Theme Of To Room Nineteen

The narrator falls into a state of deep depression following the birth of her baby, which is currently known now as postpartum depression. During the 1800’s they called it “temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency” a diagnosis common to women during that era. There was little or no knowledge for the treatment of postpartum depression. The doctors used “rest cure” as a form of treatment, the patient is prohibited from doing any kind of work. All they need is to rest, exercise, eat well and get enough air then they will recover. No external stimulation which lead to the deterioration of the narrator’s mental health in the story. She is ordered by her husband and brother, who are respected physicians to rest. She is isolated from everyone except her husband John and her sister in law Jennie the house keeper. Locked in a room with yellow wall paper, windows facing all direction, all the

In chapter 1 of Sister Citizen titled Crooked Room author Melissa V. Harris-Perry illustrates a study of subjects placed into a crooked room. The subjects are then asked in a variety of scenarios to attempt to re-align themselves. The results came as much of a surprise to the researchers as what the subjects perceived as “straight’ was heavily skewed. Harris-Perry used this crooked room example to support as well as confront the gender and race stereotypes that black women still face in society today.

Mark’s psychological problems become more and more clear to the reader throughout the book. Eventually Susan McConnell can’t take the guilt feelings and decides to tell the whole story to the cops, but Mark is not okay with this and decides to tie up Susan and burn down the house with Susan and Mark inside. This part of the book is most likely the climax of the book; at this point, the reader finally is certain that Mark has some psychological problems. After this suspenseful scene the next chapter immediately starts back at the house of Susan, she is still alive and does not want to talk about what happened. Her mother tries to convince her to speak up and tell what happened, her mom eventually reads her something about a certain personality:

Trapped in the upstairs of an old mansion with barred windows and disturbing yellow colored wallpaper, the main character is ordered by her husband, a physician, to stay in bed and isolate her mind from any outside wandering thoughts. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, describes the digression of the narrator’s mental state as she suffers from a form of depression. As the story progresses, the hatred she gains for the wallpaper amplifies and her thoughts begin to alter her perception of the room around her. The wallpaper serves as a symbol that mimics the narrator’s trapped and suffering mental state while she slips away from sanity reinforcing the argument that something as simple as wallpaper can completely

One thing that is instantly noticeable about Susan is that she is becoming curious of the world and depressed as she grows older. “Why this way? Why not another way? Who said so and why

She was educated, independent and was holding on to a position that had been traditionally set aside to young men. In Philadelphia, Susan was sent there to attend a boarding school. She had decided to teach at a female academy boarding school that was in upstate New York from the age of 15 to around thirty years of age. When she got comfortable in her Rochester home in New York, it was here that she

The surroundings which one is placed in can drastically contribute to their mental state. Deterioration and a lack of stimulation will be reciprocated within the mind of the inhabitant. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, depicts a young, unnamed woman who is suffering with post-partum depression. In this time period, the treatment of mental illness typically did more harm than good as electroshock therapy, and the rest cure were the classic treatments of choice. Similarly, William Faulkner, the author of “A Rose for Emily”, written in 1930, gives the reader an inside look upon an elderly woman experiencing mental distress. Although there are major signs of an issue being present within Miss Emily’s old, southern house, the town chooses to ignore and cover them up as to not disrupt the elderly woman who buys poisons without a reason and sleeps next to the dead corpse of her lover. Theme and setting play two very distinct and important roles within each of these stories allowing the reader to have a more complete understanding of the message the author is trying to convey.

As human beings, we play the cards that are dealt to us in this world. In life, every person goes through their individual ups and downs and occasionally may break down to the extent of not knowing what to do with oneself. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” which takes place in the late 1800s, focuses on the first person narrator who is an infatuated woman. The disheartening story concentrates on a woman who is suffering from postpartum depression, and as well had mental breakdowns. The narrators husband John, moves her into a home isolated in the country where he wants her to “rest” and get better from her illness. During the course of being confined in the room with the wallpaper, she learns new

The use of confinement in the story can lead the reader to assume a number of different things about the setting of the book. The couple moves into a really nice mansion that no one has lived in for years. While the husband could have put his wife in any of the rooms of the house, he chose to confine her to a room that looked like a nursery. The woman being confined to a nursery can lead the reader to assume that they are treating her as if she is a kid. The nursery that she is put in is not an ordinary nursery; the nursery has bars over the windows. The bars over the windows are very significant to the setting. This particular aspect of the room can be related to a mental hospital. Mental hospital rooms would somewhat be described in the same way that the woman’s nursery is described in the book. Her bed is also nailed to the floor. All of these features of the room that she is placed in give the reader a hint that this woman is insane

Susan's defense team hired a psychiatrist to conduct a psychiatric evaluation of her. She was diagnosed as having dependent personality disorder. He described her as a person who "feels she can't do anything on her own". "She constantly needs affection and becomes terrified that she'll be left alone" She was only depressed when she was alone. The psychiatrist studied her family history and concluded that based

In the beginning of the narrative, Sarah demonstrates characteristics of bewilderment. Sarah, a 16-year-old high-school dropout, is rethinking her life as she says, “Maybe my whole life I’ve been living inside of an imaginary painting” (King 54). Sarah is confused and feels that her childhood was a lie. The readers realize along with her that her parents put on an act to protect her from the fact that they do not get along. This communicates the sense of feeling trapped within lies thought to be true and addresses the message to society that the root of the problem is always bigger than what is expected. Similarly, Sarah asserts her latest assessment regarding herself and her mental state saying, “I am not going crazy. I do not need a psychologist. I decide I am an artist inside of a tornado that will not let me go” (King 128). Sarah decides she is in a mental state where she cannot portray her feelings. She uses this excuse of being stuck in a tornado to reject the fact that ultimately she will need to get her life back on track and accept who she is. This is another one of Sarah’s shenanigans to try to be original, and by doing this, she finds a reason to avert from being a “normal” person. People today encounter the same situation in everyday life by using excuses to get around inevitable things. Sarah’s manifestation of change continues in the middle of the story as well.

In To Room 19, Susan Rawlings becomes emotionally and physically isolated from her family after learning of her husband’s infidelity. Susan struggles with processing the affair; intelligent Susan tries to ignore the affair and act like it didn’t matter “the whole thing was not important” (866 Lessing), emotional Susan is confused and betrayed. Susan’s inner turmoil over the affair causes her to begin to crave complete isolation from her family and the world around her. “In that case why did Susan feel…as if life had become a desert, and that nothing mattered, and that her children were not her own?” (867 Lessing). In The Yellow Wallpaper, the storyteller becomes isolated following the birth of her first child. Her isolation, unlike Susan’s is involuntary. Having been diagnosed by her husband with “temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency” (580 Gilman), the storyteller is “absolutely forbidden to work” (581 Gilman) until she is well. Although she believes that “congenial work with excitement and change” (581 Gilman) would benefit her, she yields to

The narrator tells the story in the form of a journal that she hides from her husband. She only feels free to speak her mind on this “dead paper”. The narrator begins her journal by marveling at the grandeur of the house and grounds her husband has taken for their summer vacation. She develops a feeling that there is “something queer” about the situation leads her into a discussion of her illness—she is suffering from “nervous depression”—and of her marriage. The narrator is not free to speak her mind and is dismissed by her husband often. This is where the stories truly differ; unlike Edna, this woman follows social norms and listens to her husband whom she feels is wrong about her diagnosis. Her mental health continues to decline to the point where she spends nearly all her time locked away in the room with the yellow wallpaper. Here she develops an unhealthy fixation on the plain pattern free paper. Here she starts to see a pattern that isn’t there, a woman trapped in the paper. Her mental health declines even more rapidly as she attempts to free the many trapped women she now sees. However, it is she and many other women under these social norms who are

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story set in a 19th century colonial mansion, in which the narrator and her husband stay for the summer. The narrator, who is unnamed, is undergoing a rest cure for some kind of mental illness after giving birth. This mental illness is now known as postpartum depression. Rest cure involves doing absolutely nothing and this triggered the further deterioration of the narrator’s mental health. Her husband, John, monitors her condition while they stay in the mansion. She is confined in a room— supposedly a nursery room— with barred windows and scratches on the floor. The most noticeable feature of the room by the narrator is the yellow wallpaper. Each day, her description of the yellow wallpaper becomes more disturbing; from being just plain wallpaper to being a prison cell for trapped women, shaking the bars, wanting to be free from it. Instead of getting well from the rest cure, the narrator’s mental state worsened as what is depicted in her journal entries. She eventually goes mad and her husband fainted from the sight of her condition.

The short story, the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can be analyzed in depth by both the psycho-analytic theory and the feminist theory. On one hand the reader witnesses the mind of a woman who travels the road from sanity to insanity to suicide “caused” by the wallpaper she grows to despise in her bedroom. On the other hand, the reader gets a vivid picture of a woman’s place in 1911 and how she was treated when dealing what we now term as post-partum depression. The woman I met in this story was constantly watched and controlled by her husband to such an extreme that she eventually becomes pychootic and plots to make her escape.