The Yellow Wallpaper And Modernism Analysis

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Recommended: The Symbolic and beyond the Symbolic in 'The Yellow Wallpaper

“There is good and there is bad in every human heart, and it is a struggle of life to conquer the bad with the good,” said Susan Glaspell. Many parts of modernist writings include a dark undertone. Modernism was part of the evolution of writing and influenced writing styles today. It has a strong emphasis on what writers at the time didn’t want to publish such as psychological aspects, the drive for murder, and one’s questionable sanity. Modernism also includes the strong use of symbols and personification. In Anderson’s work, for example, he uses personification to show that Wing Biddlebaum’s hands have a mind of their own. In Glaspell’s work, she symbolizes a canary for one’s broken marriage. In The Yellow Wallpaper a woman is constantly having an inner battle with her sanity. No one truly knows if there is actually something behind the wallpaper, but no one questions it since they assume she’s an insane mother. Glaspell and Anderson have a common style of writing that includes the basics of Modernism. They also include a distance and, most often, a misunderstanding between the main characters and their relationships. “Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted …show more content…

Her husband has probably given her the worst diagnosis possible, or at least that is so in her mind. “My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing,” (Gilman, 1.11) In the narrative the main character is prescribed no work and a lot of sleep but it doesn’t help at her at all because her obsession with the mysterious person trapped in the wallpaper increases drastically. The sanity of the main character is also directly related to the author because the writer had the exact same “disease” and struggles with similar dilemmas. The psychology in this story is very similar with Glaspell and Anderson’s modernistic

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