Jasmine Dunn
Dr. Swedan
ENG-102
20 Oct. 2017
“The yellow Wallpaper”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in Hartford, Connecticut in1860. Her father the grandson and the nephew of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe deserted his family shortly after her birth. During her lonely childhood, she tried to establish a relationship with him. (Gilman) After becoming a tutor and a brief stint at Rhode Island School of Design, she took a job designing post cards and began to write, publishing a short newspaper article in 1883. From 1889 to 1891, she edited the Pacific Monthly in Los Angeles, and during the 1890s she toured the nation lecturing on women rights. In 1900 she married her first cousin, George Houghton Gilman, who shared many of her
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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.
During that time, Mental illness and depression was not generally understood. Outspoken women were diagnosed with "hysteria" and put on bed rest. The woman gradually goes insane when she is put on bed rest for all hours of everyday. It is a criticism of a medical practice that was created solely for women, which is one reason for it being considered a feminist story. She was thought to be delicate and predisposed to emotional outbreaks. The story explains that the bed rest and the views that supplement such a practice, is what makes women
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"Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'?" Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, vol. 201, Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=mill30389&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CH1420082945&it=r&asid=fa503d396619394dc49024ab2704723f. Accessed 30 Oct. 2017.
Lanser, Susan S. "Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the Politics of Color in America." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, vol. 201, Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=mill30389&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CH1420082954&it=r&asid=fa503d396619394dc49024ab2704723f. Accessed 30 Oct. 2017.
MacPike, Loralee. "Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, vol. 201, Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com.gmclibrary.idm.oclc.org/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=mill30389&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CH1420082948&asid=562f132388d74c4bd92439b5842a2fe7. Accessed 25 Oct. 2017.
Perkins, George B., et al. "Gilman, Charlotte Perkins (1860-1935)." Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, 1991. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=mill30389&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA16849243&it=r&asid=5117efbccd169926fcbf4b9213508ea6. Accessed 23 Oct.
Nevertheless, her attempts are futile as he dismisses her once more, putting his supposed medical opinion above his wife’s feelings. The story takes a shocking turn as she finally discerns what that figure is: a woman. As the story progresses, she believes the sole reason for her recovery is the wallpaper. She tells no one of this because she foresees they may be incredulous, so she again feels the need to repress her thoughts and feelings. On the last night of their stay, she is determined to free the woman trapped behind bars.
She was placed in this treatment called the “rest cure” that made her somewhat like a prisoner. She started to slowly decrease into psychosis due to her husband’s treatment, the environment, and the way society has treated her illness. The love the husband felt for his wife and the fear he had of losing her lead him to treat her in questionable ways. He placed her in environment that made her feel trapped and aided to her reduction in sanity. Ann Oakley in her article, “Beyond the Yellow Wallpaper” discusses how important this story truly is. Oakley talks about the gender differences and the harm that it can bring to a society. This treatment was acceptable and normal for the situation because society has taught him and her that it was normal. Even if the protagonist’s husband meant well the treatment she was placed in for depression lead her to have more psychological damage, increasing her insanity more each
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Kessler, Carol Parley. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860 -1935." Modem American Women Writers. Ed. Elaine Showalter, et al. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991. 155 -169.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Booth, Alison and Kelly J. Mays, eds. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: Norton, 2010. 354-65. Print.
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------. "The Writing of 'The Yellow Wallpaper': A Double Palimpsest." Studies in American Fiction. 17 (1989): 193-201.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature for Composition: Reading and Writing Arguments about Essays, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, and William E. Cain. 8th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 765-75. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte. "The Yellow Wall-Paper." Literature and the Writing Process. Eds. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 1996. 105-115.
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
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Essay date 1935." Twentieth-Century Litirary Criticism 9. Ed. Dennis Poupond. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. 316-317