Throughout this extract, the key themes of the text include patriarchy, confinement and insanity. The narrator is an insane paranoid women who dreams to one day overcome her ‘illness ’, as branded by her doctor husband, and to become an artist and a writer. Throughout Gilman’s frantic writing style the reader gets an insight into the narrator’s insanity and her inner emotional state is exposed as it is written in first person.
The theme of insanity is evoked throughout Gilman’s portrayal of the narrator. Her insanity is evident throughout her wild imagination and intensive descriptions of the new house. She believes her new house to be ‘haunted’ (p.1), ‘strange’, (p.2) and ‘queer’ (p.1) which suggests she is on edge and feels uncomfortable
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Her attention to detail regarding the wallpaper shows this passion, as she describes it as ‘one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns for committing every artistic sin’. (p.6) Her low frequency lexis also evokes such passion and reveals how well educated she is for using such Latinate …show more content…
Furthermore, I agree with the critic’s point that it is clear that John does not understand how to help his wife’s condition properly. His job has made him to believe pills and medicine are the only answer. However, her artistic work is disapproved by John and he refuses to believe that her ‘”work” might be beneficial to her’. Her work will help her remain calm and express all of her bottled up emotions. With her art, John can then finally understand what his poor wife is going through mentally. I do not believe John to be necessarily a bad husband. He is just trying to help her through the ideas that he knows and is familiar with – that is - various prescriptions and
Gilman's female narrator, who either chose not to fight this tradition or was unable to do so, loses her sanity at the hands of an oppressive male-dominated American society. The narrator feels certain that the "rest cure" prescribed by her doctor is not working. She says that the men in her life are wrong to limit her activity. She feels that she could escape her depression if given the chance. "Personally, I disagree with their ideas. I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good."1 But despite this knowledge, the narrator does not act out against what she believes to be the incorrect ideas of the men who confine her and make her mental illness worse. Her growing insanity is inspired by and represented in the wallpaper of the story's title.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” has opened many people’s eyes since it was first published in 1892. In the beginning readers only acknowledged Gilman’s story as showing how women with mental illnesses were treated by physicians during the 1800’s. They overlooked the deeper meaning the text contained, and it was not until later that readers discovered it. Eventually, “The Yellow Wallpaper” became known as feminist literature. Gilman does a great job showing how women suffered from inadequate medical treatment, but above that she depicts how nineteenth century women were trapped in their roles in society and yearned to escape from being controlled by males.
Tied together with feminism, Gilman’s story takes on the humiliation of social codes by illustrating a woman who is put to bed rest after giving birth and must stay put away per her husband and brother’s requests. Gilman works through the narrator to show how the woman slowly fades from the realistic world and into a new one by way the yellow wallpaper. The room becomes her reality and the world outside her window becomes the fantastical delusion. But as the narrator develops into a creature of the room itself, her physiology transforms according to the environment. Scott quotes Gilman’s essay, “The ‘Nervous Breakdown’ of Women,” on her elaboration of ecologies, “Even if the physico-psychic balance is perfect, there remains another necessity for peace of mind; that is the adjustment between the individual and the environment” (qtd. in Scott 199). While Gilman’s sanity never went as far as the narrator’s, she still bordered the line of physiologically and psychologically leaving one world for
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story that demonstrates a woman being controlled and isolated by her husband who plays both her husband and doctor as she suffers from a mental illness. The core of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is when the protagonist, a woman controlled by her husband and doctor, John, leads to an obsession of a woman being trapped in yellow wallpaper finally takes control over her and John . John is incapable to separate his doctor role and husband role because of the traditional gender roles during the nineteenth century that leads his wife, Jane, to have the need to escape from her traditional gender role.
There are various interpretations of what causes the narrator to go crazy in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. These interpretations include suggestions that the narrator is possessed, that she is oppressed by society and is acting out, that she has suffered from a traumatic childbirth, and so on. While all of these ideas hold merit and are supported by evidence in the short story, there is an alternative explanation that fits the story just as well, if not better. That explanation is that the reason the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” acts strangely and sees images in the wallpaper of her room is that she is suffering from the disorder of postpartum psychosis. During this essay I will be going into depth on a psychological analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper”.
These critics pick apart the story and view other works by Gilman to compare and contrast the differences in her works. In the first critical review, “Gender and Pathology in The Yellow Wallpaper” Juliann Fleenor states that Gilman struggled with the concepts of being a mother, motherhood, and with creation as well. In Fleenor’s comparison to the stories he states how in all the stories the home is their prison, insane asylum, and often their death place. In the story Fleenor also points out how Gilman is disgusted, awed, and frightened of her own body functions. He believes that a major theme of the story involves punishment of becoming a mother. This is supported by the absence of the child in the story (Fleenor 450-451). Her punishment of being a mother is a perfect example of an indirect topic that Gilman uses in her story. The reader may overlook this if the critic wouldn’t have broken it
Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells her readers the story of a woman desperate to be free. Gilman’s use of symbolism is nothing short of brilliant in telling the story of a new mother suffering from postpartum depression and fighting her way through societies ideas of what a woman should be. When her husband, John, also known as her physician, tells her nothing is wrong with her mind, at first she believes him because she knows that society tells her she should. However, with her husband’s misdiagnosis, or attempt to keep his wife sane for the sake of their reputation, comes a short journey into madness for his wife, Jane. Jane’s downward spiral, as one may call it, turns out to be not so downward when the reader
Although setting may seem deceivingly simple, it is the setting in “The Yellow Wallpaper” that gives Gilman the platform to convey these complex ideas. The description of the setting reveals that narrator’s inner psychology and allows the reader to examine the struggles the narrator faces with her husband and within. The yellow wallpaper, along with the rest of the room, illustrates the issues people faced being constrained with regards to marriage and treatment of the mentally ill. These ideas wouldn’t have reached the reader if the setting was not as developed as it
Gilman critiques the position of women in society by giving scaring psychological tales. She depicts how the perceived “respectable” mistreat their women. In her text, one can see how cruel sometimes society can be towards women. An image of a woman in extremely pathetic state of consciousness is seen and lingers in one’s mind. Though to some it might be a false portrayal of reality, Gilman
Gilman shows through this theme that when one is forced to stay mentally inactive can only lead to mental self-destruction. The narrator is forced into a room and told to be passive, she is not allowed to have visitors, or write, or do much at all besides sleep. Her husband believes that a resting cure will rid her of her “slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 478). Without the means to express herself or exercise her mind in anyway the narrator begins to delve deeper and deeper into her fantasies. The narrator begins to keep a secret journal, about which she states “And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way - it is such a relief” (Gilman 483)! John tells his wife that she must control her imagination, lest it run away with her. In this way John has asserted full and complete dominance over his wife. The narrator, though an equal adult to her husband, is reduced to an infancy. In this state the narrator begins her slow descent into hysteria, for in her effort to understand herself she fully and completely loses herself.
Gilman manipulates the reader s perspective throughout her story as she immediately introduces us to her world. Language plays an important role as a normal woman assesses her husband s profession and her own supposed illness. The narrator comes across intelligent if not a little paranoid-less concerned with a slighthysterical tendency but rather a queer untenanted (Gilman 691) house. Her suspicion occurs early on; appearing at first as misdirection meant to foreshadow a possible ghost story. She goes on to describe the most beautiful place with a delicious garden (Gilman 692). Her depiction is that of a quaint home-leading thereader to imagine a stable woman in a new setting. Clearly the narrator s broad vocabulary is an indication of her right-mindedness as well as her ability to examine a condition she disagrees with.
Throughout the story, the reader is called to trust the narrator although it is clear she is going crazy, for she is the only telling the story. Gilman is able to develop the theme through this character’s point of view by showing that the narrator has no choice in the world in which she lives-- she must obey the men in her life above all else. If Gilman chose any other perspective, the story would not have been able to portray the woman’s oppression as well, because the reader would not have been able to see into her mind as it slipped away well into insanity.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a very astonishing story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that daringly reaches out to explore the mental state of a woman whose mind eventually begins to be broken down to a state of insanity by the appearance of a creeping woman who is trapped behind a revolting yellow wallpaper. This short story takes a look at the causes of the narrator’s insanity by how she was confined in a house alone, trapped with only her mind and a dull wallpaper; while dealing with depression and consuming strong
In Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author takes the reader through the terrors of a woman’s psychosis. The story convey to understatements pertaining to feminism and individuality that at the time was only idealized. Gillman illustrates her chronological descent into insanity. The narrators husband John, who is also her physician diagnosed her with “nervous depression” and therefore ordered her to isolate until she recuperates. She is not only deprived of outside contact but also of her passion to write, since it could deteriorate her condition. The central conflict of the story is person versus society; the healthy part of her, in touch with herself clashing with her internalized thoughts of her society’s expectations. In a feminist point of view the central idea pertains to the social confinement that woman undergo due to their society.
Societal control of the accepted terms by which a woman can operate and live in lends itself to the ultimate subjugation of women, especially in regards to her self-expression and dissent. Gilman does an extraordinary job of effectively communicating and transforming this apparent truth into an eerie tale of one woman’s gradual spiral towards the depths of madness. This descent, however, is marked with the undertones of opportunity. On one hand, the narrator has lost all hope. On the other, she has found freedom in losing all hope. This subversion of the patriarchal paradigm is tactfully juxtaposed against a backdrop of the trappings of insanity.