Why Charlotte Perkins wrote The Yellow Wallpaper
In 1887 Charlotte Perkins Gilman had melancholia, meaning she was suffering from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown. During about the third year of this trouble she went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. She of course went to the physician, he put her to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a good physique, told me so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me. He sent me home with solemn advice to “live as domestic a life far as possible” to “have but two hours intellectual life a day”.She went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, She became almost border
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But the best result is this. Many years later the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading “The Yellow Wallpaper.” It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to …show more content…
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
Until she sees a woman creeping behind the pattern one night tempting her to go see if the wallpaper is actually moving which is when her husband catches her. He always seems to talk down to her treating her like a child in this particular instance calling her “little girl”. In spite of this she sees this as an opportunity to talk to let him know her concerns informing him that she is not getting better as he so adamantly believes. Nevertheless, her attempts are futile for he dismisses her once more putting his supposed medical opinion above his wife’s feelings. The story takes a shocking turn as she finally discerns what that figure is: a woman. As the story progress she believes the sole reason for her recovery is the wallpaper. She tells no one of this because she foresees they may be incredulous so she again feels the need to repress her thoughts and feelings. On the last night of their stay, she is determined to free the woman trapped behind bars. She begins to tear strips of the wallpaper and continues to all night by 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
Gilman tries to show that according to her husband, the narrator continually brings her great depression upon herself. The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman also attempts to show that the lack of social exposure, physical repression, and ugly wallpaper cause the treatment to be extremely ineffective and detrimental. The disorder which is being treated is actually strengthened to the point of a serious mental illness. Similarly in today’s society, medical and psychological advice may have the same effect. Medical technology and practice have progressed considerably since the time of the “Yellow Wallpaper.” This is not to say that today’s physicians are infallible. Perhaps some of today’s treatments are the “Yellow Wallpaper” of the future .
In her 1935 autobiography, The living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, She describes her “utter prostration” by “unbearable inner miser” and “ceaseless tears,” a condition only made worse by the presence of her husband and her baby. She was referred to Dr. S Weir Mitchell, then the country’s leading specialist in nervous disorders, whose treatment in such cases was a “rest cure” of forced inactivity. Especially in the case of his female patients, Mitchell believed that depression was brought on by too much mental activity and not enough attention to comestic affairs. For Gilman, This course of treatment was a disaster. Prevented from working she soon has a nervous breakdown. At her worst, she was reduced to crawling into closets and under beds, clutching a rag doll
Related to thought disorder is obsession, which the protagonist displays in her relentless thoughts about the yellow wallpaper which covers her bedroom walls. The narrator begins her obsession with the yellow wallpaper from the very beginning of the story. "I never saw a worse paper in my life," she says. "It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irri...
The medical profession’s godlike attitude in “The Yellow Wallpaper” demonstrates this arrogance. The Rest cure that Dr. Weir Mitchell prescribed, which is mentioned in Gilman’s work, reflects men’s disparaging attitudes. His Rest cure calls for complete rest, coerced feeding and isolation. Mitchell, a neurosurgeon specializing in women’s nervous ailments, expounded upon his belief for women’s nervous conditions when he said,
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.
The short story titled, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is given its name for no other reason than the disturbing yellow wallpaper that the narrator comes to hate so much; it also plays as a significant symbol in the story. The wallpaper itself can represent many various ideas and circumstances, and among them, the sense of feeling trapped, the impulse of creativity gone awry, and what was supposed to be a simple distraction transfigures into an unhealthy obsession. By examining the continuous references to the yellow wallpaper itself, one can begin to notice how their frequency develops the plot throughout the course of the story. As well as giving the reader an understanding as to why the wallpaper is a more adequate and appropriate symbol to represent the lady’s confinement and the deterioration of her mental and emotional health. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the color of the wallpaper symbolizes the internal and external conflicts of the narrator that reflect the expectations and treatment of the narrator, as well as represent the sense of being controlled in addition to the feeling of being trapped.
In everyday day life we go through changes and sometimes we even break down to the point we do not know what to do with ourselves, but in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story” The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator is an obsessive person. The story focuses on a woman who is going through postpartum depression and has had a nervous breakdown. Her husband John moves her into a home where he wants her to rest in isolation to recover from her disorder. Throughout her time in the room the narrator discovers new things and finally understands life.
Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was an author in the late 1800s who suffered from mental illness and was able to mostly avoid the maddening resting cure used to treat mental illness at the time. She wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” as a warning to doctors and families of women with minor mental illnesses to allow them to continue in their normal activities to help them recover. “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy,” Stetson claimed, “and it worked.” The intention of the short story was to show how a sane woman can be driven to madness by the constraints put on women who “misbehave” by their husbands and society. The narrator, Jane, was simply a nervous and depressed woman and may have had mild postpartum
“‘Too Terribly Good to be Printed’: Charlotte Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’” by Conrad Shumaker places an interesting analysis of the short story written by Gilman. The purpose of the article is to highlight the feminist role Gilman wanted to deliver through writing. Shumaker even refers to her as “an avowed feminist.” (Shumaker 589) Shumaker hopes the readers of his article see the feminist side of Gilman’s story.
Can a story contain more than one antagonist? In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman there is an overwhelming amount of conflict the unnamed narrator must endure. The protagonist of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the narrator who is suffering from depression and is taken to a house for the summer to rest. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the wallpaper is the antagonist because it causes the narrator to have a breakdown at the end of the short story; John, the narrator’s husband, cannot be the antagonist because he is doing what he believes is best for her, and the narrator cannot be the antagonist because she wants to improve her mental state.
When first reading the gothic feminist tale, “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one might assume this is a short story about a women trying to save her sanity while undergoing treatment for postpartum depression. Gilman herself had suffered post-natal depression and was encouraged to undergo the “rest cure” to cure her hysteria. The treatment prescribed to Gilman resulted in her having a very similar experience as the narrator in the short story. The “perfect rest” (648), which consisted of forced bed rest and isolation sparked the inspiration for “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This story involving an unreliable narrator, became an allegory for repression of women. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman illustrates the seclusion and oppression of women in the nineteenth century society by connecting the female imprisonment, social and mental state, and isolation to the objects in and around the room.
“John is so queer now, that I don’t want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don’t want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself.”(Gilman) She is now imagining the woman out of the paper and creeping around outside. She wants to catch her even though there is no one to even catch, but she doesn’t know that. Her husband is at work all day which gives her the opportunity to creep around, explore and find this woman. Her husband John would suspect her of something if she left the room at night so she must do it during the day. This quote shows symbolism in relation to the fact that the woman in the paper is symbolizing the narrator wandering around outside. Moreover, she is clearly hallucinating about this woman in wallpaper. Her visibility of insanity is quite clear when the author says, “That was clever, for really I wasn’t alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.” (Gilman) The narrator is imagining interactions that have occurred with the woman she sees in the wall. They begin to peel off all the paper, working together in her mind. She then begins to imagine the wallpaper laughing at her when the sun is out. It can be concluded that her husband should not be taking care of her because he is the sole reason she is insane in the first place. This quote demonstrates symbolism because the woman in the wall represents the psychotic state that the narrator’s husband has driven her to. With this in mind, the narrator becomes connected with the woman in the wall. “I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path. I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anyone come in, till John comes. I want to astonish him. I’ve got a
"If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression -- a slight hysterical tendency -- what is one to do?" (Gilman 1). Many women in the 1800's and 1900's faced hardship when it came to standing up for themselves to their fathers, brothers and then husbands. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator of the story, "The Yellow Wallpaper", is married to a physician, who rented a colonial house for the summer to nurse her back to health after her husband thinks she has neurasthenia, but actually suffers from postpartum depression. He suggested the 'rest cure'. She should not be doing any sort of mental or major physical activity, her only job was to relax and not worry about anything. Charlotte was a writer and missed writing. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is significant to literature in the sense that, the author addresses the issues of the rest cure that Dr. S. Weir Mitchell prescribed for his patients, especially to women with neurasthenia, is ineffective and leads to severe depression. This paper includes the life of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in relation to women rights and her contribution to literature as one of her best short story writings.
The woman behind this work of literature portrays the role of women in the society during that period of time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a well written story describing a woman who suffers from insanity and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The author uses her own experience to criticize male domination of women during the nineteenth century. Although the story was written fifty years ago, "The Yellow Wallpaper" still brings a clear message how powerless women were during that time.