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Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper

Decent Essays

Charlotte Perkins wrote the yellow wallpaper. A short story that focuses on the causes and the nature of a nineteenth century woman’s descent into madness. After moving into a new place the narrator 's mind begins to slowly degenerate because of the conditions of her environment; which completely affect her life and identity.
The narrator a middle class woman moves into a colonial hereditary mansion for the summer. She lives with her husband John and two other adults. All three adults affect her mentality in different ways. John is the narrator 's husband and is also a physician. Before the narrator moves into his ancestral home for the summer he diagnoses her with temporary nervous depression and anxiety. Being a man and a physician, John …show more content…

John wants her calmed into compliance. He calls her his little girl, feeds her, reads to her, and laughs at her mind. She writes “John does not know how much I really suffer he knows there is no reason to suffer and that satisfies him (Gilman 3).” Her husband ignores her emotional state so that his reality stays in tact. Several times she reaches out to him in a mature way to take her away from the house or even the room to a nicer one because she is getting worse. John refuses her telling her “she shall be as sick as she pleases (Gilman 5)”, and that she is getting better any further objections are met with reproach and patronizing. He tells her she must control her silly fancies with her will. Mary and Jennie also live with the narrator and her husband they hurt the narrator 's mind, even further by assuming part of her identity. They both take a role as a surrogate wife or mother. Jennie is her sister-in-law. She is the keeper of the house and discuss anything the narrator does with John. Mary takes care of the narrator and John 's baby. The narrator starts losing her identity. This loss affects her well-being and intellectual state because she has no power.
The Mansion is another part of the reason her mind deteriorates. She dislikes it right away, though she does not deny its beauty she feels there is something strange about it. Things get worse when she moves into her room. She describes it as, “the windows are barred for

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