Who Is The Seclusion Of The Narrator Of The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is widely recognized for her support of feminism and calls for awareness to her mental condition by voicing her ideas through her original writing. One of her works, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, describes a woman who suffers from severe anxiety and is isolated in a room in order to “heal” according to her husband. While in the room, she becomes obsessed with the ugly wallpaper, which leads to her fall. In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author discusses the Narrator’s deteriorating mental state, her inability to differentiate reality and imagination, and her desire to rebel against

The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a paradox: as she loses touch with the outer world, she comes to a greater understanding of the inner reality of her life. This inner/outer split is crucial to understanding the nature of the narrator’s suffering. At every point, she is faced with relationships, objects, and situations that seem innocent and natural but that are actually quite bizarre and even oppressive. In a sense, the plot of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the narrator’s attempt to avoid acknowledging the extent to which her external situation stifles her inner impulses. From the beginning, we see that the narrator is an imaginative, highly expressive woman. She remembers terrifying herself with imaginary nighttime monsters as a child, and she enjoys the notion that the house they have taken is haunted. Yet as part of her “cure,” her husband forbids her to exercise her imagination in any way. Both her reason and her emotions rebel at this treatment, and she turns her imagination onto seemingly neutral objects—the house and the wallpaper—in an attempt to ignore her growing frustration. Her negative feelings color her description of her surroundings, making them seem uncanny and sinister, and she

The "Yellow Wall Paper "by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a chilling study and experiment of mental disorder in nineteenth century. This is a story of a miserable wife, a young woman in anguish, stress surrounding her in the walls of her bedroom and under the control of her husband doctor, who had given her the treatment of isolation and rest. This short story vividly reflects both a woman in torment and oppression as well as a woman struggling for self expression. The setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the driving force in the story because it is the main factor that caused the narrator to go insane.

The narrator's childlike behavior represents how men would treat women as children which drove women to insanity.

The social code of the Victorian era places women in a role of obedience. They are expected to fulfill duties such as a mother, keeper of a house, and to be a quiet and “behaved” spouse. The narrator in this story is an obedient spouse, who has become a new mother that experiences postpartum depression. The change in her role sparks a change in her demeanor, causing a “nervous condition”, in which her husband dictates her treatment. John’s treatment of his wife represents the powerless-ness and repression of women during the late nineteenth-century.” (Wilson). John’s authority over her treatment, mimics that of patient to doctor relationship, and further reminds her of her secondary status during the era.

As a woman, the narrator must be protected and controlled and kept away from harm. This seemed to be the natural mindset in the 19th century, that women need to have guidance in what they do, what decisions they make, and what they say. John calls her a “little goose”(95) and his “little girl”(236), referring her to a child, someone who needs special attention and control. His need for control over her is proven when she admits that her husband is “careful and loving and hardly lets me stir without special direction”(49). John has mentally restrained the speaker’s mind, she is forced to hide her anxieties, fears and be submissive, to preserve the happiness of their marriage. When the narrator attempts to speak up, she is bogged down and made guilty of her actions. Her husband makes her feel guilty for asking, he says, “‘I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind!’”(225-226). By making her feel guilty for her illness, John has trapped her mentally from speaking up about it, convincing her that she must be more careful about her actions. Men often impose the hardships placed upon women during this era. They are often the people reassuring them of their “womanly” duties, and guiding them

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.

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 Yellow Wallpaper," written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late nineteenth century, explores the dark forbidding world of one woman's plunge into a severe post-partum depressive state. The story presents a theme of the search for self-identity. Through interacting with human beings and the environment, the protagonist creates for herself a life of her own.

The longer she is alone, the more insane she becomes. She can see the environment around her becoming worse. The wallpaper progressively deteriorates as she does. It goes from being “torn off in spots” to becoming a “faint figure.. wanting to get out.” By her change in perspective of the wallpaper, the reader can tell that she is losing her mind. The wallpaper begins to look alive to her, demonstrating her madness. The longer she is isolated, the more the wallpaper seems as if it is trying to escape. Representing her own self, who wants to escape from the room. She feels trapped and it causes her to become more insane the longer she is left alone. Because she has no other choice and nothing else to do. She has nothing to take her mind off of what she is dealing with. All she is able to do is stare at the wallpaper and think about her life situation. The doctor and her husband think they are bettering her by taking her away from her life, and giving her time alone, when really they just made her illness worse by forcing her to fix it on her

“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 belief. The story appears to take place during a time period where women were oppressed. Women were treated as second rate people in society during this time period. Charlotte Perkins Gilman very accurately portrays the thought process of the society during the time period in which “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written. Using the aspects of Feminist criticism, one can analyze “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman through the dialogue through both the male and female perspective, and through the symbol found in the story.

In “The Yellow wallpaper”, the wallpaper is a metaphor that expresses women’s protest against the repression of the society and their personal identity at the rise of feminism. During the Victorian era, women were kept down and kept in line by their married men and other men close to them. "The Yellow Wallpaper", written By Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a tale of a woman, her mental difficulties and her husband’s so called therapeutic treatment ‘rest cure’ of her misery during the late 1800s. The tale starts out in the summer with a young woman and her husband travelling for the healing powers of being out from writing, which only appears to aggravate her condition. His delusion gets Jane (protagonist), trapped in a room, shut up in a bed making her go psychotic. As the tale opens, she begins to imagine a woman inside ‘the yellow wallpaper’.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator must deal with several different conflicts. She is diagnosed with “temporary nervous depression and a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 221). Most of her conflicts, such as, differentiating from creativity and reality, her sense of entrapment by her husband, and not fitting in with the stereotypical role of women in her time, are centered around her mental illness and she has to deal with them.

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, is a great example of early works pertaining to feminism and the disease of insanity. Charlotte Gilman’s own struggles as a woman, mother, and wife shine through in this short story capturing the haunting realism of a mental breakdown.The main character, much like Gilman herself, slips into bouts of depression after the birth of her child and is prescribed a ‘rest cure’ to relieve the young woman of her suffering. Any use of the mind or source of stimulus is strictly prohibited, including the narrator’s favorite hobby of writing. The woman’s husband, a physician, installs into his wife that the rest treatment is correct and will only due harm if not followed through. This type of treatment ultimately drives the woman insane, causing her to envision a woman crawling behind the yellow wallpaper of her room. Powerlessness and repression the main character is subject to creates an even more poignant message through the narrator’s mental breakdown. The ever present theme of subordination of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is advanced throughout the story by the literary devices of symbolism, imagery, and allegory.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story told from the perspective of a woman who’s believed to be “crazy”. The narrator believes that she is sick while her husband, John, believes her to just be suffering from a temporary nervous depression. The narrator’s condition worsens and she begins to see a woman moving from behind the yellow wallpaper in their bedroom. The wallpaper captures the narrator’s attention and initial drives her mad. Charlotte Gilman uses a lot of personal pieces into her short story, from her feministic views to her personal attributes. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written from a feminist and autobiographical standpoint and includes elements, like symbols and perspective that the reader can analyze in different ways.