The Yellow Wallpaper and the Chrysanthemums - Symbols of Entrapment

The protagonist’s mental decline serves to illustrate the results of the aforementioned inferior treatment of women by their male counterparts. As one critic argues, “‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ [is] a story of female confinement and escape.” (Korb) The aspect of confinement is illustrated in the protagonist’s husband preventing her from expressing herself in a healthy fashion. The escape occurs when the protagonist looses her sanity and is reduced to a psychotic wreck as a result of her husband’s treatment.

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" takes a close look at one woman's mental deterioration. The narrator is emotionally isolated from her husband. Due to the lack of interaction with other people the woman befriends the reader by secretively communicating her story in a diary format. Her attitude towards the wallpaper is openly hostile at the beginning, but ends with an intimate and liberating connection. During the gradual change in the relationship between the narrator and the wallpaper, the yellow paper becomes a mirror, reflecting the process the woman is going through in her room.

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.

As Elisa diligently cares for her garden she spots an unfamiliar wagon in the distance. She is approached by a tinker who repairs broken pots, pans, and various household supplies. He eagerly asks Elisa if there is anything he can repair. As she adamantly refuses she implies that she can repair her own pots and pans. She is stern in her refusals and allows us to learn that she desperately wants to be an equal and accepted. Elisa implies that she can repair her own pots and pans and eludes us to However, the tinker observes how loving she is with her flowers and uses that to his advantage. He starts a conversation about her beloved chrysanthemums and implies that an acquaintance has been looking for these specific flowers. The tinker quickly gains Elisa’s trust, gives her hope, and plays on her vulnerabilities.   She begins to get a restored sense of self and

“The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Chrysanthemums”, by John Steinbeck, are two inspirational stories about the limitations and stereotypical roles of a woman in the early 1900’s. The reader can easily conclude that in both of the stories, the women feel like they are underappreciated by their husbands. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the woman keeps describing herself as “one’s self”, as she feels that she is not her own person. The viewers notice this woman has a husband, John, whom is her caretaker and believes he shows his love in a very dysfunctional way. In order for her to remain stable, she relies on writing, which John does not like and has in his head that she is sick. This

Restraints are set by parents on their children to aid with the developmental process and help with the maturity level. Restrictions and the ability to control exist in our society and our lives. We encounter restraints daily: job, doors, people, and the most frequently used and arduous become intangible. In the following stories tangible and intangible scenarios are presented. Autonomy, desires, and talents spurned by the husbands in John Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The authors share views regarding a similar theme of male domination and imprisonment. “The Yellow Wallpaper” involves the treatment of a depressed woman who is driven insane in a male imposed detention in her own room. On the

The 1937 short story written by John Steinbeck “The Chrysanthemums” illustrates the woes of repressed sexuality in a farmer’s wife Elisa Allen, a farmer’s wife in America set in the late 1930’s. Elisa Allen grows Chrysanthemums in her flower garden, and is quite passionate about her flowers. Elisa dresses rather mannish in the beginning and throughout most of the story excluding of course at the end of the story when she wears a dress to go out to town. Elisa also seems to be very passionate about her chrysanthemums, linking anything to them could reflect her passion onto that as well. Elisa also cleans herself with a pumice rock to cleanse herself in the falling action of the story.

The “Yellow Wallpaper” can be analyzed by examining the aspect of dialogue which stretches across most of the scenes in the story. In relation to women

However, in the yellow wallpaper, the protagonist completely personified a ‘monster’. There is 120 years between both books, and over these years, as we learn from Dr. Kurtz in Semple’s novel, a husband cannot enforce involuntary treatment and confinement on his wife. Nevertheless, the idea of hysteria continues to exist in society, and many people continue to believe that ‘hysterical’ women deserve to be isolated from the public, as we saw when Dr. Kurtz took Elgie’s side in sending Bernadette away to a mental health facility. Both stories showcase the effects on women’s mental health when hyper-policing their identities within the home, the yellow wallpaper’s protagonist forbidden from writing, and outside the home, Bernadette unable to be herself and having to fit into what her community perceived as being a good mother and wife. As Gilbert and Gubar said that a woman’s virtue is to make her man great but “in and of herself, she is neither great nor extraordinary” (600). Both women felt that they had to be the best women they would be for their husbands, and not for themselves, thus leading them to take extreme actions not only to control their bodies, but their identities that have been

Jane a young wife of a physician narrates Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. She embodies an oppressed woman who is subjected to isolation. The author uses the yellow wallpaper that surrounds Jane as symbolism to her inner struggle of oppression and her desire for freedom. The woman who resides in the wallpaper is Jane herself. As the story unfolds Jane realizes she is the only one who can set herself free.

Since she allowed no creative outlets, nor the ability to make decisions for herself, her obsession with the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom becomes increasingly severe. The narrator begins to use the wallpaper to facilitate her creativity and give herself some purpose. The oppressive situation her husband forces her into seems to drive her further and further into insanity until she becomes one with the ‘woman’ behind the wallpaper. “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!” (Gilman, 1899, p. 9) The narrator’s inability to control her own life due to her husband’s continuous controlling ways seems to increase her insanity to the point of no return. This directly represents a woman’s struggle in society during the time the story was written. It was expected of a woman to adhere to every wish of her husband, whether or not he was correct.

     The short story “The Chrysanthemums” shows how extraordinarily forward thinking the author, John Steinbeck, was in his understanding of the pressures that women dealt with in his time. Through the exploration and illustration of women’s emotions, Steinbeck gives us a view into the struggle of women in the early 20th century to find a place for themselves in society as well as establishing their own sexuality(Charters, 502).

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story about a new mother who cannot climb out of the pits of depression. Her husband is very supportive, to the point of relocating to a summer home in the country. The new mother is the narrator of the story, and through her own thoughts, written on paper, we see her fall into an insane state that consumes her life. Despite all her and her husband’s efforts, the battle with her depression is lost. To properly relate the narrator’s madness and creativity, her behavior must be first dissected to discover the source of her madness.

In the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, there are many of literary techniques that illustrates the theme to express the story. Irony, imagery and symbolism are some literary devices that is presented among the story.  “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 acceptance and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The story appears to take place during a time where women were oppressed. Women were treated as if they were under one’s thumb in society during this period which is approximately the 19th century.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” provides an insight into the life of the narrator- a woman suppressed and unable to express herself because of her controlling husband- leading the reader down her fall to insanity, allowing for her inner conflict to be clearly expressed. The first person point of the view the author artfully uses and the symbolism present with the wallpaper cleverly depicts the inner conflict of the narrator, losing her own sanity due to the constraints of her current life. However, while it seems that the narrator in “ The Yellow Wallpaper” succumbed to her own insanity, the endless conflict within herself and her downward spiral to insanity is seen through a different light, as an inevitable path rather than a choice taken as the story develops.