The Role Of Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper

In the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, I think the Husband did try to drive to drive his Wife insane. One of the reasons I think that is because within the short story it mentions how awful and repellent the color of the wall, yellow, is. The wife also describes the color yellow and also says other negative things about it, “The color is repellent, almost revolting… No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in the room long.” (649)

Mental illness and madness is a theme often explored in literature and the range of texts exploring these is tremendously varied. Various factors can threaten a character's sanity, ranging from traumatic events which trigger a decline to pressure from more vast, impersonal sources. Generally speaking, writers have tried to show that most threats to sanity comprise a combination of long-term and short-term factors - the burning of the library in Mervyn Peake's novel 'Titus Groan' precipitated Lord Sepulchrave's descent into madness, but a longer term problem can be discerned in the weight of tradition which caused him to worry 'that with him the line of Groan should

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.

There are many different events in a person’s life that could lead them to insanity. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” you are dealing with a woman who is a victim of male over-protectiveness and isolation that eventually leads to her insanity. In William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” you are dealing with a man who has to deal with his father’s death and rejection from the love of his life that eventually leads him to a form of insanity. Each character handles their situations differently, but it could have gone the other way had they chose to make different decisions.

The quote shows that the narrator has become so incredibly obsessed with the wallpaper in her room that she will again as she states for the “thousandth time” will try to follow the pattern in the wallpaper. Her exaggeration about the amount of times she has attempted to follow it before shows that her obsession has gotten to the point where she does nothing but stare at the wallpaper and attempt to unravel the pattern. Gilman italicised the word “will” to once again add emphasis on how determined the narrator is to untangle the pattern of the yellow

As summer progresses in the story "The Yellow Wallpaper," John's treatment of the narrator as though she were a helpless docile child becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; she sheds the skin of her adult self and gives birth to her inner child via the wallpaper. From the moment she implies she is sick, his behavior becomes more and more parental and authoritarian. Under this guise he slowly disintegrates any resemblance of an adult wife he had. At the end he's victorious because he does beget a child. Simultaneously, he's a loser because the behavior of this childlike being mirrors his own attitude toward his wife: she's defiant and assertive and runs right over him. The tables have reversed.

Madness is the state of being mentally ill. It is the spectrum of behavior characterized by abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Madness manifests as the violation of societal norms, including becoming a personal danger to one’s self. As a woman in the male-dominated society of the 19th century, the narrator has no control over her own life. This lack of control contributes to her descent into madness. The rest cure prescribed by her physician husband provided the environment for her madness to flourish because it was only in her imagination where she retained some control and could exercise the power of her mind. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman centers on the deteriorating mental condition of the female narrator. Gilman’s demonstrates of the progression of her madness throughout the story is reflected in the narrator’s change in attitude toward her husband, her growing obsession with the wallpaper, and her projection of herself as the woman behind the wallpaper.

Mental illnesses causes a person's personality to change. Issues like depression and anxiety will force a person to stay in bed all day. It can also head in the opposite direction, and drive a person to perform dangerous activities, like drink. A desire for revenge combined with a mental illness is a recipe for a disastrous situation. In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the woman suffers from post-partum depression.

The yellow wallpaper is about a woman who is sick or at least she thinks so and is told by her husband to stay in her bed and rest, which eventually causes her to go insane. She begins seeing something within the yellow wallpaper. At first she isn’t sure, but after days of staring she discovers a woman inside of the wallpaper. The binaries at work in this piece are light and dark or sane and insane. The main character is sane at first but as time passes she gets sicker and crazier. She loses touch with reality and begins to see things that aren’t there. The woman she sees in the yellow wallpaper isn’t really there, but her mind makes her think she is. She sees this woman trying to get out of the wallpaper, but she can’t. The woman finally escaping

The women in Faulkner's and Gilman's stories are victims of male over-protectiveness.  The men that rule their lives trap Emily in "A Rose For Emily" and the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper". Each character must retreat into their own world as an escape from reality.

    In the late 1800's/early 1900's, when Charlotte Perkins Gilman experienced her episode of "temporary nervous depression" (Gilman 885), and wrote her autobiographical short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," the workings of the mind were mysteries that few medical people attempted to investigate. A patient who was poor and ill-educated and exhibiting signs of mental disorder was institutionalized -- ala Bedlam. The patient who was rich, educated, and/or from a "good family" was called eccentric and given a prescription for complete mental rest and controlled physical exercise combined with the consumption of phosphorus enriched tonics. This regimen was to be followed in an environment

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

Charlotte Perkins-Gilman’s portrayal of mental illness in The Yellow Wallpaper truly captures the historical truth of how the lives of everyday women were shaped by stereotypes and abuse. In the short story, the narrator’s mental state slowly deteriorates and is marked with periods of severe disassociation as consequence of her sentence. The inability of her husband to accept her condition is a massive factor in her initial disassociation. The narrator’s condition spirals after a month’s stay locked up, characterized a notable avoidance of reality, all while under her husband’s belief that resting is the miraculous cure for her sudden and “temporary nervous disease”. A week before she is able to go home, she has fully detached from societal expectations and fully into madness, escaping from her cruel treatment.

I don’t believe that the narrator is insane. But, I do believe that she is ill. At first I was under the illusion that she was not and that her husband was leading her to believe so for some personal gain. But, after looking into the text some more I believe that she is schizophrenic. The narrator seems to be lost in her own world. She starts to obsess over something so simple as this yellow wallpaper to the point that she convinces herself there is a women trapped inside of this wallpaper. She doesn't notice things such as bars on the “nursery” windows as being odd or out of place. Her husband seems to keep her trapped in this house away from her family, friends, and baby insisting its for her well being, but he's keeping her trapped. I don't

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the story of a woman spiralling into madness whilst her physician husband refuses to acknowledge that she has a "real" problem. On the other hand The Black Cat by Edgar Alan Poe is about a man who is initially fond of cats however as the plot progresses he becomes an alcoholic making him moody and violent, which lead him to torture and kills the animals and eventually also his wife. In Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Black Cat," symbolism is used to show the narrator’s capacity for violence, madness, and guilt .The recurring theme present in both these stories is that the main protagonists claim that they suffer or have been taken over by a form of madness. In this essay I shall examine the