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a picture of women’s life at that time. The story is a gothic horror tale, in which Gilman tried to convey her life to the readers. This story takes place in 1892, which is a century ago. It is story about a mentally troubled young woman named Jane. Even though it is a fictive story, it is still semi-autobiographical. Gilman had the same condition “Nervous Breakdown” as Jane in the story, and her doctor advised her to “’Live as domestic a life as far as possible,’ to ‘have but two hours intellectual life a day,’ and ‘never touch pen, brush, or pencil again’ as long as you lived’”(Gilman 1). It almost sounds like taking somebody’s life away without killing them. Gilman was lead by her husband just like Jane in the story, and never found him to be wrong, no matter what he says. It was maybe because of
John her insensitive husband and physician has prescribed a “rest cure” treatment for his wife. John rents a summer mansion so his wife can recuperate in solitude, doing nothing active and forbids her to write. The narrator feels that activity and exciting work would help her condition, so she secretly writes in her journal to relieve her mind. Unfortunately, she is confined to bed rest in a large sunlit former nursery, which has an immovable bed, bars over the windows, and walls decorated in hideous yellow torn wallpaper with an eerie chaotic pattern. Jennie, John’s sister is the housekeeper, but her most important job is to keep an eye on her sister-in-law making sure she follows John’s strict daily regimen of doing nothing. Several weeks later, the narrator’s condition worsens and she feels nervous, depressed, fatigued, and lacks energy to write in her secret journal. The narrator’s only stimulation is spending hours studying the perplexing pattern of the wallpaper. She becomes obsessed with the repulsive wallpaper, as the image of the figures creeping around behind the wallpaper becomes clearer each day. Late one night the moonlight reveals the figures of women trapped behind the bars. Each night the women in the wallpaper shake the bars and try to break through, but fail in their attempt. The
As she spends more and more time isolated in her bedroom, with nothing else to occupy her mind, she gradually become fixated on the dreadful patterns of the paper and instantly foresee something else: the narrator eventually see a “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous design”(77). The narrator’s bedroom being a prison becomes more literal as from figurative when the loneliness and social negation intensifies her need for an escape from the pre-set nature of conduct created specifically for her (a mentally depressed and unwell women) by the people in her life especially by John. Throughout the story, the narrator’s psychological breakdown goes from a typical depressed mind and lacked awareness of identity, to a complete madness and reversed sense of self-esteem. She gradually changes the place she has in the physical world and fights back the social rejection she is facing by turning away from reality in exchange for a world where she has total control and can act according to her own will. The author uses the yellow wallpaper as a symbol for representing the phases of the narrator’s gradual deteriorating
The story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Gilman, is a story of a woman overcome by depression after giving birth to her first child. Her husband John, a physician, diagnoses the condition as womanly hysteria. John, being “practical in the extreme” (284), takes charge of the means to her recovery through his knowledge and power over his wife. Due to the way he exercises his high status as a man, John is consequently more of a factor in his wife’s mental decline than the condition itself.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, writer and feminist, was witness to many major social changes in her lifetime including the Women’s movement. She spoke out in regard to evolving social orders, especially those which affected the status of women. She supported the idea that women should separate career and family yet be free to fulfill both (Women's Intellectual Contributions). The Yellow Wallpaper, the writing which followed her nervous breakdown, was a controversial piece for its time (Gilman 745). The story dives into the human psyche and takes us on a mental journey thru the silent suffering the narrator is experiencing while desperately trying to escape from her demons. The story leaves a lot of room for interpretation of what exactly these demons are-an evil spirit lurking in the shadows of a haunted house, the imprisonment experienced in her own home, or the loss of here sanity. One thing is certain, she must set herself free. The mental anguish of the narrator is very clear; when there is a need to escape the walls of torture, trying to free ourselves from these perils is often enough to drive one mad. The question is….is Gilman, in fact, describing her own lack of sanity or could she be making us, as the reader, question ours?
The "Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is an example of how women were repressed by society in the nineteenth century. The narrator is an upper-middle class woman who is likely to be suffering from post-partum depression, but due to an ineffective cure, she starts to go insane. The narrator’s husband, John, assumed that because he was a physician, he knew best and dominated her actions. She then retreats into her obsession with the wallpaper on the walls, the only thing she can control. Her craze for the wallpaper begins when she imagines a woman behind the bars, and eventually leads to her ripping the woman and the wallpaper off the walls completely, symbolizing her exit from oppression. The narrator’s eventual insanity was the result of the repression brought on by the patriarchic society and the suppression of her imaginative power.
In the 19th century society was from different from what it is today. Women were not in the workforce, could not vote, or even have a say in anything. Women were not permitted to give evidence in court, nor, did they have the right to speak in public before an audience. When a woman married, her husband legally owned all she had (including her earnings, her clothes and jewelry, and her children). If he died, she was entitled to only a third of her husband’s estate. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wanted to change this. She wanted people to understand the plight of women in the 19th century. In her short story The Yellow Wallpaper she tries to convey this to the reader not just on a literal level, but through various symbols in the story. In The Yellow Wallpaper the author uses symbols to show restrictions on women, lack of public interaction, the struggle for equality, and the possibilities of the female sex during the 1800s.
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.
John her husband and her physician wasn't really paying attention to her and her actions like he should’ve so it got a lot worse. Shes locked in this room at the top of the house and is starting to go crazy about the yellow wallpaper that surrounds the room. She is seeing some lady in it crawling around, the lady in the wallpaper is actually a resemblance of her just crawling around looking about as crazy as she actually is in real life.The narrator, john’s wife, was imagining things in that wallpaper. She literally imagined a woman that looked exactly like her, crawling around in the foggy woods. The woman attempts to escape her confinement and the wallpaper by gnawing at the bed, which is nailed down, and peeling off the wallpaper with her fingernails. John let it get that far because he wasn't really caring too much other than he had it set in his mind that she was ok she just needed some rest. She finally escapes into total madness, starts creeping round and round the room on her hands and knees just like the lady in the wallpaper was. Really if you think about is that lady in the wallpaper she was imagining was her
The narrator claimed that there was a woman trapped by bars in the wallpaper. It is like a prison that she is stuck in and coincides with the narrator as she is also forced to sit inside a room alone. It is also symbolic of John and his wife’s relationship. As the narrator looks deeper and deeper into the wallpaper she is really just observing her life. The yellow wallpaper really changes the narrator and her mind and she begins to dislike John. The narrator is dealing with postpartum depression and many people that are depressed are usually stuck inside their own minds. It’s like your vision is just a window you can see out of, but cannot escape. The narrator is seeing herself in the wallpaper and trying to escape because she is also trying to escape her depression. Close to the end of the story John’s wife starts to rip apart the yellow wallpaper and when she is ripping it is like she is helping the woman inside the wallpaper which is really her, to
It pinpoints out how women were taken as during the 1900’s. The story also highlights the extremes of repression and sexism by viewing the woman as mad by a rest cure. In the view of the Narrators role as a woman, lack of intellectual stimulation in her thought and unjust environment usually led her insane. This points out failure in the society in which sexism and oppression was carried out towards women. An aspect of feminism portrayed by the Narrator in the story is how she tries to dismiss John’s opinions. She repeatedly requests him to relocate her to another room downstairs. This is an aspect of feminism which should be encouraged among women to demand for their freedom. The Narrator takes part in not conquering with John. But as time goes she is less able to feel the usual relief. John rejects the request and replies to her that she must spend in the nursery room which is barred and rings similar to those of dungeon on the walls. She is denied the right to choose what pleases her. Later she comes to like the nursery room where other times she locks herself up to avoid husband’s disturbance upon the story. Also the act of Narrator’s wallpaper routine is a sense of imprisonment. She recognizes that the pattern is so ugly like a cage imprisoning women who are desperately trying to escape. The Narrator figuratively tears the bars and the wallpaper of the cage to clear her way to escape.
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. During the course of being confined in the room with the wallpaper, she learns new things and finally may have an understanding