The Yellow Wallpaper Research Paper

  “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.

Berenji, Fahimeh Q. "Time and Gender in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”." Journal of History Culture and Art Research, vol. 2, no. 2, 1 Jan. 2013, pp. 221-234, Database: MLA International Bibliography -- Publications. kutaksam.karabuk.edu.tr/index.php. Accessed 18 Nov. 2017.

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 narrator is diagnosed with a “nervous disorder” and is ordered by her physician, who also happens to be her husband, to abstain from most activity and all intellectual work. The same treatment Gilman was forced to take part in. The narrator is deprived of any stimulus or outlet for thought or action, and she begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper. Her discovery of the women trapped in the pattern in the wallpaper symbolizes the pattern of behaviors and practices that trap the female sex. For Gilman, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, with its rigid distinction between the “domestic” functions of the female and the “active” work of the male, ensured that women remained second-class citizens.

Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded.

In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, talks about a woman who is newly married and is a mother who is in depression. “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is written as the secret journal of a woman who, failing to relish the joys of marriage and motherhood, is sentenced to a country rest cure. Though she longs to write, her husband - doctor forbid it. The narrator feels trapped by both her husband and surroundings. The woman she sees behind the wallpaper is a symbol of herself and the Victorian women like her.

Women in the eighteenth century were confined by their husbands, and imprisoned in their own homes. Women had no rights to their own lives, or a say so in how to live it. Women at this time struggled for equality, and they were unable to think or live for themselves. If they showed any signs of being unhappy they were condemned by society and their master. In this process many women transcended into severe nervous depression. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, we observe a woman’s descent into madness, and we can better understand how women of this time suffered with oppression. This story is a glimpse of Gilman’s real life struggle with gender roles, inner conflict,

Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Fall of The House of Usher’ both serve a highly horrific purpose which is both good examples for the gothic. The strongest example of gothic is ‘The Fall of The House of Usher’ as it established the extreme horror intense and shows the gothic scene of the house.

As I started reading this short story, it clearly introduced who the characters are and where it took place. The narrator is a woman; she has no name, remains anonymous throughout the story. She lives with her husband John in a house. This house is isolated from society, since the short story indicates that it is far from village, roads or any means of communication. It also contains locks and gates throughout. The woman is ill and this illness has placed her in a weak position with her husband and everything around her. We know that she likes to write, but her husband doesn’t let her, so she does it in secret. Although this type of writing is mainly to show mild personality disorder in dealing with life,

The structure of the text, particularly evident in the author’s interactions with her husband, reveals the binary opposition between the façade of a middle-class woman living under the societal parameters of the Cult of Domesticity and the underlying suffering and dehumanization intrinsic to marriage and womanhood during the nineteenth century. While readers recognize the story for its troubling description of the way in which the yellow wallpaper morphs into a representation of the narrator’s insanity, the most interesting and telling component of the story lies apart from the wallpaper. “The Yellow Wallpaper” outwardly tells the story of a woman struggling with post-partum depression, but Charlotte Perkins Gilman snakes expressions of the true inequality faced within the daily lives of nineteenth century women throughout the story. Although the climax certainly surrounds the narrator’s overpowering obsession with the yellow wallpaper that covers the room to which her husband banished her for the summer, the moments that do not specifically concern the wallpaper or the narrator’s mania divulge a deeper and more powerful understanding of the torturous meaning of womanhood.

Making the room seem more prisonlike then homely. It is within that room that the reader is first introduced to the “ghost”. As time goes on the narrator begins to see a woman behind this ghastly yellow wallpaper that she is forced to look at every day. We are introduced to this wallpaper as “a woman that is stooping down and creeping behind that pattern” (Gilman 72). As the story progresses the narrator begins to see the woman more and more clearly behind this yellow wallpaper. “The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be” (73). The longer the story goes the more the reader begins to understand who the woman is. Behind the Yellow Wallpaper lie our narrator and her thoughts and emotions. Like the “woman” she sees behind the yellow wallpaper she feels trapped without a way out. And the ghost is what she sees within herself. Both are being kept inside during the daytime while they want to be outside being active. As we progress the woman behind the wallpaper shakes and moves more agitated, as the narrator herself becomes more agitated and trying to break free in a sense. What the reader comes to understand within the story is that the narrator isn’t trying to break out of the room, but rather break out of the submissive relationship she has with her husband. And the ghost behind the wallpaper represents

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” she explores the world of madness, torture, and imprisonment. In the story, the narrator is suppressed by her husband and his ‘‘superior wisdom,’’ leading to the loss of her sanity. Although it seems as though her husband is trying to help her, in actuality, his methods of healing her are detrimental to her health, both emotionally and mentally. The destruction of her sanity in relation to his attempt to help her are strategically illustrated by Gilman throughout the story.

Throughout history and cultures today, women have been beaten, verbally abused, and taught to believe they have no purpose in life other than pleasing a man. Charlotte Perkins Gillam uses her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a weapon to help break down the walls surrounding women, society has put up. This story depicts the life of a young woman struggling with postpartum depression, whose serious illness is overlooked, by her physician husband, because of her gender. Gillman 's writing expresses the feelings of isolation, disregarded, and unworthiness the main character Jane feels regularly. This analysis will dive into the daily struggles women face through oppression, neglect, and physical distinction; by investigating each section

My perspective of Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is influenced by a great number of different and diverse methods of reading. However, one cannot overlook the feminist theorists’ on this story, for the story is often proclaimed to be a founding work of feminism. Further, the historical and biographical contexts the story was written in can be enlightened by mentioning Gilman’s relationship with S. Weir Mitchell. And I can’t help but read the story and think of Foucault’s concept of Panopticism as a method of social control. Lastly, of course, there’s the psychological perspective on the story, although in my readings of psychology, particularly the psychological knowledge surrounding both women and queers, I find the

Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is centered on the deteriorating psychological condition of the female narrator. As a woman in a male dominating society in the 19th century, the narrator has no control over her life. This persistence eventually evolves into her madness. The insanity is triggered by her change in attitude towards her husband, the emergent obsession with the wallpaper and the projection of herself as the women behind the wallpaper. The “rest cure” which was prescribed by her physician husband, created the ideal environment for her madness to extend because, it was in her imagination that she had some freedom and control.