The Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

When asked the question of why she chose to write 'The Yellow Wallpaper', Charlotte Perkins Gilman claimed that experiences in her own life dealing with a nervous condition, then termed 'melancholia', had prompted her to write the short story as a means to try and save other people from a similar fate. Although she may have suffered from a similar condition to the narrator of her illuminating short story, Gilman's story cannot be coined merely a tale of insanity. Insanity is the vehicle for Gilman's larger comment on the atrocities of social conformity. The main character of "The Yellow Wallpaper" comes to recognize the inhumanity in society's treatment of women, and in her

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.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is known as the first American writer who has feminist approach. Gilman criticises inequality between male and female during her life, hence it is mostly possible to see the traces of feminist approach in her works. She deals with the struggles and obstacles which women face in patriarchal society. Moreover, Gilman argues that marriages cause the subordination of women, because male is active, whereas female plays a domestic role in the marriage. Gilman also argues that the situation should change; therefore women are only able to accomplish full development of their identities. At this point, The Yellow Wallpaper is a crucial example that shows repressed woman’s awakening. It is a story of a woman who

   In the disturbing novel, The Yellow Wallpaper, the setting in which the action takes place is extremely important. The author uses setting to focus the reader’s attention into the story in a gradual manner. Also, the manipulation of setting allows the author to subtly introduce symbols in the text. These symbols represent Gilman’s view on the status of women in the patriarchal society of the nineteenth century.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Although the work is short, it is one of the most interesting works in existence. Gilman uses literary techniques very well. The symbolism of The Yellow Wall-Paper, can be seen and employed after some thought and make sense immediately. The views and ideals of society are often found in literary works. Whether the author is trying to show the ills of society of merely telling a story, culture is woven onto the words.

Many people see change as being unnecessary or a bad thing. However, when it comes to the change and evolution of gender roles and attitudes; it is necessary and significantly affected how women are seen in the workforce as well as in the home. Many women in the past have not been able to do what they have wanted to do and are expected to do what their husbands want them to do, as well as what society wants them to do. Charlotte Gilman published "The Yellow Wallpaper" in 1892 and wrote this short story because she experienced the same confinement that the narrator did. The narrator 's role in the family in the short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," represents the ideals and attitudes toward gender roles in the Victorian Era which will evolve

In the narrative ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Charlotte makes correlations between her trials and the character in her story. Charlotte shared many feelings and , even a personal sickness, with the character such as an temporary mental illness and other projections. One of the false restrictions even helped Gilman and her character with their disorder ; writing. It played a huge role in her recovery and assisted her goal for constructing ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’ Relationships also played a huge part in translating Gilman’s goals. Which as the characters associations with her husband converted to Gilman’s treatment towards women. That there should be an equality and or the feminists outlook between men and women alike. These are only a few of her

Gilman uses the literary method of irony in almost every aspect of “The yellow wallpaper”. The author utilizes irony to reveal how depression disguises itself under denial as those forced to live in refusal to recognize its presence. Thus, this permits the illness to degenerate while undetected. Presenting the husband, the narrator describes that he is a physician and away often and most nights. She exclaims, “I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing” (Gilman 240). Here, irony appears as the narrator states her case “is not

The way how a patriarchal society sees women is, one of the biggest ideas that are being expressed in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s narration criticizes the social structure that she lives in, gender roles, the rest cure and how women were considered inferior to men, during the 19th-century, with a feminist approach. The author uses symbolism throughout the story to show the social differences between a married male and a female. It is evident that the narrator mostly does not agree with John, but in the end has no choice but to tell him that she agrees.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” what is hoped to be a dream vacation for relaxation becomes a nightmare for the protagonist. This protagonist, who plays the role of narrator, is in the midst of a nervous breakdown who has left her village for recovery. The narrator, along with her husband, lives in a house that they have taken on rent so that she can recover efficiently. During this period, the protagonist passes her time observing the yellow wallpaper and after some time of observation, she finds attractive patterns in that wallpaper which changes with light that falls on it during night and day. The protagonist becomes so acquainted with that pattern that she sleeps all day and wakes up all night to observe the changes that happen in that pattern. After some time, the narrator gets much tired with the place that she wants to leave that house even if they have rented it for three months. On the other hand, pattern in the yellow wallpaper keeps the protagonist’s interest in that house which was a headache for her and she lives there for three months only to observe the pattern which changes with sunlight.

The reasons the author wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" was due to the fact after going through years of depression, she went and see the best specialist in the nation for help. What he told her to do to help cure what she was going through was too "live as domestic a life as far as possible,"(Gilman Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’) then proceed to say to her not to write ever again in her life. This advice the physician given to Gilman could mean that the writing may have been the cause of her depression. So, seeing the resemblance in the story, being which she was going against what she was recommended (or told in the story’s case; going against what she was told to do) and start writing.

However, both novels ultimately expose the certainty of madness when identity is lost. The entrapment of the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper is notable from the beginning of the novella as Gilman asserts the male dominance of her husband, John. The controlling nature of her husband in their marriage establishes the narrator’s emotional imprisonment: “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage”. Gilman emphasises the gender inequality between the female protagonist and her husband as the narrator is immediately dismissed of importance - she is worth so little that it is laughable.

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

Gilman’s story “the Yellow Wallpaper” opens with the female narrator telling the readers that she is “sick.” Her husband, believing in self-control above all else, is “a physician of high standing” and has diagnosed her with a “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency.” Unable to express her thoughts freely without her husband’s condescension, the narrator confides in her secret diary entries to relieve her frustrations. The uncertain rhetoric she uses in her journal to describe her condition suggests she has an underlying feeling that the diagnosis may actually be aggravating her mental state

Korb is surely right about the narrator, who has no physical or spiritual escape from her husband, because as he/she may not be aware, recent studies have shown that, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” the text she creates as she described her relationship with the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper she realizes two patterns; the bars in front of the woman in the back. She tried to escape but becomes the wallpaper woman. She escape those places leading her husband, the forces that kept her trapped there becomes a madwoman who refuses to write anymore, only to freed herself from the text that chronieles her mental breakdown. Although Korb may have seem concern to only a small group of woman to be accepted for what they are: creative,independent, thinking creatures, it should in fact concern anyone who cares about Gilman’s that having money, a private room are not all necessary in a leisure time. As a writer and a person; she lack on other essential elements; “a family who believes in a woman’s right to creativity and