The Weird Is An Essential Horror Component

Victor Frankenstein was obsessed with science and anatomy, and the balance between life and death while he was a university student. Frankenstein claimed to create the monster to better mankind, but it is more likely he created him out of the desire to become more like a God. “. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me; I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption. (Shelley 54)” This is basically Victor explaining how he wants to cheat death and create a new race of species. Victor wants the creature to look at him as a God figure or as his ruler. The irony is that Victor never gives the creature a chance and that is the reason the monster did all the

One similarity between the two works is the that we are limited on where we get our information. Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” we see everything through the eyes of the narrator. The entire story is told from her secret diary when she has the time to write as shown in the line, “I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal-having to be so sly about it” (Gilman 527). Due to this, we can only make assumptions based on the information we get from her. She tells us she is in “A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate” (Gilman 526) and that she stays in “a big, airy room…It was a nursery first and then a playroom and gymnasium” (Gilman 527). However, once we reach the end of the story, with the

Gilman's use of narrative structure is important in depicting the fragmentation of the woman's mind. Through the course of the story sentences become increasingly choppy and paragraphs decrease in length. This concrete element of fiction illustrates the deterioration of that narrator's psychological well-being and mental surmise to the yellow wallpaper.

In this section of the reading, the creature’s habits really stood out to me. I couldn’t help but see a more softer and human like side to the monster. When the creature is observing his neighbors he comes to notice that they are unhappy and he is “deeply affected” by this. When the creature learns that poverty is causing their unhappiness he also comes to the realization that when he has stolen their food he causes them great pain and suffering. So the creature “abstained” and swore to not steal anymore. So not only is this supposedly monsterish creature feeling sorrow and remorse for others pain, but he also chooses to end his role in causing this pain. These kind of emotions and actions that the creature is conducting are really interesting.

The depiction of gender roles and the stigma of mental illness in “The Yellow Wallpaper” can be elucidated in different ways. When reading the actual piece, the narrator really does seem to have a very difficult time in her life. It is obvious through several of the articles that she has had a difficult time trying to find her identity, and it has shown through her mental stability. The comparison of the Panopticon method and Gilman’s own experiences helps to provide a clearer view as to what she was actually experiencing in the time that she was confined to her room. By the end of “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman seems to have escaped from the thing that was holding her back, but did she really escape completely? I am not sure if someone

Secondly, whatever the difference monsters have from a human, whether it be animal characteristics, made-up attributes, or a combination of human limbs and other traits, any discrepancy points out their difference from humanity. The monsters with human attributes backhandedly comment on human behaviors, such as Manticore, Medusa and Minotaur. Blake and Cooper note that Medusa is in a group of “over-sexual women… were combined with snakes in order to emphasize the supposed sinful nature of women and temptations of their bodies” (Blake and Cooper 4). In recent monster stories, humanoid monsters have become increasingly normal. Thirdly, despite their distortions, monsters reflect who we are as humankind. Their many differences in meaning and image reflect humanity’s diversity. “Gothic” fiction is a literary tradition that started a recent wave of monsters that consisted of novels from Dracula to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. People began to write tales that tamed the supernatural

“I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings…” (Shelley 54). As he reads the books he found, he begins to compare his life and himself with others, and shapes his opinion and point of view of himself, since now he wants to be accepted for who he really is, because he knows that mankind rejects him. He feels lonely and miserable, and what he most want in life is a female companion. “You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being” (Shelley 63). The monster feels that he is miserable because mankind hate him, and that is what make him malicious. It is possible that the monster would actually fulfill his promise and leave humankind in peace. We can assume that he has the potential for good as well as evil. As he is being aware of life by reading “Paradise Lost,” he compares himself to Adam, because he was left alone on earth by his creator, and also to Satan, because humans are afraid of him, and he is threatening and

After learning of Gilman’s personal story, it becomes apparent that “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and the struggle of its narrator, carries a distinct message. Gilman grew up in an unhappy and impoverished family with a brother, a single mother, and no father figure. She later went on to marry Charles Stetson (whom she later divorced) and had a daughter with him. After the birth of her daughter, Gilman fell into a deeply depressed state, indicating the relevance of postpartum depression. When she consulted Dr. Weir Mitchell about it, she was prescribed a “rest cure.” It was this event that inspired Gilman to write “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and many similarities can be drawn between

She does rebel at times but for the majority of the book, she remains compliant. Gilman on the other hand doesn’t always respond positively to her physicians. Gilman is passive in this sense but aggressive as well because she acts on her own beliefs. Throughout, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman is forbidden to invoke her passion; writing. Her brother and husband, John are both highly respected doctors that believe “Congenial work, with excitement and change,” would only worsen her case. But in spite of them, she writes anyway making sure not to be seen. Gilman’s character is a little more manic than Kaysen because she is locked up in her own house alone for the majority of her time. She is unable to leave without permission or write ever. In this aspect, I feel that being passive aggressive is a positive characteristic because it allows Gilman to fool her husband into believing she is improving. When in actuality, she’s not and she may be going crazy being cooped up in the house all the time. However it is a negative because unlike Kaysen, she acts on her impulses without thinking them through. She doesn’t take into consideration what the consequences of her actions may be. For instance, when she starts to notice the figures behind the wallpaper taking form, she starts to peel off the wallpaper. Although she says she is trying to rescue the girl stuck behind the dreaded colored paper, this act does not show her husband she is not crazy.

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Gilman's point of view is expressed through first person narration, which provides her

The reader gets a first glimpse at her insanity as she constantly jumps from one subject to another. Gilman’s thought process is much like that of an insane being as she begins to let her thoughts run together in a mass of confusion. For example, at the beginning, Gilman is writing about a discussion with her husband, John, when suddenly she skips to a description of the old house: “But John says if I feel so I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself-before him, at least, and that makes me very tired. I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs…” (Gilman 470). This sense of confusion throughout the story relays to the reader that Gilman is indeed severely mentally confused and ill. According to several doctors in the medical journal Psychological Assessment, some of the characteristics of mentally ill patients during interpersonal and personal behavior include interruptions and ignoring personal boundaries (Kosson 91). These characteristics are seen in Gilman’s conversations with herself.

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 the section “Ghosts and Male Murders it suggest that Gilman’s work is a work that belongs in the horror genre. It goes on to state that “The Yellow Wallpaper” was reprinted to be a horror a story based on its chilling words and scenes. Critics have even went as far as to compare her work to that of Edgar Allan Poe with respect to their ghastly storytelling. Their evidence to back up their claims is a scene they pulled out where the “woman is dwelling over in the hideous papered room” which seems to prove to them that Gilman’s work belongs with the genre of that of the supernatural horror. However, it is critics such as Hedges that point out that the only reason Gilman’s wok would even be considered that of horror would be because it lacked

In H.P. Lovecraft’s sensational story The Call of Cthulhu Lovecraft indirectly characterizes the inhabitants of his story primarily through thoughts and actions. In the story we follow unnamed characters through multiple parts of this theosophical tale, all starting at the discovery of a professor’s research on the Cthulhu cult activity. As more information on this enigmatic topic

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is portraying a story of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. The story describes the mental and emotional outcomes of a distinct old therapy called “rest cure” that was prescribed to people. Which is what their prescribed Mrs. Gilman with. It appears that she was writing about her own suffering that she went through in the year 1887, two years after giving birth to child. From the story, it was obvious that Mrs. Gilman was writing about her own life experience which can now be viewed as a clear reflection of the feelings of women, like herself who have gone through these same treatments. In her words, “It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.” (Gilman,487).