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what is the deeper meaning in the yellow wallpaper
what is the deeper meaning in the yellow wallpaper
what is the deeper meaning in the yellow wallpaper
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r 10, 2017 “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte P. Gilman embellishes the hardships that women had to not only face but overcome when confined in society and bolted down in relationships. The narrator is lost and confused towards the beginning but she finds herself through different symbols. These symbols widely range from a piece of paper in her journal where she truly can express what she feels to a nervous breakdown caused by Johns constant control over her. Gilman uses variant symbols such as her journal, the yellow wallpaper, and her nervous breakdown to show her anger and doubts that were placed upon her by both John and society surrounding her. The journal is the first imperative symbol in this story. It is her only escape from all the bad and negatives that her life has become. She has trouble communicating her thoughts and ideas to John because he always rejects her ideas but her journal is her own safe storage unit for her true feeling against John and her ‘sickness’. The journal is a safe place for her and she feels she can express herself without any consequences as she says, “I don't feel able. 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 …show more content…
Gilman the symbolism shown is to show how women felt and how they overcame these feelings and accepted their role in society and marriage. The journal represents her freedom to say what she means with no consequences and to relieve her mind. The yellow wallpaper represents herself trying to escape the control of her husband John and finding herself through abstract characters. The nervous breakdowns illustrated how to overcome restraints so that she can feel accepted within a society and okay with her role. Gilman used all of these symbols to show what happens of a person when people expect too much from another and try and control them in restrictive
The Yellow Wallpaper, Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is comprised as an assortment of journal entries written in first person, by a woman who has been confined to a room by her physician husband who he believes suffers a temporary nervous depression, when she is actually suffering from postpartum depression. He prescribes her a “rest cure”. The woman remains anonymous throughout the story. She becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her in the room, and engages in some outrageous imaginations towards the wallpaper. Gilman’s story depicts women’s struggle of independence and individuality at the rise of feminism, as well as a reflection of her own life and experiences.
Even though her husband treats her with what seem at first as love, it becomes clear she is nothing more to him than a piece of property. Every time he talks to her, he asks her to get better for his sake and the children's, and only after mentions hers interests. He doesn't think that she has any normal human feelings or worries and attributes her behavior to minor nervous depression. He doesn't see her true suffering since he believes "there is no reason to suffer" (574). He could never understand that a woman can be unsatisfied with the role imposed on her by society. Even though the heroine recognizes that her condition is caused by something other than John's theory, she is too scared to voice her opinion.
On my first reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", I found the short story extremely well done and the author, successful at getting her idea across. Gilman's use of imagery and symbolism only adds to the reality of the nameless main character's sheltered life and slow progression into insanity or some might say, out of insanity.
The "Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman is a great story about the repression of women in the late 1800's but is still representative of issues faced by women today. She writes from her own personal experiences and conveys a message that sometimes in a male dominated society women suffer from the relentless power that some men implement over women.
Gilman creates a horrific tone that helps explore the idea of freedom and confinement within a certain place. The story is created to follow the situation of the narrator and how slowly she begins to deteriorate psychologically due to the wallpaper. The narrator is never assigned a name, therefore it can be assumed that the story is suppose to serve as a voice for the women who have been in a similar situation and have lost their freedom and say on their own lives. However, the narrator appears to come from a wealthy family with privilege so there cannot be this idea that all women who have been through this form of depression and inequalities have experienced it in the same form. Through the use of imagery, the reader was able to understand and clearly visualize the situation in which the narrator is in and see how she has begun to slowly deteriorate, even though she is finally freed in the end of the story, or at least that is what is assumed. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is indeed a very profound image of what it was like to be a female during the 19th century while emphasizing the themes of freedom and confinement. Even though it illustrates the impact that confinement can have on a person, it restricts the situation to fit only women who had similar social backgrounds as the narrator, which is
“This passage describes the narrator’s spiritual nadir, and may be said to represent her transition from conscious struggle against the daylight world to her immersion in the nocturnal world of unconscious-or, in other terms, from idle fancy to empowering imagination” (Johnson 525). Which was supported when Jane attempted to fight the urge to engage in her unconscious state. “And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder – I begin to think- I wish John would take me away from here!” (Gilman 92). This exhibits the struggle Jane was facing while trying to maintain her conscious state of mind. However, John felt that if she was taken out of her environment she would go crazy, which ironically led to her slow decline into the unconscious mind. “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Gilman 89). It was here that Jane began giving human characteristics to inanimate objects. As Gilman’s story continues, Jane gradually becomes more entranced by her imagination. “There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes” (Gilman 94). Displaying the idea that Jane was immersed in her unconscious world, validating the Johnson’s argument that Jane progressively develops into her unconscious mind throughout the
“The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of a woman who is trapped in a room covered in yellow wallpaper. The story is one that is perplexing in that the narrator is arguably both the protagonist as well as the antagonist. In the story, the woman, who is the main character, struggles with herself indirectly which results in her descent into madness. The main conflicts transpires between the narrator and her husband John who uses his power as a highly recognize male physician to control his wife by placing limitations on her, forcing her to behave as a sick woman. Hence he forced himself as the superior in their marriage and relationship being the sole decision make. Therefore it can be said what occurred externally resulted in the central conflict of” “The Yellow Wallpaper being internal. The narrator uses the wallpaper as a symbol of authenticy. Hence she internalizes her frustrations rather then openly discussing them.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper is partly autobiographical and it illustrates the fight for selfhood by a women in an oppressed and oppressive environment. In the story, the narrator is not allowed to write or think, basically becoming more dysfunctional as she is entrapped in a former nursery room where bars adorn the windows and the bed is nailed to the floor. In this story there is an obstinacy on behalf of the narrator as she tries to go around her husband's and physician's restrictions, however, there is no resisting the oppressive nature of her environment and she finally surrenders to madness even though it represents some kind of selfhood and resistance because it allows her to escape her oppression, "She obsesses about the yellow wallpaper, in which she sees frightful patterns and an imprisoned female figure trying to emerge. The narrator finally escapes from her controlling husband and the intolerable confines of her existence by a final descent into insanity as she peels the wallpaper off and bars her husband from the room" (Gilman, 1999, 1).
Imagery in literature brings a story to life for the reader. It draws the reader in and surrounds them with the environment of the narrative. The use of imagery will make the reader fully understand the circumstances under which the characters of a story live. In "The Yellow Wallpaper", by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator of the story often describes the wallpaper, each time giving more details. The vivid descriptions allow the reader into the psyche of the narrator, which illustrates her ever-deepening mental illness. The imagery presented in the wallpaper through the narrator's words show her descent into insanity coupled with her desire for independence.
"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 yellow wallpaper itself is one of the largest symbols in the story. It can be interpreted to symbolize many things about the narrator. The wallpaper symbolizes the mental block mean attempted to place on women during the 1800s. The color yellow is often associated with sickness or weakness, and the narrator’s mysterious illness is an example of the male oppression on the narrator. The wallpaper in fact makes the narrator more “sick” as the story progresses. The yellow wallpaper, of which the writer declares, “I never saw a worse paper in my life,” is a symbol of the mental screen that men attempted to enforce upon women. Gilman writes, “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing” this is a symbolic metaphor for restrictions placed on women. The author is saying subliminally that the denial of equality for women by men is a “hideous” act, and that when men do seem to grant women some measure of that equality, it is often “unreliable.” The use of the words “infuriating” and “torturing” are also descriptions of the feelings of women in 19th century society.
I think that the narrator feels much alone in life, even though she has a family who cares for her. She is clinically depressed so naturally she is going to feel isolated from the world. Speaking about a house that the narrator grew up in, she writes, 'and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend.
Evidence of Gilman's life experiences can be seen all throughout the story. The main character in the story, a slightly neurotic woman, is married to a prominent physician. This husband refuses to believe anything is wrong with his wife's health simply because her physical health is intact. Thus, he prescribes for his wife nothing more than relaxation and cessation of her writings. This character clearly correlates to the doctor who "treated" Gilman for her nervous breakdown. The description of the room and the wallpaper is clearly crucial to the story as a whole. The room itself is described as large and airy, with windows facing towards a "delicious garden." The wallpaper does not fit the room at all. It is a repulsive, pale yellow color. The description of the wallpaper seems to function metaphorically. The wallpaper becomes much more detailed and much more of a fixture in the main characters life as the story progresses. The wallpaper essentially takes on a life of its own. This progression seems to represent mental illness itself. As mental illness progresses, it becomes much more whole and enveloping. Gilman attempts to represent the depth of mental illness through the wallpaper. For example, the woman in the story comes to the conclusion that there is a woman in the wallpaper behind the pattern.
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.
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.