The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman Essay

The woman behind this work of literature portrays the role of women in the society during that period of time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a well written story describing a woman who suffers from insanity and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The author uses her own experience to criticize male domination of women during the nineteenth century. Although the story was written fifty years ago, "The Yellow Wallpaper" still brings a clear message how powerless women were during that time.

This gothic horror tale of nineteenth century fiction, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892; during a time that women writers were starting to come out and write about key issues in their treatment. She craftily sets up or spins the story with a setting of isolation and a character who feels trapped, by a husband who chooses not to know her; yet does not listen to her and keeps her trapped on an island, all in her best interest. The tone is filled with desperation, sarcasm, anger, and shows that though she is mentally unstable there is intelligence behind her instability that is kept unseen. The main symbol is the wallpaper which is a constant bane to her.

Immediately in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” readers are able to tell that the protagonist feels trapped in the room, in which she is being placed. The female narrator also mentions to us that her husband “John is a physician, and perhaps –– (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind –– perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” (Stetson 1892, 129). That is to say, this statement clearly indicates that science triumphs over the fantasy of religion. Therefore, John intellectually dominates his wife as a result of this view and his gender. Throughout the story, readers are able to observe themes from “The Yellow Wallpaper,” such as powerlessness, patriarchy, and lack of independence. As a result, Gilman 's protagonist does not have a room of her own. Despite, the struggles that the narrator faces in the room, “it makes [her] think of English places that you read about” (Stetson 1892, 130). Basically, the narrator tries to make herself feel comfortable while she is in the room and she is also able to express herself on paper, although her husband, John insists that she should not. According to Gilman’s protagonist, “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, or else meet with heavy opposition” (Stetson 1892, 129). This statement explains that the narrator expresses a need for independence by removing herself from the

Annals of Pharmacotherapy. (32: 7). 1998. 829.33. Print. Most people who wrote about "The Yellow Wallpaper" do so from the perspective of a literary scholar. This however is written by someone in the health care field. C.B. Frye says that fiction can impact the larger world; in this case it impacted mental health and the work of Gillman's doctor, S Weir Mitchell. Although the short story acts as a testimony from a patient, there is either no or very little information from the perspective of the health care community about why the rest cure was used.

"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a woman in isolation, struggling to cope with mental illness, which has been diagnosed by her husband, a physician.   Going beyond this surface level, the reader sees the narrator as a developing feminist, struggling with the societal values of the time.  As a woman writer in the late nineteenth century, Gilman herself felt the adverse effects of the male-centric society, and consequently, placed many allusions to her own personal struggles as a feminist in her writing.  Throughout the story, the narrator undergoes a psychological journey that correlates with the advancement of her mental condition.  The restrictions which society places on her as a woman have a worsening

“I don 't like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?” the woman behind the pattern was an image of herself. She has been the one “stooping and creeping.” The Yellow Wallpaper was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In the story, three characters are introduced, Jane (the narrator), John, and Jennie. The Yellow Wallpaper is an ironic story that takes us inside the mind and emotions of a woman suffering a slow mental breakdown. The narrator begins to think that another woman is creeping around the room behind the wallpaper, attempting to "break free", so she locks herself in the room and begins to tear down pieces of the wallpaper to rescue this trapped woman. To end the story, John unlocks the door and finds Jane almost possessed by the woman behind the wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist background gives a feminist standpoint in The Yellow Wallpaper because the narrator’s husband, John acts superior to the narrator.

1. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1899) contains elements that could be construed as a feminist take on a paternalistic society or a gothic ghost story. When the writer states that ""¦ he hardly lets me stir without direction," I can't imagine anything more claustrophobic. Given the period in which this is written, it makes sense that this attitude is fueled by the endemic paternalism of the time. When the heads with bulging eyes began to appear in the wallpaper, as if these heads represented a harvest of women trapped in a paternalistic society, this could be construed as the writer portraying the oppression of women, but it could also be viewed as a ghostly manifestation. However, the one consistent theme throughout the story is that the writer is slowly losing her mind, due in large part to her husband's well-intentioned prescription of rest. While this type of treatment would never be tolerated in Western society today, from what I know of that period the husband was probably acting in good faith. If this assessment is true, then this can't be a story about the oppression of women or a ghost story, but a story about the slow encroachment of insanity brought about by a paternalistic approach to medicine.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman has surprised that her writing on “The Yellow Wallpaper” that based on her experience unfortunately become one of the early feminism literature in the Victorian era. At first, her tale is regarded as a horror story because of its gothic theme. However, after the 1960s when feminism became a trending topic of women in Europe, North America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, people started to comprehend that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a feminism narrative which accidentally developed as a source for shaping the view of patriarchy and feminism characteristics in the early construction of feminism. Hooks (2004, p. 1) declared that “[p]atriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence”. As a result, patriarchy generates a gap between men and women right. This fixed gender roles which assigned by male dominated society builds discrimination. Nevertheless, women who think critically may be revolting of it and resulting in the exploration of women imprisonment, which is “a recognition of an imbalance of power between the sexes, with women in a subordinate role to men”, states Hannam (2007, p. 4). “The Yellow Wallpaper” provides the story about woman madness in response to the patriarchal structure

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, published in January of 1892.  The short story is focused on the issue of women's health and mental disorder. It is often referred to as a feminist or psychological short story. The setting in time is based in the late nineteenth century,  in an America. The narrator has a struggle between her husband and her mental health illness, the conflict relates to how the doctor or her husband in other words wants to cure her postpartum depression. As though her mind physically overpowers her thinking to become healthy again. This a substantial deal back in the late 1892’s which relates to the millennials in today's society.

In Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Jane is driven insane when the neurasthenia rest cure is given to he by her husband and physician, John. The rest cure was created by Dr. Weir Mitchell targeted towards women who displayed symptoms of neurasthenia,”a psychological disorder marked especially by easy fatigability and often by lack of motivation, [and] feelings of inadequacy”(Merriam- Webster). Jane is forbidden to work and write. She is told to not overexert her mind or body, and her illness and thoughts are constantly belittled by her husband. Her creative, imaginative and greatly contrast her husband who chooses to assimilate in society and assume his expected role as the caregiver in the family.Although she is forbidden, Jane secretly writes in a journal to express her thoughts, feeling she needs just the opposite of what the resting cure requires. The narrator expresses her utter revulsion for the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom, which she quickly becomes fascinated with. She even begins hallucinated a woman trapped behind bars in the wallpaper, going as far as ripping out the wallpaper to free the woman, whom she thinks is herself. The narrator is driven insane by the confinements placed on her by both the rest cure and her husband. Her imagination is confined, coercing her to release it in something else. As a result, the narrator overanalyzes the wallpaper, soon reaching a point in which she loses her self identity and

continues to crawl over him. The central idea of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is that ignorance of

“The Yellow Wallpaper” (published in 1892) is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Narrated by a woman through her descent into madness, the protagonist is perceived to be suffering from a “temporary nervous depression — a slight hysterical tendency” and is being misdiagnosed with the rest cure treatment (par. 10). Although not as well-known as other literary works, one believes that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is considered an American classic for its remarkable plot and in-depth analysis that instill a strong personal reaction.

Published in 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” may be approached as an American example of the female Gothic, a literary genre pioneered by English writers such as Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe. According to the book “Loving with a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women,” author Tania Modleski points out that texts belonging to this genre typically focus on female protagonists who find themselves in romantic relationships with men that eventually come to oppress them. Thus, Gothic narratives trace the female protagonist’s victimization at the hands of a male lover or a husband, providing “an outlet for women’s fears about fathers and husbands” (Modleski 10). Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), which describes the misadventures of orphaned Emily who is pursued and persecuted by a violent suitor, is often cited as a quintessential Gothic novel. However, elements of this genre can also be discerned in such renowned literary classics as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), with its Gothic setting, ghostly happenings, the brooding male protagonist, and the motif of the madwoman in the attic. It must be noted, however, that the female Gothic was a popular genre, which was not initially valued for its subversive content and even frequently dismissed by critics (Watt 5). Only later, following the advent of critical theory and gender studies, was it reclaimed and celebrated by feminist critics such as Modleski. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”

After jane had the baby these symptoms started to come up and had hallucinations and delusional thinking. She had all these symptoms at this time and know one didn’t know she had them. They just thought that rest and relaxing would help her but it the opposite for jane. It was a bad thing for her because her symptoms got worse for her.

During the nineteenth century, women along with men were expected to fill separate spheres of society. Most men were expected to live a public life while women were accordingly expected to live their lives largely homebound, taking care of the cooking, cleaning with child rearing. Free time for women was not supposed to be spent socializing, yet doing other things related to the maintenance of the family, from sewing socks to the laundry. Very few women had the same opportunities for education as men. A small fraction of women started to protest for their rights and some is abolitionist writers. Among those writers, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, who was women’s rights activism.