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Reading this story was a sad example of how women with postpartum depression were treated back in the 1800’s, before we knew more about the cures for those ailments. Gilman showed significant courage when writing this story, as it reflected on her own experiences and how she almost became a fatality from this type of treatment. The fact that she has helped many people through writing this story shows how important that her words truly were in her work, The Yellow
In spite of the fact the women appear frail throughout the story, they eventually show their strength. In Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, John the husband of the narrator in the story moves his wife to a new house shortly after her giving birth. Because John is a doctor he feels as though he knows more than his wife and is completely disregarding her feelings. He stripped her of her identity, and she couldn’t express herself.
Literary Devices in The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an American novelist, author and feminist. Born July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, she died August 17, 1935 in Pasadena, California. She is best known for her short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper', the story of a young couple, John and Charlotte, who also happen to be new parents. The wife not only suffers from postpartum depression, but she also slowly descends into a state of psychosis due to the yellow wallpaper from her room in the summer house where they were staying. This short story is rich in literary devices such as imagery, symbolism, and personification, which will soon be explored in depth.
The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a portrayal of a woman’s descent into madness and how the society around her contributes to her illness. As a matter of fact, the story was inspired and written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own personal experience. Gilman’s use of a first person point of view and tone allows the reader to experience and understand the narrator's actions and situation. The narrator’s tone also plays a role in establishing her character and the theme through the paragraph structure, her thoughts and expressions and finally her ironic expressions. To begin with, the narrator's tone helps establish character through her paragraph structure within the story.
The narrator should be allowed to go outside, or be allowed to do things that she enjoys because these things will help her overcome her depression but; instead, she is imprisoned by John: imprisonment, John controls his wife's actions: authoritarian, she is scared because John threatens her: duress, she spends her time obsessing over the yellow wallpaper: fantasizing. Gilman also suffered from a nervous condition for some time. She went to a specialist who prescribed her the rest cure.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator 's husband John, who also happens to be her physician, prescribes the rest cure to help lift his wife of her depressive state and ultimately heal her depression. However, the rest cure does not allow the narrator to experience any mental stimulation. Therefore, to manage her boredom the narrator begins obsessing over the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. After analyzing the pattern for awhile, the narrator witnesses a woman trapped behind bars.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman often discussed for its biographical critic on the way women, but especially those suffering from mental illnesses profiled by 19th century physicians as "women's diseases", have been treated in society at the end of the 19th century (Teichler 1984: 61, Oakley 1997: 29). In order to cure the female main character of her hysterical tendencies--a status she was diagnosed with after the birth of her son--she has been confined to the former nursery in the family's house, and undergoes a treatment in which she is forced to avoid all forms of stimuli, excitement, or activity (Gilman 1997: 1-15.). One of the main objects she interacts with during her isolation period, besides the nailed down bed and her hidden journal, is the yellow wallpaper with which the former nursery is papered (Gilman 1997: 1-15.).
Charlotte Gilman’s short story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, (1899) is a text that describes how suppression of women and their confinement in domestic sphere leads to descend into insanity for escape. The story is written as diary entries of the protagonist, who is living with her husband in an old mansion for the summer. The protagonist, who remains unnamed, is suffering from post-partum depression after the birth of her child and is on ‘rest’ cure by her physician husband. In this paper, I will try to prove that ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ acts as a subversive text by portraying the protagonist’s “descent into madness” as a result of the suppression that women faced in Victorian period.
The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story. It’s clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator’s point of view greatly differs from that of her husband’s and other family in her life.
Traditionally, women were described in a sense that is dominated by men in literary works. However, Charlotte Perkins Gilman connected the social phenomenon in that time with her personal experience to create a fictional narrative about feminist “The Yellow Wall-paper” which is about an unnamed woman who has postpartum depression and is sent to a house by her husband in order to cue her mental illness, and finally gets mad because of her self-centred and dominating husband. The narrator, a nameless woman in order to symbolize any wife, mother, or woman, is oppressed and clearly represents the significant influence from the oppression of women. Gilman uses symbolism to portray the narrator’s self-expression and the oppression she suffers in the society in the nineteenth century.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story told through diary entries of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, becomes obsessed with the ugly yellow wallpaper in the summer home her husband rented for them. While at the home the Narrator studies the wallpaper and starts to believe there is a woman in the wallpaper. Her obsession with the wallpaper slowly makes her mental state deteriorate. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary devices such as symbolism, personification and imagery to help convey her message and get it across to the reader.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator, Jane, has postpartum depression. In order to cure this depression, John, Jane’s husband and a doctor, administer the rest treatment on her. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” through her personal experience. Along with writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” she wrote an explanation for why she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” perfectly lends itself to the eye of a feminist critic. Gilman’s narrator is highly unreliable as she recounts the horrifying treatment she received from her controlling husband and his complicit sister to destroy who this woman and completely eliminate her autonomy. This woman’s secretive journaling, though fictional, captures the essence of feminist issues in the Gothic era. In his chapter on Feminism, Robert Dale Parker states that it is a criticism mostly based off of issues with identity.
Throughout short fiction, Charlotte Gilman is most famously noted for her ability to create strong gothic themes in her writing. This is especially true in her 1890s story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Overall, an important theme in Charlotte Gilman short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is that when combined, isolation and oppression often lead to negative consequences such as insanity and mental instability. Gilman achieves this through her thorough use of symbolism and settings that helps to highlight and establish the overall theme.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in 1892. The story is told through a series of journal entries by a woman diagnosed with a “nervous condition”. The entries take place during her “rest treatment” prescribed by her physician (who is also her husband). Gilman uses her own experiences with the rest treatment to flawlessly animate the fall to madness. She uses an array of figurative language, an alluring mood, and a first person point of view to entirely capture the reader.