Nervous Depression In The Yellow Wallpaper

However, the most important aspect of this room is the yellow wallpaper. The narrator despises it, loathing the colour and it’s pattern. She writes that it is “. . .dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.” (Gilman). This description of the wallpaper serves the purpose to show the reader the unjust restrictions of society that the narrator is subjected to; “. . .commentators have seen in this description of the wallpaper a general representation of “the oppressive structures of society in which [the narrator] finds herself” (Madwoman 90), . . .” (Haney-Peritz 116). The statement of “dull enough to confuse the eye” and “constantly irritating and provoking study” are alluding to the narrator’s sense of inferiority and burden while the “lame and uncertain curves” are referencing the absurd suggestions that her husband is providing. Finally the “suicide” is the unfortunate fate that is destined to occur if his counsel is followed. When describing the wallpaper the narrator writes that “The color is repellent, almost

  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a symbolic tale of one woman’s struggle to break free from her mental prison.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the reader how quickly insanity takes hold when a person is taken out of context and completely isolated from the rest of the world.  The narrator is a depressed woman who cannot handle being alone and retreats into her own delusions as opposed to accepting her reality.  This mental prison is a symbol for the actual repression of women’s rights in society and we see the consequences when a woman tries to free herself from this social slavery.

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,

The vivid descriptions in “The Yellow Wallpaper” help to bring the reader along in the narrators decent into a kind of psychosis. It starts mildly, with her describing the color of wallpaper as “repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 528). As more time passes she begins to see more things in the paper such as “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes start at you,” and for it have “so much expression in an inanimate thing” (Gilman 592). As the pattern and descriptions get more twisted, we get visual clues of the madness that is slowly consuming the narrator. The color of the paper even begins to become a physical thing she can smell descried as, “creep[ing] all over the house...sulking...hiding...lying in wait for me…It gets into my hair” (Gilman 534). In the end we get a graphic visual representation of her full psychosis

The "Yellow Wall Paper "by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a chilling study and experiment of mental disorder in nineteenth century. This is a story of a miserable wife, a young woman in anguish, stress surrounding her in the walls of her bedroom and under the control of her husband doctor, who had given her the treatment of isolation and rest. This short story vividly reflects both a woman in torment and oppression as well as a woman struggling for self expression. The setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the driving force in the story because it is the main factor that caused the narrator to go insane.

The wallpaper takes on immediate significance when it is introduced to the story, simply because its characteristics are described with such detail. At this point, the paper seems to represent all that is the opposite of the woman, and she is repulsed by it. "I never saw a worse paper in my life,"(l56) writes the woman. Whereas she is a sweet, dutiful wife to her husband, and her behavior carefully conforms to what society expects of her, she is disgusted by the paper's poor condition, its faded, soured color, and its pattern, "One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin"(156). Her mild-mannered behavior, evident in the opening scenes, carefully conforms with what society expects of her; therefore, this vague description of the pattern of the wallpaper seems to be an inversion of the woman's personality.

The yellow wallpaper in the room shows, symbolically, the narrator was being oppressed. The narrator hated the wallpaper because she saw herself as a prisoner of her own husband. Spending so much time in the room, the narrator studied the wallpaper in details and found the wallpaper somewhat represents her. "There is one place where two breadths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other" (pg280), "Such a peculiar odor, too" (pg 285) etc. The confusing pattern, the bar, the woman behind the bar, and the yellow color of the wallpaper allowed her to feel so helpless, as if she was a bird

Throughout the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator of the story displays signs of depression. The narrator of the story was brought to an old colonial mansion that has been untenanted for a long while by her husband John, who believed that she had a nervous condition. On the walls in the nursery of the house, there was yellow wallpaper that, according to the narrator, was horrific. After staying in the house a while, the narrator began to become obsessed with the wallpaper, and she would use some bizarre language to describe the sight. When the narrator describes the wallpaper you can tell that there is a something deeper that’s wrong other than just a nervous condition: “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken

This story was written in the late 1800’s, which emphasizes women and their place in society. The narrator’s story is quite accurate given the treating of her illness and the overall treatment toward the narrator herself at the time of publication. The deterioration of the narrator’s emotional state began when her career was at a halt when the responsibilities of motherhood overwhelmed her. This is when the narrator begins to fall into a depression that her husband, a therapist that was well respected, treated by a form of rehabilitation called the ‘rest cure’. This cure consisted of rest and destruction of all thoughts or actions toward a career. When this method proved to be unsuccessful, the narrator begins to understand her roles of wife and mother as the source of her depression. This leads the narrator to leave her husband, as well as her own child, in pursuit of leaving behind the chain that brought her career to a halt.

The yellow wallpaper is a symbol of oppression in a woman who felt her duties were limited as a wife and mother. The wallpaper shows a sign of female imprisonment. Since the wallpaper is always near her, the narrator begins to analyze the reasoning behind it. Over time, she begins to realize someone is behind the

In Charlotte Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," Jane, the main character, is a good example of Sigmund Freud’s Studies In Hysteria. Jane suffers from symptoms such as story making and daydreaming. Jane has a nervous weakness throughout the story.

I believe the lines used from “The Yellow Wallpaper” accurately represent symptoms of depression and what can happen if the depression symptoms are repressed into the person suffering. Toward the end of “The Yellow Wallpaper” she finally has a breakdown that causes her husband to faint in pure surprise, she had many more issues than just depression but the depression and the lack of human interaction and talk therapy to help her through her issues. Depression can not be repressed and it needs to be known and to be treated as more than just everyday sadness because it exceeds sadness. A person who suffers from depression can not be repressed it is not sadness it is a common and serious mental problem that over 350 million people suffer from

There is no end to the different approaches presented in critiques of "The Yellow Wallpaper." A prominent

The Yellow Wallpaper develops a mysterious imagery to heighten the senses of its readers. For example, the setting involves “a colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicit” that seems to be abandoned and isolated from all society, providing for an eerie mood to settle. The story’s imagery and enhanced detail is focused mostly around the narrator's obsession with the yellow wallpaper. Even though, this obsession might be alluded to from the title, it is demonstrated when Perkins states that “the color is repellant, almost

Response paper for “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. The author Charlotte Perkins Stetson, chosen scene leaves the protagonist isolated from society. The bedroom of the mansion in which the protagonist spend majority of her time give off a feeling of solitude.