An Atmosphere of Uncertainty of Confusion in The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a first-person narration of madness experienced by an unnamed woman in the Victorian era. The madness is exposed through a “nervous condition” diagnosed by the writer’s husband, a physician, who believes the only cure is prohibiting all intellectual thought and to remain in solitude for a “rest-cure”. The act of confinement propels the narrator into an internal spiral of defiance against patriarchal discourse. Through characterization and symbolism, “The Yellow Wallpaper” exhibits an inventive parallel between the narrator’s mental deterioration and her internal struggle to break free from female oppression imposed on her through her husband and society.

Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded.

In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author presents a controversial story about a woman’s mental conditions and her life within her current home. Throughout the story symbols arise to express how the woman progressively gets worse when it comes to her mental condition. This is shown through the animation of the wallpaper that is in her bedroom and the reasons she feels like she has to express her feelings through writing instead of verbally. The different symbols used in the story by Gilman reveals changes in the narrator by expressing the pressure felt by women from their significant other during the early to mid 1900’s.

Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Fall of The House of Usher’ both serve a highly horrific purpose which is both good examples for the gothic. The strongest example of gothic is ‘The Fall of The House of Usher’ as it established the extreme horror intense and shows the gothic scene of the house.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” a short story about a mentally ill women,written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman at age 32, in 1892 is a story with a hidden meaning and many truths. Charlotte Perkins Gilman coincidentally also had a mental illness and developed cancer leading her to kill herself in the sixties. The story begins with Jane, the mentally ill woman who feels a bit distressed, and although both of the well respected men in her life are physicians she is put simply on a “rest cure”. This rest cure as well as many symbols such as the Yellow Wallpaper, her journal, and her inevitable breakdown are prime examples of the typical life of a woman in this time period and their suppressed lives that they lived even with something as serious as a

As human beings, we play the cards that are dealt to us in this world. In life, every person goes through their individual ups and downs and occasionally may break down to the extent of not knowing what to do with oneself. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” which takes place in the late 1800s, focuses on the first person narrator who is an infatuated woman. The disheartening story concentrates on a woman who is suffering from postpartum depression, and as well had mental breakdowns. The narrators husband John, moves her into a home isolated in the country where he wants her to “rest” and get better from her illness. During the course of being confined in the room with the wallpaper, she learns new

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the idea of “true womanhood” is challenged. The white woman portrayed in the story is prescribed what is known as the “rest cure” due to the overwhelming pressure of being the perfect woman, wife, and mother. Driven mad by the smothering of her husband and her inability to do anything for herself, the woman in this story goes crazy attempting to free herself from the constraints. In stark contrast to the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Sojourner Truth, a former slave, delivers a speech titled, “Ain’t I a Woman,” in 1851 that shakes people to their very core. A little before “The Yellow Wallpaper” was released, Truth shares a message that is astoundingly different from the

   There are more reported cases of clinical depression in women than their are in men. There is also, generalized in western cultures, a stereotype that women are fragile and should be more dedicated to maintaining the home, doing feminine things, that they shouldn't work, and be discouraged from intellectual thinking. In the Victorian period (1837-1901) aside from women's suffragette movements the Victorian woman usually upheld this stereotype of a well behaved wife, more or less a possession then an individual. However, there were a few who defied the odds and took it to heart to let the world know about the indifference's that they went through. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist, was one of

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story that exemplifies the common belief during the 1800’s. During then women were never held accountable for any duties other than being house bidden due to the weakness of handling stress. In the 1800s society was known to look past women who did anything besides house chores and raising children. Majority of women were then meant to be housewives and mothers and seen as the trophy wife and nothing more. It was extremely uncommon for the average women to want to further herself in life; this caused many nervous breakdowns and was assumed to be Hysteria. The ideals and ideas of conventions for these women did not always sit well with certain people, and in the reexamination, others were far too comfortable with them; this left demographics of humans that did not end up getting along. The only believable cure to Hysteria was to shutting the women inside a “get away” home for days on end. The idea of redemption was deemed noble, inspiring and turbulent; though many women refused to go against these forbidden acts but saw others as strong and encouraging. The pursuit in redemption is one that often came with high cost, what many forget is that there was a slim line between redemption and its equivalents. The Yellow Wallpaper is written from a characters point of view in a journal style which gave the reader descriptions of the home and those involved. The house was deemed as an old mansion and the yellow wallpaper in the narrator bedroom put an

Commonly overlooked in its significance, the garden in “The Yellow Wallpaper” successfully represents all elements of the main character’s rebellious intentions. Generally, a garden features well-trimmed vegetation, which is guarded by a fence or wall to keep away outside forces, whether it be humans or animals with intentions to harm the plants. In contrast, nature operates in a free-flowing manner, with its greenery tangled in abundance and lacking any type of structure. On the surface, it may seem that the garden’s kempt appearance is a blessing to the plants within, as they are saved from the uncertainties of natural life by being incubated in a specific space. The main character of “The Yellow Wallpaper” originally follows this notion

Charlotte Perkins Gilman once said, ‘’There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver’’. Gilman’s belief that there’s no difference in means of mentality between men or women demonstrated through ‘’The Yellow Wallpaper’’. Gilman symbolically portrays that women suffer from psychological disorders caused by lack of love, care, and a constant pressure of secondary roles and personal unimportance in social life. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of belief. The story appears to take place during a time frame where women were oppressed. The short story can be analyzed in depth by both the psycho-analytic theory and

Throughout history and cultures today, women have been beaten, verbally abused, and taught to believe they have no purpose in life other than pleasing a man. Charlotte Perkins Gillam uses her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a weapon to help break down the walls surrounding women, society has put up. This story depicts the life of a young woman struggling with postpartum depression, whose serious illness is overlooked, by her physician husband, because of her gender. Gillman 's writing expresses the feelings of isolation, disregarded, and unworthiness the main character Jane feels regularly. This analysis will dive into the daily struggles women face through oppression, neglect, and physical distinction; by investigating each section

My perspective of Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is influenced by a great number of different and diverse methods of reading. However, one cannot overlook the feminist theorists’ on this story, for the story is often proclaimed to be a founding work of feminism. Further, the historical and biographical contexts the story was written in can be enlightened by mentioning Gilman’s relationship with S. Weir Mitchell. And I can’t help but read the story and think of Foucault’s concept of Panopticism as a method of social control. Lastly, of course, there’s the psychological perspective on the story, although in my readings of psychology, particularly the psychological knowledge surrounding both women and queers, I find the

In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman creates a character of a young depressed woman, on the road to a rural area with her husband, so that she can be away from writing, which appears to have a negative effect on her psychological state. Lanser says her husband “heads a litany of benevolent prescriptions that keep the narrator infantilized, immobilized, and bored literally out of her mind. Reading or writing herself upon the wallpaper allows the narrator to escape her husband’s sentence and to achieve the limited freedom of madness which constitutes a kind of sanity in the face of the insanity of male dominance” (432). In the story both theme and point of view connect and combine to establish a powerful picture of an almost prison-type of treatment for conquering depression. In the story, Jane battles with male domination, because she is informed by both her husband and brother countless brain shattering things about her own condition that she does not agree with. She makes every effort to become independent, and she desires to escape from the burdens of that domination. The Yellow Wallpaper is written from the character’s point of view in a structure similar to a diary, which explains her time spent in her home. The house is huge and old with annoying yellow wallpaper in the bedroom. The character thinks that there is a woman behind bars in the design of the wallpaper. She devotes a great deal of her