Yevgeniy Pastukhov Semchenkov. Eng 201-0908. Pr. Chrysula

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, published in 1899, is a semi-autobiographical short story depicting a young woman’s struggle with depression that is virtually untreated and her subsequent descent into madness. Although the story is centered on the protagonist’s obsessive description of the yellow wallpaper and her neurosis, the story serves a higher purpose as a testament to the feminist struggle and their efforts to break out of their domestic prison. With reference to the works of Janice Haney-Peritz’s, “Monumental Feminism and Literature’s

  “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.

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.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, The Yellow Wallpaper, portrays the life and mind of a woman suffering from post-partum depression in the late eighteenth century. Gilman uses setting to strengthen the impact of her story by allowing the distant country mansion symbolize the loneliness of her narrator, Jane. Gilman also uses flat characters to enhance the depth of Jane’s thoughts; however, Gilman’s use of narrative technique impacts her story the most. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses interior monologue to add impact to Jane’s progression into insanity, to add insight into the relationships in the story, and to increase the depth of Jane’s connection with the yellow wallpaper it self.

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,

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.

“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.

Topics of great social impact have been dealt with in many different ways and in many different mediums. Beginning with the first women’s movement in the 1850’s, the role of women in society has been constantly written about, protested, and debated. Two women writers who have had the most impact in the on-going women’s movement are Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper are two of feminist literature’s cornerstones and have become prolific parts of American literature. Themes of entrapment by social dictates, circumstance, and the desire for personal independence reside within each work and bond the two together.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” was one of many short stories written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an ambitious female novelist in the 1890s aimed to change the aesthetic of womanhood. The plot is centered on a young, upper-middle-class woman, newly married and a mother, who is undergoing care for depression prescribed by her husband, John. The narrator’s mental health is defined when the family leaves to stay in a frontier estate after the birth of their only daughter. The confining walls of her room are subject to her abuse, reflecting her depression and wreckage that her mind and body encounter; although John perceives it as protection, it is actually the leading cause towards her deterioration. As each day persists, the narrator is consumed by the

The narrator’s visions of a woman behind the wallpaper offers the reader important insights into how she views her marriage. The woman is described as “subdued” in the daylight, that she stays still because of the intricate patterns of the wallpaper (Gilman, 653). The woman behind the wall only gets out by nighttime, mirroring how the narrator is forced to hide her writing from her husband, only expressing herself in the night. This characterization also describes what is expected of the narrator; that she be quiet and do as she is told. The intricate pattern keeping the woman in the wallpaper is the intricate culture that forces the narrator to not write, and to be an ‘ideal’

The Yellow Wall-Paper:” Sans Everything Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” is a deeply disturbing work of the Gothic Romantic genre. “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is not only a psychologically perturbed story, but a biting social critique of the gender standards of its time. The author, Charlotte P. Gilman, suffered from Postpartum Depression and as a result of her diagnosis, she wrote, “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to stress the ineffectiveness of the “rest cure.” The narrator of Gilman’s story, like most women of the time, has no say in regards to her own mental health, and is ignored and infantilized by her physician husband.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story telling about a young woman who is eventually driven mad by the society. The narrator is apparently confused with the norm defining “true” and “good” woman constructed by society dominated by man. “The Awakening” addressed the social, scientific, and cultural landscape of the country and the undergoing of radical changes. Each of these stories addresses the issue of women’s rights and how they were treated in the late 19th century. “The Awakening” explores one woman's desire to find and live fully within her true self. Her devotion to that purpose caused friction between her friends and family, and also conflicts with the dominant values of her time.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman uses the wallpaper in the bedroom as a symbol to represent the oppression of sexism and the dialogue within the diary resembles the social hierarchy men had in a marriage. Gilman wrote this piece in the progressive era when gothic literature was popular and woman’s rights were debatable. Gilman was a young adult that experienced post-partum depression after her first born and, like the girl in the story, she was told by a man that she no longer needed to write nor work to heal. In the progressive era they believed in the “rest cure” which women were treated delicate and were to stay in fine confinement. The woman in the story believed that it was worse for her to stay in bed but never wanted to undermine her husband.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the literary approach in which the reader sees the text as if it were some kind of dream. Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical attempt seeks evidence of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilt, and ambivalences within “The Yellow Wallpaper”. In this particular story, the reader must analyze the language and symbolism of the text to reverse the process of the dream in order to reveal the hidden thoughts/meaning of the story itself. This is important when trying to reveal how the conflicts of the narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and her behavior/actions towards these conflicts indirectly state the themes of gender role, freedom, madness,

There is a certain ignorance required to see the world and matters in it in terms of “this or that;” either black or white, either wives and mothers or social exiles. In the nineteenth century, most everyone was blinded to any but two possibilities in respect to women 's role in society. In The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper, the two main characters are women who have begun to see a spectrum unimaginable to those around them. Unfortunately, because the world remains engrossed in black and white, any additional hues, Edna Pontellier and the narrator of the Yellow Wall paper, become lost - not only to society but also to themselves. Each supporting character in these novels represent a larger part of the effects of this limited