The Yellow Wallpaper as a Guide To Insanity and Madness

The forceful tone throughout the passage I chose, and story, shows that Gilman was forcefully trying to get her point across through the narrator of the story, that resting, and confinement were not the answers to curing mental health issues, such as postpartum depression, in the late nineteenth century, “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do? 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” (Gilman, P. 462). She is forceful. She does not agree with the ideas of rest and confinement as a cure. The narrator wants to be able to be free and live with the normal excitements of life. In addition, she states forcefully, that she writes in spite of her husband and brother. The narrator knows that writing helps her and wants the reader to know that she continues to do it anyways, because she knows that it is in the best interest of her health, to be able to clear her head, by writing down her

Gilman emphasizes the wife's isolation by describing to the reader where the story is set. The retreat John takes his wife to in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a large, dilapidated Victorian mansion "quite three miles from the village" (470). It is surrounded by extensive

We learn from the first paragraphs that focusing on the scenery will help her forget the nervous depression which she has been diagnosed with: ""So, I will let it [her illness] alone and talk about the house"(947). The main character’s focus on the environment is the reason for which the reader gets plenty of information about the setting.

Many children often bring inanimate objects to life with their imagination. The narrator is introduced at the beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper” as a woman who is recovering from what other appears to be a mental illness. The woman is with her husband John, who is a physician. The narrator and John stay in the nursery where there is yellow wallpaper covering the walls. Slowly, the narrator forms a childish obsession with the wallpaper to the point where it seems she is losing her mind. Charlotte Perkins Gilman has a very unique use of literary technique throughout her short story. Gilman uses the literary technique of diction to show how the narrator is being treated like a child, and how she acts like a child.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman begins the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” with the narrator and her husband John going away to the mansion, which the narrator describes as “the most beautiful place!” (552). The narrator is describing the whole mansion with such happiness, until she began to speak of the walls in her bedroom, she says “it is dull”, “the color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow” (552-553). The wallpaper will come back into play as the story continues on. Gilman portrays the state of insanity through her character, the narrator, which is why they ended up in this “hereditary estate” (551), because she was not well enough to stay around so many people. As you read above, the description of the wallpaper, which makes

    In the late 1800's/early 1900's, when Charlotte Perkins Gilman experienced her episode of "temporary nervous depression" (Gilman 885), and wrote her autobiographical short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," the workings of the mind were mysteries that few medical people attempted to investigate. A patient who was poor and ill-educated and exhibiting signs of mental disorder was institutionalized -- ala Bedlam. The patient who was rich, educated, and/or from a "good family" was called eccentric and given a prescription for complete mental rest and controlled physical exercise combined with the consumption of phosphorus enriched tonics. This regimen was to be followed in an environment

Throughout the story we can see the oppression Gillman faced battling mental illness during the 1800’s. It also indicates that she wrote the story because women's voices were not being heard. Gilman's writing helped to give women a voice. Everyone should have a say in their medical treatment. She brought light to the inferiority that women faced during these times. Gillman’s writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” has significantly helped women and changed the way mental health conditions are treated.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about a troubled mother attempting to overcome her struggle with mental illness. John the woman’s husband, a top-rated male psychologist treats her with something known as the “rest cure.” This treatment deprives her of any social interaction besides with him or her sister. As her condition slowly worsens we see the “rest cure” is not working and we see the gender roles of the ninetieth slowly emerge. Mental illness consumes the women; the reader can’t help see the overlying theme, that by trying to help someone, sometimes you make it worse.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman uses an unreliable narrator to show the narrator’s increasing madness throughout her confinement in her room.To show this throughout the story Gilman’s used of the literary element of an unreliable narrator. It started with a plot based loosely on a experience Gilman had. Then with the narrator having an ignored and mistreated mental illness; which was a mix of anxiety and depression. The narrator went through the same treatment as Gilman, for the reason of showing her doctor, Weir Mitchell, how wrong his treatment is. Finally, Gilman expertly exhibited how unreliable the narrator was through these issues. Gilman’s use of an unreliable narrator really helped to convey the narrator’s insanity while making the

Her descriptions and obsessions with the wallpaper as viewed from her perspective, truly draw readers into her downward spiral to ultimate insanity. Readers follow her in her mind from a nervous condition through her mild subsequent pleadings for alternative treatment to eventually "creeping" through the wallpaper with her--experiences which readers grasp within a powerful narration indeed. Through her, and only her is precisely how readers clearly knew how she felt at the end when she says, "I've got out at last in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" (330). Husband John fainted, he had no idea she had gone that far, but readers did.

Through the use of the journal format she is calling attention to the problems of madness this solution actually caused instead of helping the women get through the illness. She also points out that the man of the house was always in complete control over the women’s lives. The women talked, dressed, acted, and did whatever the man said was the right thing for them to do even if they did not entirely agree. Gilman is essentially pointing out everything that was wrong with the way women were treated by society, even more in depth how a husband was able to treat his wife as if she was inferior to him. She used this way of formatting so that the reader can see everything through the narrator’s eyes and her emotions of how many women felt at that

The narrator's journey in The Yellow Wallpaper allows for Gilman to use her perspective to further illustrate the link between seclusion and prohibition of self expression to a loss of touch with reality, by portraying the narrator's thoughts as they began to float away from their grounding in reality in response to having dealt with isolation and not being able to properly express herself for a considerable amount of

However, without John’s knowledge, the narrator keeps a journal to keep an account of her condition, as well as her feelings. Upon their arrival to the home, he brings her to the room all the way up on the top of the house. This room is quite small, but it was enough to keep her in there. There were drafty windows on the wall that had bars attached, as to keep someone inside of an insane asylum. To her dismay, the narrator is forced to stay isolated in this room the entire stay since John wishes for her to not wander around. She attempts to make it more comfortable, but she cannot help but notice the yellow wallpaper that encased the walls which led her to feel confined in a prison. During her stay in the room, her obsession with the wallpaper begins to grow gradually inside of her. This is seen in the story as she writes about John, the room, and mainly about the wallpaper. She complains about John’s belittling of her thoughts and how he is worried about

In the article “‘Too Terribly Good to Be Printed’: Charlotte Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’” Conrad Shumaker explains the genius of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and how its themes reflect the patriarchal society of the time period. Shumaker identifies one theme as the detriment of suppressing the narrator’s sense of self and that “by trying to ignore and repress her imagination, in short, John eventually brings about the very circumstance he wants to prevent” (590). John confines his wife in a yellow “nursery” in order to “cure” her of her illness, banning her from writing and discouraging her imagination. His plan backfires when her mind, unable to find a proper outlet, latches onto the yellow wallpaper that eventually drives her to madness. Another theme that Shumaker points out is that the dynamic of a domineering husband and an obedient wife is a cage that the narrator is desperately trying to free herself from. John constantly dismisses the narrator’s opinions and thoughts and insists that he knows what is best for her. Shumaker points out that the husband, a representation of the patriarchal society, is clearly depicted as the villain and that he “attempts to ‘cure’ her through purely physical means, only to find he has destroyed her in the process” (592). At the end of the story, because of her confinement and inability to express herself, the narrator fully descends into insanity, “escaping” the

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