Effects Of Repressing ' 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.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” tells the story of a woman suffering from post-partum depression, undergoing the sexist psychological treatments of mental health, that took place during the late nineteenth century. The narrator in Gilman’s story writes about being forced to do nothing, and how that she feels that is the worst possible treatment for her. In this particular scene, the narrator writes that she thinks normal work would do her some good, and that writing allows her to vent, and get across her ideas that no one seems to listen to. Gilman’s use of the rhetorical appeal pathos, first-person point of view, and forceful tone convey her message that confinement is not a good cure for mental health, and that writing,

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator must deal with several different conflicts. She is diagnosed with “temporary nervous depression and a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 221). Most of her conflicts, such as, differentiating from creativity and reality, her sense of entrapment by her husband, and not fitting in with the stereotypical role of women in her time, are centered around her mental illness and she has to deal with them.

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.

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, is a great example of early works pertaining to feminism and the disease of insanity. Charlotte Gilman’s own struggles as a woman, mother, and wife shine through in this short story capturing the haunting realism of a mental breakdown.The main character, much like Gilman herself, slips into bouts of depression after the birth of her child and is prescribed a ‘rest cure’ to relieve the young woman of her suffering. Any use of the mind or source of stimulus is strictly prohibited, including the narrator’s favorite hobby of writing. The woman’s husband, a physician, installs into his wife that the rest treatment is correct and will only due harm if not followed through. This type of treatment ultimately drives the woman insane, causing her to envision a woman crawling behind the yellow wallpaper of her room. Powerlessness and repression the main character is subject to creates an even more poignant message through the narrator’s mental breakdown. The ever present theme of subordination of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is advanced throughout the story by the literary devices of symbolism, imagery, and allegory.

During the nineteenth century, women and men played vastly different roles. While men had the free will to choose the life paths they desired, women lacked such privileges. Women, instead, were expected to tend to domestic responsibilities. Unlike men, they were unable to voice their opinions, instead, myriads of them lived monotonous lives with their, often condescending, husbands. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, portrays a woman in the nineteenth century descending into psychosis. After the birth of her daughter, the unnamed narrator presumably endures postpartum depression and is forced into bed rest as a cure. In her male-dominated society, the narrator often feels as though she is at a loss of control over her life. Despite what she believes is best for her own betterment, her husband, John, overrides her inputs. She is stripped away from the outside world and left with nothing more than her concealed diary entries and the horrid yellow wallpaper of her bedroom. Although John seemingly wants the best for his wife, his dismissiveness towards her mental state and solicitations necessarily cause her to become deranged; her breakdown is a result of feeling powerless as she is encaged in a house she does not care for, restricted from her activities, and her inability to communicate effectively.

Shumaker, Conrad. “"too Terribly Good to Be Printed": Charlotte Gilman's "the Yellow Wallpaper"”. American Literature 57.4 (1985): 588–599. Web. This article is about the feminism in the twentieth century, dominant tradition, and the narrator’s vivid imagination. This article explains the woman’s role instead of the tale of horror or the madness of mental breakdown and the complex work of art as well as an effective indictment of the twentieth century view. This article describes the room to be confine violent mental cases almost like being in a cage. This article discusses Gilman’s deception of the narrator’s decline into madness which it captures the symptoms of a mental breakdown. I can use this article because it is accurate and creditable for my research paper.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Gilman is a chilling portrayal of a woman’s downward spiral towards madness after undergoing treatment for postpartum depression in the 1800’s. The narrator, whose name remains nameless, represents the hundreds of middle to upper- class women who were diagnosed with “hysteria” and prescribed a “rest” treatment. Although Gilman’s story was a heroic attempt to “save people from being driven crazy” (Gilman p 1) by this type of “cure” it was much more. “The Yellow Wallpaper” opened the eyes of many to the apparent oppression of women in the 1800’s and “possibly the only way they could (unconsciously) resist or protest their traditional ‘feminine’

The structure of the text, particularly evident in the author’s interactions with her husband, reveals the binary opposition between the façade of a middle-class woman living under the societal parameters of the Cult of Domesticity and the underlying suffering and dehumanization intrinsic to marriage and womanhood during the nineteenth century. While readers recognize the story for its troubling description of the way in which the yellow wallpaper morphs into a representation of the narrator’s insanity, the most interesting and telling component of the story lies apart from the wallpaper. “The Yellow Wallpaper” outwardly tells the story of a woman struggling with post-partum depression, but Charlotte Perkins Gilman snakes expressions of the true inequality faced within the daily lives of nineteenth century women throughout the story. Although the climax certainly surrounds the narrator’s overpowering obsession with the yellow wallpaper that covers the room to which her husband banished her for the summer, the moments that do not specifically concern the wallpaper or the narrator’s mania divulge a deeper and more powerful understanding of the torturous meaning of womanhood.

In “The Yellow wallpaper”, the wallpaper is a metaphor that expresses women’s protest against the repression of the society and their personal identity at the rise of feminism. During the Victorian era, women were kept down and kept in line by their married men and other men close to them. "The Yellow Wallpaper", written By Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a tale of a woman, her mental difficulties and her husband’s so called therapeutic treatment ‘rest cure’ of her misery during the late 1800s. The tale starts out in the summer with a young woman and her husband travelling for the healing powers of being out from writing, which only appears to aggravate her condition. His delusion gets Jane (protagonist), trapped in a room, shut up in a bed making her go psychotic. As the tale opens, she begins to imagine a woman inside ‘the yellow wallpaper’.

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a young woman’s gradual descent into insanity due to her entrapment, both mentally and physically, in the restrictive cult of domesticity. Through the narrator’s creeping spiral into madness, Gilman seeks to shed light upon the torturous and constraining societal conditions in which women are expected to live, that permeates throughout all aspects of their lives. At first glance to an average reader unfamiliar with Gilman’s history, “The Yellow Wallpaper” seems to just provide a tale about the oppressive relationship between the man and the woman in a domestic environment, however, once Gilman’s own personal life is uncovered, the story takes on a new level of depth.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman starts “The Yellow Wallpaper” with the narrative of a character in first person perspective. Gilman writes in a style and attitude that is reflective of the character 's feelings towards her current situation. The character’s doctor who is coincidentally her husband decided it was best to move her into a remote house for some time away to get plenty of rest and to heal mentally. The character was moved into a nursery that was covered with yellow wallpaper and as time passed the character started to go insane from the seclusion. The character in the story describes her relationship with her husband, John, while explaining how she feels towards him after he excluded her. The character’s sanity transforms into an irrational mentality after her attitude transitions from positive to negative, from her husband’s condescending tone and excessive control, and when she is left constantly alone in seclusion causing her to hallucinate.

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

“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 period where women were oppressed. Women were treated as second rate people in society during this time period. Charlotte Perkins Gilman very accurately portrays the thought process of the society during the time period in which “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written. Using the aspects of Feminist criticism, one can analyze “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman through the dialogue through both the male and female perspective, and through the symbol found in the story.

Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is centered on the deteriorating psychological condition of the female narrator. As a woman in a male dominating society in the 19th century, the narrator has no control over her life. This persistence eventually evolves into her madness. The insanity is triggered by her change in attitude towards her husband, the emergent obsession with the wallpaper and the projection of herself as the women behind the wallpaper. The “rest cure” which was prescribed by her physician husband, created the ideal environment for her madness to extend because, it was in her imagination that she had some freedom and control.