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Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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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.). The story explores how the woman's sickness worsens gradually because of forced isolation and inactivity, and portrays how her sickness focuses almost entirely on the wallpaper during this transformation (Teichler 1984: 61, Geilman 1997: 1-15.). She is absorbed by her madness while trapped …show more content…

Conversations with these other characters are few, and there is nothing else the main character to do than look out the windows, secretly writing in her journal, and staring at the walls around her (Gilman 1997: 1-15.). She begins to have the subjective impression that "[t]here are things in that paper that nobody knows but [her], or ever will", and that these things are only held back by the wallpaper, at least, until she finally frees the creature by ripping apart the wallpaper and tearing it off of the wall in the final entry (Gilman 1997:

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She proceeds to explain the contributing factors of the narrator succumbing to her “disease” of hysteria which was isolation from social interaction and the restriction of her own thoughts. She points out that the narrator is confined to a simple square room with nothing to offer in terms of mental health therapy. The narrator’s lack of the ability to interact with anything or anyone leads to infatuation with the wallpaper, which turns out to be “the

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With all the effort needed to write and make her logs she eventually becomes exhausted and slows down making logs, not only that her logs become shorter her vocabulary less formal and fluent. She turns to the wallpaper as the intellectual stimulus she needs and uses it to keep her mind intact but slowly losing it as a result of this, beginning with her hatred for the wallpaper following with her curiosity of the patterns and her determination to find some kind of conclusion to the wallpaper and then finally describing the wallpaper to have a woman trapped inside of itself. As we see her descent into insanity it shows her true feelings of imprisonment and finds herself being the woman in the wallpaper until eventually breaking free from her confinement like the woman in the wallpaper had done before, although it was already far too late for our

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“The Yellow Wall Paper”, discloses the struggles that women undertake when they are imprisoned by insanity through symbolism, setting, and characterization. The woman isn’t able to have her own voice in the world. The yellow wallpaper in the room represents that. She uses the wallpaper to symbolize family authority, social standings, and medical practices.

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Secondly, throughout the story, the narrator describes seeing an evolving woman trapped inside of the wall. Although readers can assume that this woman is merely a product of the narrator’s mind, the woman can also be seen as a symbol of the narrator and her feelings of being trapped. Eventually, the woman in the wall aids the narrator in her escape. In conclusion, many elements of the narrator’s increasing madness throughout The Yellow Wallpaper contributed to her freedom from the confines of the room, the confines of society, and the confines of her

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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.

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She becomes obsessed with the patterns of the wallpaper, but she mainly notices a woman that she thinks is trying to free herself from the confines of the wall. During the day this woman is still, but when night time comes around, it seems as though the woman creeps around. Towards the end of the story, the narrator has a breakdown and thinks that she is this woman inside of the wallpaper, and begins to perform similar actions like creeping around. This meaning of this scene is simple cause and effect. Not only did she already have postpartum depression, but she is basically trapped in this house for a whole summer with nothing to do so she can heal.

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“2. When we meet the main character she seems like a regular person, she has some mental problems, but she 's trying to do her best, to recover and be able to reconnect with her child. Due to her loneliness and boredom, she is starting to get obsessed with the wallpaper covering the walls in

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In 1892 Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, in which the unnamed main character who has been diagnosed with neurasthenia is prescribed the rest cure by her physician husband. Her husband, John, takes her to an estate out in the country where she is isolated from everyone but her husband and his sister, and is ordered to do absolutely nothing but rest for the entire time they are there. The story follows this woman’s decent into madness as a result of the rest cure and total social isolation. In this story, Gilman uses her setting and characters to explore both the culture’s anger over the oppression and disregard of women and the fear over the beginning of the first feminist movement. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is set in a mansion out in the country that has been rented by the main character and her husband for the purpose of carrying out her rest cure (Gilman 489).

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A story about one woman’s progression towards psychosis, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is set in the 1800’s and takes place over a three month period. This account begins when a woman and her husband move into a house and stay in a room with yellow wallpaper. Throughout the story, this woman writes about how this paper affects her daily life until her obsession with it takes over her mind. Written in a journal format, the plot of “The Yellow Wallpaper” gives the reader a close insight to the deteriorating effect this wallpaper has on the sanity of the narrator.

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She may be diagnosed with slight hysteria, and nervous depression, but that is what makes her the best narrator for Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The unreliable first person point of view in this story is told through journal entries of a slightly hysterical woman undergoing treatment. She is both the protagonist, and the narrator. Thus allowing the woman to share her view of events, as well as sharing her thoughts throughout the story. Charlotte Gilman chose unreliable first person point of view for the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” because it is the best way to truly explain what the protagonist saw and felt.

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The vast majority of people wouldn’t give the wallpaper much thought, however the narrator becomes obsessed with it. To the narrator, the wallpaper is alive and becomes the focus of all her time. Her overwhelming lure to the wallpaper becomes obvious when she first provides a very vivid description stating “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (217-218). As she begins to lose her grip on reality, the narrator beings to see faces and eventually a woman within the wallpaper. At first, her description of seeing faces in the wallpaper seems like it could be her mind making since of the varying patterns or just part of her imagination.

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(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”

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Nonetheless, the narrator continues to pen her ideas about the wallpaper as it transpired from being perplexing to gaining clarity each day. Amidst arriving at a full conclusion of what the wallpaper depicts, the narrator says she sees “a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (Perkins Gilman, 50). As the days passed,

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The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a brilliant piece of fictional literature. The tale involves a mentally ill woman who is kept in a hideous, yellow room under the orders of her husband, John, who is a physician. The ill woman is conflicted due to the fact that the horrifying yellow wallpaper in the room is trapping a woman who she must help escape, but the sick woman is aware that she must get better in order to leave the terrifying, yellow room. The setting and personification applied in the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, allows readers to develop an understanding of the sickness of the main character faces.

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Living through a brief, unsuccessful marriage, postpartum depression, and relinquishment of her young child, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her experiences to create a revealing portrait of women’s societal constraints in her famous short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Published in 1892, “The Yellow Wallpaper” brilliantly represents the plight of women during the Victorian era. The story tells of a woman’s dual confinement, both in a rest home, specifically, and in the society as a whole, more generally. The apparent symbolism categorizes the story as a significant and progressive feminist text. Through exploration of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s biographical influence and the symbolism throughout the short story, readers will be able to see how

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