More handpicked essays just for you.
Essays on symbolism in literature
Scholarly article about charlotte perkins gilman
Women novelists characters and features
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
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 …show more content…
The windows are barred, symbolizing the restrictive nature of the narrator’s mental condition. She is imprisoned within her mind. Her room was once a nursery, symbolizing that she is helpless and dependent on her husband’s care, similar to how a parent is reliant on the care of it’s parents, “… for the windows are barred for little children,” (Gilman 2). The narrator is not only trapped by her own mind and mental condition, but her husband’s wishes and expectations as well. The most significant symbol within the story is the yellow wallpaper. Initially, the narrator only views the wallpaper as something unpleasant, but over time she becomes fascinated with it’s formless pattern and tries to figure out how it’s organized. She discovers a sub-pattern within in it in which she distinguishes as a barred change with the heads of women that have attempted to escape the wallpaper like the woman she has been “seeing” moving within the wallpaper, “And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads” (Gilman 8). The yellow wallpaper is symbolic of a women’s place in society within the nineteenth century. It was not commonplace, or deemed acceptable, for women to be financially independent and/or engage in intellectual activity. The wallpaper is symbolic of those economic, intellectual, and social restrictions women were held to, as well as the domestic lives they were expected to lead. The narrator is so restricted by these social norms that her proper name is never given within the story, her only identity is “John’s wife”. At the climax of the story, the narrator identifies completely with the woman in the wallpaper and believes that by tearing the wallpaper, both she and the woman would be freed of their domestic prisons, “…there are so many of those
“The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the tale of a woman succumbing to madness following postpartum depression. First published in 1892, it stands out as a piece of early American feminist literature and it reflects 19th century society’s attitude towards women’s health -- both physical and mental. In the beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator and her husband take vacation to the countryside to give the narrator some time to rest and recover. As the story progresses, the narrator becomes more and more bothered by the wallpaper in the room in which she is staying. At the end, the narrator finally loses it and her husband faints upon seeing how insane she has become.
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 powerful story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is about a woman who was driven to madness by her depression and controlling husband. The story is told by the wife, in first person, and is based on Gilman’s own life experience. Gilman suffered from post-partum depression after her daughter was born and was prescribed the “resting cure” which is resting and isolation. In the story, the narrator’s husband puts her in isolation because he believes that will cure her of her depression and breakdowns. He won’t let her do anything, so she turns to writing in her secret journal to try and cure her depression. Since she has nothing to do all day, she turns her attention to the yellow wallpaper in the room. She becomes obsessed with it and begins to see a woman trapped inside the pattern. The wallpaper dominates the narrator’s imagination and she becomes possessed and secretive about hiding her obsession with it. The narrator suspects the her husband and sister are aware of her obsession so she starts to destroy the wallpaper and goes into a frenzy trying to free the caged woman in the pattern of the wallpaper. The narrator becomes insane, thinking that she also came out of the wallpaper, and creeps around the room, and when her husband checks on her, he faints because of what she has become, and she continues to creep around the room, stepping over body.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” we are walked through the journal of a women who has been diagnosed, by her husband, with what he believes is merely, “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 216). Since the protagonist’s husband, John, believes the only way she will get better is through moderate exercise, and lots of rest, they rent a house where she can have tranquility and rest until she is better (Gilman 216). At first glance “The Yellow Wallpaper” seems like a simple story of a women trying to get better in a house that she doesn’t particularly like. However, through further analysis it can be seen that through the use of symbolism Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a critique on the role of women in nineteenth-century American society.
As she spends more and more time isolated in her bedroom, with nothing else to occupy her mind, she gradually become fixated on the dreadful patterns of the paper and instantly foresee something else: the narrator eventually see a “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous design”(77). The narrator’s bedroom being a prison becomes more literal as from figurative when the loneliness and social negation intensifies her need for an escape from the pre-set nature of conduct created specifically for her (a mentally depressed and unwell women) by the people in her life especially by John. Throughout the story, the narrator’s psychological breakdown goes from a typical depressed mind and lacked awareness of identity, to a complete madness and reversed sense of self-esteem. She gradually changes the place she has in the physical world and fights back the social rejection she is facing by turning away from reality in exchange for a world where she has total control and can act according to her own will. The author uses the yellow wallpaper as a symbol for representing the phases of the narrator’s gradual deteriorating
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman has a tone of a mentally ill women who worsens while under the thumb of her husband who is her doctor first and husband second. She numerously attempts to reveal her true, current state of mind to her husband but he shows that he thinks he knows best. The internal conflict of being better but not being heard leads to her ultimate breakdown and shock to her husband, John. Everyone has experience this type conflict, whether concealed or disclosed to another, of trying to convey your true feelings but not getting the results you need to progress properly. This story is very much peculiar as it is true and trying for those who struggle under various mental stresses.
Described as an “autobiographical account fictionalized in the first person,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” chronicles the narrator as she is brought to a country house and put on rest cure, instructed by her physician husband to live in a room with yellow wallpaper (“The Yellow Wallpaper”). Throughout her stay there, the narrator appears to develop a sort of hysteria and falls into a deeper depression than when she arrived.
Gilman uses this story to show a woman 's struggle with her oppressive limitations. She begins her journal by marveling at the grandeur of the house and grounds her husband has taken for their summer vacation. She describes it in romantic terms as an aristocratic estate or even a haunted house and wonders how they were able to afford it, and why the house had been empty for so long. Her feeling that there is “something queer” about the situation leads her into a discussion of her illness and of her marriage. As the Fourth of July passes, the narrator reports that her family has just visited, leaving her more tired than ever. John threatens
From the “gouged and splintered” floor to the chewed bedstead, each mentioned object contributes to the story’s eerie setting as well as to the narrator’s confinement (229). Objects such as the bolted bed and the bars on the window symbolize the narrator’s inability to do as she pleases, yet another factor which constrains her. At the center of it all is the yellow wallpaper. While the narrator at first regards the yellow wallpaper as “repellant” and “revolting,” she slowly becomes more and more entranced by it and, more specifically, that which lies behind it (227). She begins to imagine a woman inside the wallpaper, looking for escape behind the pattern which entraps her. Under close scrutiny, it is easy to see that the woman inside the wallpaper is a reflection of the narrator, while the wallpaper acts as yet another theoretical cage to entrap her. Just as with the setting, the author uses everyday objects to demonstrate the muddled emotions that the narrator subconsciously feels due to the pressures laden upon
...demonstrates the oppression that women had to face in society during the nineteenth century. The nursery room, the yellow wallpaper, and the windows, all symbolize in some way the oppression of women done by men. She bases the story on one of her life experiences. Charlotte Gilman wrote the story because she believed that men and women should be treated equally.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through expressive word choice and descriptions, allows the reader to grasp the concepts she portrays and understand the way her unnamed narrator feels as the character draws herself nearer and nearer to insanity. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator writing in a journal about the summer home she and her husband have rented while their home is being remodeled. In the second entry, she mentions their bedroom which contains the horrendous yellow wallpaper. After this, not one day goes by when she doesn’t write about the wallpaper. She talks about the twisting, never-ending pattern; the heads she can see hanging upside-down as if strangled by it; and most importantly the
"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a woman in isolation, struggling to cope with mental illness, which has been diagnosed by her husband, a physician. Going beyond this surface level, the reader sees the narrator as a developing feminist, struggling with the societal values of the time. As a woman writer in the late nineteenth century, Gilman herself felt the adverse effects of the male-centric society, and consequently, placed many allusions to her own personal struggles as a feminist in her writing. Throughout the story, the narrator undergoes a psychological journey that correlates with the advancement of her mental condition. The restrictions which society places on her as a woman have a worsening effect on her until illness progresses into hysteria. The narrator makes comments and observations that demonstrate her will to overcome the oppression of the male dominant society. The conflict between her views and those of the society can be seen in the way she interacts physically, mentally, and emotionally with the three most prominent aspects of her life: her husband, John, the yellow wallpaper in her room, and her illness, "temporary nervous depression." In the end, her illness becomes a method of coping with the injustices forced upon her as a woman. As the reader delves into the narrative, a progression can be seen from the normality the narrator displays early in the passage, to the insanity she demonstrates near the conclusion.
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.
The yellow wallpaper being the most significant and obvious symbol which underlie societies attempts regarding women in the late 19th century, gives the reader an eye opening view to the repression women were under and still are in todays society. The main character writing in her notebook symbolizes a sense of stability in an oppressed life. Lastly, the isolated room, gave sense of symbolizing a safe haven for the narrator or even imprisonment. The symbols exposed in "The Yellow Wallpaper" give the short story a stronger essential meaning and a sense that the narrator was not entirely insane, however a women who found her individuality in something as horrid as the yellow wallpaper. In short, the yellow wallpaper mirrors the makeover of a woman’s identity which is triggered by a corrupt social structure that stops woman from being their true
It is easy for one to feel trapped in a seemingly familiar setting. The story, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, entails the struggle of a woman who feels confined in her own home and who becomes unable to organize her thoughts. She is assured by her husband that she is normal, yet she cannot come to terms with the feelings she harbors. She is forced to accept the societal standards that place women in lower status, because she is incapable of challenging the recognized power structures. She has no outlet to express concern or desire which ultimately makes her seem substandard. The story takes the reader through her journey during the seventeenth century where the societal norms were extremely different, especially in regards to gender equality and women’s rights. The difference in beliefs is evident throughout many aspects of the story and the narrator struggles to overcome these inherent barriers. The obstacles are both mental and emotional and strike the main characters internal struggles. There is a clear subjugation of women that occurs in the marriage, the environment, and in a woman’s ability to express themselves.