Theme Of Isolation In The Yellow Wallpaper

The narrator says “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.” she knows what she needs but no will believe her. Because of no one listening to her about her condition she eventually gives in and has no control over her life or treatment. Today women have zero control over whether they can get mental help. It is still up to a physician if a patient can get the treatment he or she needs. Dialogue, narration, and symbolism are being used by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” to show that women with mental health problems are not taken serious.

She feels constricted by her husband to speak freely and writes in a hidden journal. Gilman writes “I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind” (808). Sad and true, but she doesn’t feel that she can tell her husband how she really feels and “the only safe language is dead language” (Theichler 61). The language of male judgment and control is predominant in the beginning of the story too. Her husband and brother both are physicians, diagnose her with a nervous condition, and both believe she will be fine with medicine and rest.

Once her husband, John, realizes the deepness of depression that his wife is in due to her birth of their child he decides to take action. He decides to isolate his wife from the world for her own betterment. Once arriving in her newfound place of isolation where there is no stimulation, except for her journal, the narrator is placed within a room that is lined with yellow wallpaper. This yellow room is meant to free her from any stresses, but her dislike for the wallpaper concerns her. The pattern of yellow begins to become more of an obsession, being this is her only stimulation due to her confinement.

Edna and the narrator were unable to pursue or didn’t have time for their artistic crafts because of societal and domestic constraints. The woman’s sole responsibility was domestic duties, but men failed to realize the overwhelming nature of such; quickly labeling women with a mental illness when she fell ill. It was all too demeaning to delve into the intellects of the woman who was viewed as: inadequate, inexperience, or incompetent. The characters’ feeling of solitude and perceptions of being outcasts of society were the stifling emotional issues that led Edna to death and the narrator to insanity.

The Yellow Wallpaper In the grips of depression and the restrictions prescribed by her physician husband a woman struggles with maintaining her sanity and purpose. As a new mother and a writer, and she is denied the responsibility and intellectual stimulation of these elements in her life as part of her rest cure. Her world is reduced to prison-like enforcement on her diet, exercise, sleep and intellectual activities until she is "well again". As she gives in to the restrictions and falls deeper into depression, she focuses on the wallpaper and slides towards insanity. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story written from a first-person perspective about a young woman's mental deterioration during the 1800's and the adverse affects of the restriction place on her.

Throughout the story, the author traces the woman's mental deterioration from a having a normal but weakened sense of self, to a complete inversion of her ego. She slowly inverts her orientation of her place in society, turning away from society completely in order to create a world where she can act on her own volition. In order to represent the stages of her gradually worsening state of mind, the author represents the woman's struggles through a parallel with her view of the wallpaper. The wallpaper is at first a seeming inversion of the woman's mind, but it is gradu... ... middle of paper ... ...leasantville: Reader’s Digest, 1977. 195-206.

She believes that Esther could choose to be normal if she would like to. Moreover, the nurturing and care that her mom provides is conflictive to what Esther needs. Esther’s mom begins to treat her like an infant and tracks her every move, however that does not resolve any of the root causes that lead up to Esther’s attempted suicide. For these reasons, Esther begins to resent her mother. Further, Buddy’s comments on Esther’s state at the hospital reinforce the fact that she is not normal.

The Feminist View of the Yellow Wallpaper The yellow wallpaper is a story about John and his wife who he keeps locked up due to her "nervous condition" of anxiety. John diagnoses her as sick and has his own remedy to cure her. His remedy s to keep her inside and deterring her from almost all activities. She is not allowed to write, make decisions on her own, or interact with the outside world. John claims that her condition is improving but she knows that it is not.

This quote shows the woman’s inconsistency with reality as she does not recognize that her husband had brought her to an asylum in order to “cure” her illness. Her husband explicitly explains to the woman that the place he is taking her only has “one window and not room for two beds” further displaying how he will isolate her from society and the family. Her unwillingness to realize her husbands intentions, displays her blindness to her own repression in her marriage. In addition, the woman explains how much she enjoys writing in order to explain her own thoughts and feelings because she is not allowed to say them out loud. She goes on to say that her husband,” hates to have [her] write a word” and hurriedly tries to hide away her notebook (Gilman ___).

The thoughts and actions of Edna Pontellier are solely determined by her manic depressive state, her apparent repressed abuse from her childhood, and her abandonment of Christianity. Throughout the novel the reader gets a clear sense of Edna Pontellier's peculiar mind and her manic depressive state. She is continually plagued by the moment. Her mood shifts from highs to lows show the reader that a sadness is perpetually within her: We are told there are days when she "was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with sunlight.." On such days Edna "found it good to be alone and unmolested." Yet on other days, she is molested by despondencies so severe that "... ... middle of paper ... ...manic depressive state which leads her to her suicide.