How does the physical setting of the story contribute to the mood of the story? What is significant about the room where the protagonist is confined? The author creates a mood of isolation and imprisonment with the setting in The Yellow Wallpaper” which is symbolic of the protagonist’s emotional state. The house is located far from the road and three miles from town which indicates that there would be little interaction with outsiders. In addition, it is surrounded by hedges, gardens, and a body of water that make the house difficult to access. The protagonist even claims the house may be haunted and describes the abandoned surrounding cottages and many locks giving the setting a sinister atmosphere. The protagonist’s husband
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about a woman’s gradual descent into insanity, after the birth of her child. The story was written in 1892 after the author herself suffered from a nervous breakdown, soon after the birth of her daughter in 1885. Gilman did spend a month in a sanitarium with the urging of her physician husband. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about herself, during the timeframe of when Gilman was in the asylum.
All through the story, the yellow wallpaper acts as an antagonist, causing her to become very annoyed and disturbed. There is nothing to do in the secluded room but stare at the wallpaper. The narrator tells of the haphazard pattern having no organization or symmetrical plot. Her constant examination of and reflection on the wallpaper caused her much distress.... ...
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
Likewise, in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the wallpaper is used as symbol of the character’s imprisonment within the domestic sphere. Throughout the story, the wallpaper becomes the narrators’ imagination and appears as a female figure. The narrator’s husband, John, who has a higher
This male dominance led the narrator from “The Yellow Wallpaper” into loneliness and eventually to a place of no return. The alienation is shown in terms of the setting, "The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. " The house that the couple rented for three months represents the woman’s physical imprisonment and symbolizes her isolation. Moreover, the nursery that John recommends his wife to live in includes many confining elements.
Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, not much was known about how to treat mental illnesses. At the time, many doctors felt that an appropriate way to handle such a thing was something known as the “resting cure,” which called for doing little more than “resting” by oneself. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s epistolary short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the main speaker writes of her reclusive treatment for her own mental illness. Throughout the passage, Gilman criticizes the practice of the resting cure by showing the harmful effects of isolation and the reduction of a person to an infantile state.
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.
“Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman was analyzed by many perspective readers and writers. In my research paper I analyzed work by Ann Oakley and Karen Ford. These two authors had similar but yet different arguments. During my review process on both articles, I found that there can be many interpretations of any literary work. When you typically see topics written about women, you tend to see biased explanations. Reading these from a female standpoint you would go on to assume the writer will only defend what is morally right.
The woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is slowly deteriorating in mental state. When she first moves into the room in the old house, the wallpaper intrigues her. Its pattern entrances her and makes her wonder about its makeup. But slowly her obsession with the wallpaper grows, taking over all of her time. She starts to see the pattern moving, and imagines it to be a woman trapped behind the wallpaper. The total deterioration of her sanity is reached when she becomes the woman she imagined in the wallpaper and begins creeping around the room.
Women's roles within society have changed drastically throughout history. Today, women assume relative equality in society with men; women have the right to vote, own property, get divorced, and hold the same jobs, among other things. Prior to 1919, however, women were dominated by the largely misogynistic society that existed in the United States; women did not have the right to vote and were not regarded as equal to men in marriage or otherwise (“woman suffrage”). The late nineteenth century in the United States was also a time when society viewed individuals with mental illnesses as “a threat to public safety” (Holtzman). Therefore, “people with mental illness were cared for by family members, who quietly attended to their needs in rural areas” (Holtzman). These are the conditions the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” was living within.
In "The Yellow Wallpaper" the setting helps define the action as well as to explain characters behaviors. The setting is which the story takes place is in the narrators room, where she is severally ill, and she is "locked up" in the room which served as her cage. The room in which the narrator is caged in is a nursery, "it is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways. The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it." The narrator describes the color of the walls as repellent, almost revolting, it is an unclear yellow with a dull orange. The condition that the narrator is in, the repulsiveness of the room, and the room haunting her, drives her into insanity.
There is far more meanings behind the yellow wallpaper than just its own color. The pattern plays an immense role in causing the woman to become so entranced and obsessed with the wallpaper, as well as the source of her ever diminishing mental health. Gilman narrates, “I never saw a worse [wall] paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns
...oney to sustain themselves. Many of them felt trapped, as if behind the hideous yellow wallpaper. They were expected to have a domestic life, oppression was present in and out of the house. The color yellow is prominent in the story, it is a lively color that is often used to symbolize life and energy. The use of the lively yellow color contrasts the feelings of the narrator. The narrator realizes that herself as the woman becoming a freed woman from the oppression of the yellow wallpaper, which represents the Victorian society. At the end of the short story, when the wife refuses to leave and the husband faints she symbolically steps over his body to freedom. Imagery present in “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows the narrators slow spiral into madness. The imagery along with the oppression and isolation felt by the narrator lead to lunacy which eventually set her free.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is set in the countryside, miles away from the nearest village, in a summer home. Surrounded by hedges, a garden, and servants’ quarters, the setting provides a serene but confined feel to the story. The setting gives off a feel of tranquility but later on is discovered
Home, in contemporary literature, often plays an integral role often symbolizing security, unison, and support; although, things were not always this way. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts the all-too-real struggle many women faced in the nineteenth century and earlier. This short passage portrays the narrative of female intellectual oppression – an examination of nineteenth century social mores. The passage voices the common practice of diagnosing women with “rest cure” who displayed symptoms of depression and anxiety with a supposed treatment of lying in bed for several weeks, allowing no more than twenty minutes of intellectual application per day. Women, at this time, were considered to be the second sex – weaker and more fragile, unable to grapple the same daily activities as men – and such the “rest cure” prevents women from using any form of thinking, trusting the notion that naturally the female mind is empty. Not even were