Intentional and symptomatic readings on “The Yellow Wallpaper” On starting my reading on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, I found it very amusing to understand the feeling of the narrator, whose name is revealed as Jane at the very end of the story. She is constantly restricted in many ways by her husband John, yet many of her description describes him as “caring” and “loving” even though he disappoints her in most of her wants. The contradiction, I suspected, was due to that the authorial intention is not projected on the spot, and that through interpreting the story with intentional reading and symptomatic reading different ideology may be revealed respectively. I therefore decided to study the …show more content…
But he said I wasn’t able to go.”) John is at a superior position to Jane in every decision he makes. Jane has no say in all these scenarios. Also, John is often depicted with arrogance, though not serious (“I am a doctor, dear, and I know”; “Can you not trust me as a physician?”), but often we find that he does not understand Jane’s need (“John does not know how much I suffer”; “it is worse in the morning when you are away”). We see a woman, despite having decent knowledge (“I know a little principle of design”; being able to name Latin words), oppressed by the man in this narrative, and the oppressions are repetitive over the narrative even the narrator herself does not often recognise these as behaviours against her. We see flaws or indecent characters in the man, possibly a projection of dissatisfaction towards men. We also see, the woman, unsatisfied in her position, attempts an escape from her “imprisonment”. We further discover a hermeneutic closure in which the men’s method of treating women eventually fails, resulting in damages in both of the gender. We can conclude
Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a woman who writes about personal experience, and in her short, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” we learn exactly who our author is based on the language and communication that appears throughout the story. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a captivating tale, largely because the language and communication between characters translates to a feeling of near madness for the reader. The man, the dominant character in the story, has much to say about his wife’s mental condition and practically refuses to permit her feelings. Gilman explains how this story wasn’t made to drive people insane, but rather to save people from insanity. She realizes she has the power to create a powerful effect within literature and that is the thing that
“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 story, The Yellow Wallpaper, portrays the life and mind of a woman suffering from post-partum depression in the late eighteenth century. Gilman uses setting to strengthen the impact of her story by allowing the distant country mansion symbolize the loneliness of her narrator, Jane. Gilman also uses flat characters to enhance the depth of Jane’s thoughts; however, Gilman’s use of narrative technique impacts her story the most. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses interior monologue to add impact to Jane’s progression into insanity, to add insight into the relationships in the story, and to increase the depth of Jane’s connection with the yellow wallpaper it self.
In the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, there are many of literary techniques that illustrates the theme to express the story. Irony, imagery and symbolism are some literary devices that is presented among the story. “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 acceptance and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The story appears to take place during a time where women were oppressed. Women were treated as if they were under one’s thumb in society during this period which is approximately the 19th century.
Charlotte Gilman revealed that she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in the purpose that “it was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked” (Gilman). The Yellow Wallpaper, a short story written in 1899, is still questioned and analyzed to this day, over one hundred years after it was first published. Although Gilman has formally explained her meaning behind the piece, this has not hampered the countless interpretations of the text made by readers and literary critics alike. The story is one which was quite unlike the literature of the time period, as it is one which questioned social constructs which existed for women and marriages which had not been extensively addressed in society.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a detailed account of the author’s battle with depression and mental illness. Gilman’s state of mental illness and delusion is portrayed in this narrative essay. Through her account of this debilitating illness, the reader is able to relate her behavior and thoughts to that of an insane patient in an asylum. She exhibits the same type of thought processes and behaviors that are characteristic of this kind of person. In addition, she is constantly treated by those surrounding her as if she were actually in some form of mental hospital.
There are a number of explanations for the shocking ending of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The short story is the journal of a woman in the 1800s whose physician husband is treating her for an unknown illness at their summer home. By the end of the story, the narrator has completely lost her mind. When the evidence is analyzed, the psychology of both the narrator and her husband shows what the most logical interpretation of the story is. The narrator was not mentally ill at the beginning of the summer, but was driven insane both by the treatments prescribed to her by her husband and his behavior towards her.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," a nervous wife, an overprotective husband, and a large, dank room covered in musty wallpaper all play important parts in driving the wife insane. The husband's smothering attention, combined with the isolated environment, incites the nervous nature of the wife, causing her to plunge into insanity to the point she sees herself in the wallpaper. The author's masterful use of not only the setting (of both time and place), but also of first person point of view, allows the reader to participate in the woman's growing insanity.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a woman who writes about personal experience, and in her short “The Yellow Wallpaper” we learn exactly who our author is based off of the language and communication she shows us throughout the short. The Yellow Wallpaper is very captivating short, mainly because the language and communication between characters drives you crazy. The man, the dominant character in the story, has so much to say about his wife’s mental condition and almost refuses to let her feel how she does. Gilman explains how this story wasn’t made to drive people crazy but it was made to save people from being driven crazy. She knows that she has the power to make a difference within literature and
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story told from the perspective of a woman who’s believed to be “crazy”. The narrator believes that she is sick while her husband, John, believes her to just be suffering from a temporary nervous depression. The narrator’s condition worsens and she begins to see a woman moving from behind the yellow wallpaper in their bedroom. The wallpaper captures the narrator’s attention and initial drives her mad. Charlotte Gilman uses a lot of personal pieces into her short story, from her feministic views to her personal attributes. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written from a feminist and autobiographical standpoint and includes elements, like symbols and perspective that the reader can analyze in different ways.
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
In this story, the author uses many different literary devices to express the ongoing theme of feminism and the oppression of women. During the Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman develops a narrator to achieve her goal who once revealed her feelings but is also recumbent to decrease her own evaluation. She also develops a not trustworthy narrator, which allows her to conduct serval different emotions as her charter mood develops. This allows Gilman to put her two theories about her main character; either one is insane or one is having discomfort from these feelings of oppression. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman perfectly use of symbolism, conflict, and setting presents her theme of feminist suppression.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman aptly used narrative voice to shape the meaning of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by writing a first-person narrative about a woman who slowly loses herself to madness. This voice is one of a woman who may possibly have post-partum depression or some other form of manic depression, and her unheard cries for help. She slowly draws within herself, and allows the insanity to take over. Within the first few paragraphs we learn general characteristics about the narrator: she is middle class, as indicated by the phrase “mere ordinary people” (354); we also learn that she is married, suggested a statement about John laughing at her, something she says is only expected in marriage. Though we are never given her name, these generic aspects just might be more important to the progression of the story than her actual identity or personal history.
The geographical, physical, and historical settings in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" were more than the primary character could handle. The geography would lead to think she could enjoy the environment, but she chose not to. The physical setting showed us the reader just how grotesque and unbearable it would be to live a room in which the wallpaper to over the narrators mind. Lastly, we looked at how historically women were not allowed to speak their minds about how they felt. Maybe now that John has seen his wife go completely insane for himself he will finally seek extra attention for
“It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise,