The Yellow Wallpaper
In 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The story is written in first person narrative in the form of twelve journal entries as if the reader is reading the author’s actual journal. This style allows the reader to understand what the narrator is experiencing. It centers on a young woman who, after having a baby, does not savor the roles of wife and mother. So, she is diagnosed with a nervous condition and “sentenced” to a rest cure. The narrator is essentially imprisoned her room without mental stimulation or any creative outlet, causing her to turn to the yellow wallpaper in her room for a release. The wallpaper is the outstanding symbol of the story, and it represents her sense of entrapment. As the narrator spirals into madness her obsession with the wallpaper increases, she becomes one with the wallpaper, and she views herself as becoming stronger.
obsession with the wallpaper increases she spirals into madness
The narrator “is hustled off to the country into a life of enforced idleness of body and mind”; she is sheltered in a former nursery with yellow wallpaper (MacPike). In this room she is to sleep, get fresh air, and take tonics—nothing else, including no mental stimulation. The wallpaper is the one dominant feature of the room, she describes the wall paper as “revolting: a smoldering unclean yellow,… a sickly sulphur tint” (Gilman 438). The color yellow usually signifies something sunny, bright, cheerful, but in this case it seems to propose sickness, as if the wallpaper is foretelling the narrator’s impending insanity. She writes, “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had” (Gilman 439). Due to a lack of mental stimulation, the narrator quickly...
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...lee. "Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'." American Literary Realism 1870-1910 8.3 (Summer 1975): 286-288. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 201. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Mar. 2012.
Montgomerie, Anne. "'The Yellow Wall Paper.'." Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper": A Sourcebook and Critical Edition. Ed. Catherine J. New York: Routledge, 2004. 82.
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Quawas, Rula. "A New Woman's Journey into Insanity: Descent and Return in The Yellow Wallpaper." AUMLA 105 (May 2006): 35-53. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Vol. 228. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Mar. 2012.
Yellow Wallpaper depicts the nervous breakdown of a young woman and is an example as well as a protest of the patriarchal gender based treatments of mental illness women of the nineteenth century were subjected to.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about a woman’s gradual descent into insanity, after the birth of her child. The story was written in 1892 after the author herself suffered from a nervous breakdown, soon after the birth of her daughter in 1885. Gilman did spend a month in a sanitarium with the urging of her physician husband. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about herself, during the timeframe of when Gilman was in the asylum.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Introduction To Literature. Eds. Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. 7th Ed. New York, Norton, 1998. 2: 630-642.
depression that the narrator suffers from. What these analyses of The Yellow Wallpaper lack is a
To begin, the short story by Charlotte Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” uses the deteriorating wallpaper to represent the narrator’s failing mind. The narrator is suffering and is confined in an uncomfortable house in a room she did not choose; she becomes obsessed with the wallpaper of the room. As the yellow wallpaper represents the narrator’s mind, the statement made by the narrator, “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others” refers to the condition of her mind by suggesting her condition is revolting and unclean. She is fading away in the su...
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.
Gilman, Charlotte P. "The Yellow Wallpaper." An Introduction to Literature. Ed. Sylvan Barnett, Morton Berman, and William Burton 10th ed. New York: Harper Collins, 1993. 178-91.
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.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a woman descending into psychosis in a creepy tale which depicts the harm of an old therapy called “rest cure.” This therapy was used to treat women who had “slight hysterical tendencies” and depression, and basically it consisted of the inhibition of the mental processes. The label “slight hysterical tendency” indicates that it is not seen as a very important issue, and it is taken rather lightly. It is also ironic because her illness is obviously not “slight” by any means, especially towards the end when the images painted of her are reminiscent of a psychotic, maniacal person, while she aggressively tears off wallpaper and confuses the real world with her alternative world she has fabricated that includes a woman trapped in the wallpaper. The narrator of this story grows obsessed with the wallpaper in her room because her husband minimizes her exposure to the outside world and maximizes her rest.
In a female oppressive story about a woman driven from postpartum depression to insanity, Charlotte Gilman uses great elements of literature in her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. Her use of feminism and realism demonstrates how woman's thoughts and opinions were considered in the early 1900?s.
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 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.
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte. "The Yellow Wallpaper"." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Concise Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. 1597-1609. Print.
“The Yellow Wall Paper” is the story about a journey of a woman who is suffering from a nervous breakdown, descending into madness through her “rest cure” treatment. Basically, the woman is not allowed to read, write or to see her new-born baby. Charlotte Perkins Gilman captures the essence of this journey into madness by using the first person narration. The story plot’s is by taking the reader through the horrors of one woman’s neurosis to make strong statements about the oppression faced by women in their marriage roles. The narrator’s mental condition is characterized by her meeting with the wallpaper in her room. In addition to the story’s plot, the use of symbolism and irony throughout her story also show how males dominate during her time.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a very astonishing story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that daringly reaches out to explore the mental state of a woman whose mind eventually begins to be broken down to a state of insanity by the appearance of a creeping woman who is trapped behind a revolting yellow wallpaper. This short story takes a look at the causes of the narrator’s insanity by how she was confined in a house alone, trapped with only her mind and a dull wallpaper; while dealing with depression and consuming strong