What Is The Point Of Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper

Her husband, John, a doctor, thinks that this is the best remedy for her mental illness. She agrees to stay at the summer house because she wants her illness to be temporary. The narrator also accepts sleeping in the nursery room, completely isolating herself from her friends and family. As soon as she enters the house, she immediately notices something is not right. She states,“I am afraid but I don't care, there is something strange about this house I can feel it” (Stetson 648). By agreeing to stay in the house, she neglects herself and suppresses her emotions. John refuses to let her do anything, including writing, which makes her isolation complete and adds to her total breakdown. He is concerned that her condition will get worse because of her thoughts. She describes that John is against writing by saying “but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad” (Stetson 648). She willingly agrees to obey her husband and attempts to cure her nervous disorder, but as the story progresses the narrator becomes increasingly frustrated and infuriated within

The windows of the room are barred, and there is a gate across the top of the stairs, allowing her husband to control her access to the rest of the house. She doesn't like this new room that her husband picked for her at all. John doesn’t want her do anything even writing one word. He treated her like a baby, he calls her as “little girl”. When the narrator told John that she wants to move out because she is afraid of this room, John refused and think she is getting better. She feels really hopeless about these spiritual. Without anything can do, she becomes interested in the pattern and color of the wallpaper. She wondered what is behind the paper. "It is the strangest the yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw — not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper—the smell! ... The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell." In the last few days, she imagines there are women creeping around behind the patterns of the wallpaper, and started to believe that she is one of them. The climax appeared at the end of the story, the narrator was trying to climb out of the room in the complete nervous breakdown. She tore up almost all the wallpaper, hidden the key. When John found the key and went into the room, he was dumbfounded about her behaviour. The narrator said to her husband John, “so you can’t put me back” then he fainted. She crept over his body, escaped from the house, it’s a pity that the narrator been mentally disturbed

With these views in mind, it is common knowledge that in 1892 Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her well-known short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” to address a large problem from her time. This story was controversial and groundbreaking because most people at that time did not understand Postpartum Depression. Most doctors believed only in what they could see, and as a result, the majority thought that women were just nervous and had slight hysterical tendencies. Gilman experienced first hand the reality and severity of Postpartum Depression and she also understood the unintentional harm done to those suffering by well-meaning doctors and loved ones. Gilman knew the way people perceived mental illnesses had to completely change, and to

It is only as the unnamed narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” slips further into obsession and insanity does she begin to understand that she is not in total control of her life. The narrator begins to see a woman confined by the wallpaper and knows that the woman is a prisoner. She becomes fixated on freeing

In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator begins the story as someone who really did not want to be where she was, out in the country, isolated, and alone most of the time. Her husband John, takes her to a temporary home where he believes she will be able to find the most peace and rest so that she can recover. He believes that this routine is necessary for her recovery. She, on the other hand, doubts the necessity of such a move and wonders if the mysterious house is haunted by the end of the story. Her husband Jon shows superior attitude toward her by

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story that I feel could be interpreted in many different ways. It is narrated by an unnamed woman who says she suffers from nervous depression. A common perspective of this story is that the woman is driven crazy by her husband because he kept her locked in a room and surrounded by hideous wallpaper. We can interpret that she saw herself inside of the yellow wallpaper and tries to escape. When she does escape, she crawls over her husband John’s fainted body. Does she actually suffer from nervous depression or is it something else? Should we believe everything she says in the story or does her mental illness cause her to see things for what they are not? How do her feelings toward the wallpaper change throughout the story?

The quote in the book that supports the theme is that “He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. "Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear," said he, "and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time." This supports my theme because I feel that john overpowers the wife by saying like “ this is good for you “ and that he is only make it seem to be that he is helping her but in reality he is keeping her locked away only for her to go insane. It supports my theme because he has this sense that it's good for her to keep her locked away in this room rather than actually take her to a hospital. Another quote is that “There comes John, and I must put this away,—he hates to have me write a word.” The wife doesn’t want john to see what she is writing because she is afraid that he is going to take it away from her. Writing is especially off limits, and John warns her several times that she must use her self-control to rein in her imagination, which he fears will run away with her. You shouldn’t let creativity be trapped in a

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story narrated by John’s wife, she started describing the house where they have to stay for the summer –three months—and she described herself as a person with a depression problem and she talks about her husband (John) as a doctor that doesn’t believes on non-physical reasons. She did not like the house and she is upset because they have to stay there for the whole summer even if she doesn’t like it. She said that her husband got the house so she can have a good rest and at the end of the summer she should improve her condition a lot.

The narrator’s perception is scaled down to resemble the size of a child, and is unable to stand up for herself without appearing to be disloyal to her husband. Her husband says to her at one point, “"What is it, little girl?" he said. "Don 't go walking about like that -- you 'll get cold" (5). John never once calls her by her real name and only refers to her by these pet names as if she were his child. Even with the smallest details in her life the narrator consistently retreats back to the yellow wallpaper which she begins to obsess over. This is the only place she can retain some control in her life and exercise the power of her own mind. The yellow wallpaper helps the narrator regain her own perspective of herself as a woman which is crushed by her husbands perspective of viewing her as a merely a child.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the author uses the conventions of the psychological horror tale to critique the position of women within the institution of marriage, especially as practiced by the “respectable” classes of her time. For the author, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, with its rigid distinction between the “domestic” functions of a woman and the “active” work of a man, ensured that women remained second-class citizens. The story reveals that this division in gender had the effect of keeping women in a state of ignorance and preventing their full development. John’s assumption of his own superior wisdom and maturity leads him to misjudge, patronize, and dominate his wife, all in the name of “helping” her. The narrator is reduced to acting like a child, unable to stand up for herself without seeming unreasonable or disloyal. The narrator has no say in even the smallest details of her life, and she retreats into her obsessive fantasy, the only place she can retain some control and exercise the power of her mind. The mental constraints placed upon the narrator, even more so than the physical ones, are what ultimately drive her insane. She is forced to hide her anxieties and fears to preserve the appearance of a happy marriage and to make it appear that she is winning the fight against her depression. From the beginning, the most intolerable aspect of her treatment is the compulsory silence and idleness of the “resting cure.” She is forced to become completely passive, forbidden from exercising her mind in any way. Writing is especially off limits, and John warns her several times that she must use her self-control to rein in her imagination, which he fears will run away with her. Of course, the narrator’s eventual insanity is a product of the repression of her imaginative power, not the expression of it. She is constantly longing for an emotional and intellectual outlet, even going so far as to keep a secret journal, which she describes more than once as a “relief” to her mind. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an illustration of the way a mind that is already plagued with anxiety can deteriorate and begin to prey on itself when it is forced into inactivity and kept from healthy work. The

Out of all the stories we have read in class so far, “The Yellow Wallpaper” was the only story that stood out to me the most. I was drawn to this story because it was very disturbing and thought-provoking. It made me wonder how the narrator had her nervous disorder in the first place, or if she was really insane at the beginning of her story. Some people might say that the narrator was insane from the beginning, but I actually disagree. I believe that she eventually became insane at some point in her narrative, but I don’t think it was just the yellow wallpaper that made her crazy. In my opinion, it was her husband’s treatment and denial of her sickness that drove her to insanity.

She focuses on the paper and starts to feel as if someone in the house is watching her. She immediately wants to leave the mansion, but I was confused as to why John was forcing her to stay. I feel her interaction with the wall for the first time may have been a sign that she was always going to be watched in the house. Also, I interpreted that since John made his wife so vulnerable, it was easier for the wallpaper to possess her. The narrator tries to show her creativity through writing, but I did not understand why John does not like her doing that.

John thinks that there is something mentally wrong with his wife. The wife tells the readers that there is nothing physically wrong with her, but her husband doesn’t believe so, and that her “illness” is nothing but a sign of depression. In an analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” writer Catherine Sustana states, John treats his wife like a child, calling her names. He makes all the decisions for her and isolates her from the things she cares about. From this it is easy to see that her husband simply does not want to let her out of his sight. He wants to keep her inside the house. John wants to have control not only over his life but also over his wife’s too.

Jennie needed to have the opportunity to work, to grow and to make connections outside of the home

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening story of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. The story is set during the late 1890s, and shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era for postpartum depression as well as the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. In her story, Gillman portrays the theme of confinement and control. The narrator is forced to hide anxiety and fears to fight the depression and to keep up the pretense of a happy life