Despite the major differences, there seems to be a common theme and moreover also a cause to start telling the story in both The Yellow Wallpaper and The Metamorphosis which is the aspect of loneliness and how each protagonist deals with it ; if they are able to overcome the repercussions it causes to the environment they are part of . In The Yellow Wallpaper, the author describes the narrative of an aged unnamed protagonist, visiting her ancestral place along with her husband John, separated from the commotion of their daily lives in order to initiate the protagonist’s ‘rest cure.’ In the time period (late 1900s) the story is set in, the concept of an mental illness was not established moreover, the protagonist does not display any peripheral …show more content…
Protagonist quotes in the beginning of the story: “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes I feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house.” This quote establishes that the protagonist suffers yet doubts herself because she literally hears her husband inside her head, dictating her what is right and wrong and she must instill full trust on him. John however seems to only know his wife superficially. He interacts and sees the “outer” world she presents, but fails to realize the “inside” world of the trapped, struggling women battling the demons of the mental illness. As the story progresses, we see John is not straight up evil, and cares deeply for his wife but both of them are part of an unequal relationship where the protagonist cannot be taken seriously. There is also a sense of John treating her as an object, patient or someone he is not familiar with rather than someone he is married to. The last line of the story is very powerful, “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time! “John indirectly destroys her with his “resting cure” treatment which is the last thing he wants as he displays his reaction by what seems as fainting and not waking up (dying but is not clear in the text). The protagonist seems more frustrated with his actions in the end then worrisome and even refers to him as “the man” instead of loving calling him by his first name and positively talking about him. She complains of “creeping over” him again and again instead of finding out what went wrong with him. It is also almost as if
Readers can perceive that the narrator feels kidnapped and tormented by her husband’s lack of interest towards her mental illness, and these hallucinations are the reaction of it, or maybe she is just trying to get her husband’s attention more often. The narrator comments that “John is away all day, and even
The problem is that the woman does not give herself enough credit to speak up for herself. This is slightly comparable to what many people go through today, in our society, with medical practitioners. Although one knows what makes him or her feel better, we most often will rely on the doctor's advice, instead, simply because of his or her authority. The woman is trying so hard to get better, and deep down she knows what she needs to do, but she is constantly being shut down by her husband and her own personal insecurities. The woman describes writing as "Such a relief" (Barnet 748) but because of John's constant observation of her as well as her low energy level she must direct her thoughts elsewhere. So she begins to daydream about the wallpaper. She imagines people,
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis" contain many similarities. They both have the common theme of the deterioration of the main character's life and mind, as well as the theme of the ostracism of outcasts in society. They also both deal with the main characters gaining a freedom through the demise of their previous lives.
All along the story, John, the husband believes he can cure his wife, manage her behavior and keep his status
Every request the woman in the story has made to her husband has been dismissed and her depression continues to worsen because she has lost control of her own life. John fails to understand how it feels for his wife to be trapped in her room all day. “He forces his wife into a daily confinement by four walls whose paper, described as ‘debased Romanesque,’ is an omnipresent figuring of the
But John would not hear of it” (Gilman 308). – “I wonder – I begin to think – I wish John would take me away from here” (Gilman 314). She said she would hate herself if she had to live in the treatment room long “the paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is tripped off-the paper- in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life” – “the color is repellant” – “a smoldering unclear yellow, strangely faded by slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly Sulphur tint in others.” – “I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long” (Gilman 309). The treatment doesn’t help reduce her stressful and depression. She feels worse than before. She doesn’t feel like writing before since she moved into the yellow wallpaper – a nursery room. Besides, she is abandoned because her husband away all day. The lonely feeling make her “nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing” (Gilman 309). Preventing from moving and working treatment and focusing on resting and being alone is a wrong treatment method. The narrator gets tired and tired every day and is more nervous because she just feels like “a comparative burden” to her husband. One more time, the husband rejects her feeling – she want get out of the house to feel the fresh air and meet people around which makes she feels relax and happy – “I’m
John, the narrator’s controlling, but loving, husband represents the atypical man of the time. He wants his wife to get better and to be able to fill the role of the perfect wife that society expected from her. John, being a doctor, did not quite believe that her mental illness was out of her control and insisted on
Let us explore the first issue of her husband. It appears that she is always worried about what her husband is thinking. It is clear that John, her husband is a physician, but that he does not really believe in “mental disorders” which is clearly what she has going on. He does not let her go out in public,
According to Gilbert and Gubar she is “mad” only by society’s standards, and, more importantly, that she is, in fact, moving into “the open spaces of her own authority” (91). This interpretation seems to just touch on the many social issues the narrator experiences. Keeping the narrator anonymous is one of the key themes to show the reader who the woman really is, because of the assumption at the beginning of her status in society and in her marriage to a prominent doctor. Her husband John does not even acknowledge his wife may have any mental problems and all attempts for the woman to tell him fail. For as she in desperation states “John laughs at me about this wallpaper” (Gilman 803). Thus, if the woman can expect to get laughed at in her marriage, it would be impossible for her to actually talk to her husband, much less convince him to change his diagnosis of her, especially because he is “so wise” and a physician (Gilman 806). Indeed, male-dominant opinion becomes even more prevalent when it seems that all three different men in the story are all close to her and all prescribe the same “rest cure” for her. However, she seems to “disagree with their ideas”, for as she lucidly states, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change would do me good” (Gilman 801).
Her loving husband, John, never takes her illness seriously. The reader has a front row seat of the narrator’s insanity voluminously growing. He has shown great patience with the recovery of his wife’s condition. However, the narrator is clear to the reader that she cannot be her true self with him. In the narrator’s eyes she feels he is completely oblivious to how she feels and could never understand her. If she did tell him that the yellow wallpaper vexed her as it does he would insist that she leave. She could not have this.
She has been trained to trust in her husband blindly and sees no other way. He calls her “little girl” (352) and “little goose” (349) and states “She will be as sick as she pleases!” (352) whenever she tries to express her issues. Instead of fighting for what she thinks will make her better she accepts it and keeps pushing her feelings aside, while he treats her like a child. We get an instant feel for her problem in the first page when she says, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that” (pg 346). A woman shouldn’t expect her husband to laugh at her concerns. Even after briefly writing about her condition she remembers her husband telling her the very worst thing she can do is think about it and follows his instructions. This is when she begins to focus on the house instead of her problems and the obsession with the wallpaper starts. She has nothing else to think about alone in the home; they don’t even allow her to write, which she has to do in secret.
The men of the story, namely John, the protagonist’s husband, plays the role of the active working, dominating male who is the sole authority of his family and regards himself as intelligent and wise. John exemplifies the working man of his day, working all day and sometimes late into the night. John is a physician who recognizes the compromised state of his wife, but only chalks it up to temporary nervous depression. Playing into his gender role, John takes charge in treating and helping his wife, believing in his superiority and knowledge. One night when the protagonist confronts her husband to tell him that she really is not gaining anything from being secluded in the mansion and wishes him to take her away, he only replies with, “. . .I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger, I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can
He had even hired a housekeeper to take care of not only the house, but the baby as well. John also controlled almost everything in her life. In fact, the only thing he did not control was her journal writing, and even then she had to hide it from him since he did not approve of it. When he comes she says, "I must put this (the journal) away - he hates to have me write a word"(471). Part of John's problem 1s that he is a doctor. As a doctor, he control's his wife's health care, prescribing her medicines and her overall cure. As her husband, he is too emotionally involved to look at the case objectively, or if he had, he might have seen her mind going before it was too late. Not only that, the accepted "cure" at that particular time was ineffective and would only serve to make his wife worse (473). This "cure" was the product of a certain Dr. Weir Mitchell; a nerve specialist whose theory of a "rest cure" for mentally unstable patients was later found to be unsuccessful. In the story, the husband's ill-advised attempts to treat his wife's symptoms drive her insane by taking all responsibility from her and forcing isolation upon her as a part of her "cure."
In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator talks about several things: She feels she is sick and her brother and husband do not believe her, her husband moved her to a deserted house and keeps her isolated, he controls her every move, and she feels that she has no companionship. All of these things contribute to the theme of alienation and loneliness in this story.
John demonstrates the power of male to stop his wife’s complaints. John holds resolutely to the conventional lines of the marriage plot and produces authority out of a distanced and ironic critique of women diseases. Janice Peritz stated in her journal that, ‘’Author, Williams Howell, had nothing to say about the provocative feminism of Gilman’s text after he added her short story to his collection which caused Gilman’s story to be completely ignored’’. Gilman makes a strong statement about males in society during her time period. The men are portrayed to really see women as children more than as individuals. The dominance of men is undeniable, ‘’ He does not believe I’m sick’’. The narrator has lost control to decide is she’s sick or not, which is one of the most basic things a person can determine. The narrator stated, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression, what is one to do?” Gilman portrays that women ‘‘invented” their emotional illnesses in order to attract attention and sympathy of other relatives. It is possible to say that male physicians prefer to find any excuse not to treat psychological disorders seeing them unimportant and even “imaginary”. The typical male makes his wife a conformist by enforcing his