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Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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Women of of the 19th century era encountered a distressing period where medicine and their health were prominent highlights associated with their being. To the bewilderment of those today, society of this time believed that it was in a woman's nature to be sick, that a female was born with an illness of both the body and mind, and that nothing could be done to permanently alleviate her sickness. Ultimately this falsehood laid the foundation for the physical and often mental demise of many women. This is very clear in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a short story about a woman's slow descent into insanity while following the physician- prescribed “rest cure" made known to society by nerve disorder specialist, Silas Weir Mitchell …show more content…

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone” (Gilman 312). Here, it is obvious that the woman's depression is becoming more severe. She makes an effort to talk to her husband regarding her thoughts and is quite aware that the treatment is not working. She attempts to explain to her husband, “I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away" (Gilman 314). Adhering to the principles of the rest cure, she is told to stay in her chambers, interact with no one, and engage in no intellectual thought. She is separated from the world. Undoubtedly the rest cure begins to have an effect that is opposite of what was intended. She examines the walls so closely that she begins to have hallucinations of a "faint figure" behind the pattern of the wallpaper. The woman's feelings of repression by her husband manifest in the hallucinations. Initially the woman begins to see a lady supposedly trapped behind the designs of the yellow wallpaper. This lady is a reflection of the woman's imprisonment in her room and her longing to escape and be her own person. By the end of Gilman's story, the woman gets pushed to her breaking point, tearing pieces of the paper off the walls to free the lady as well as

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In Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” she tells a horrific ghost story about symptoms of the rest cure. The “rest cure” was a treatment developed by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell who restricted women of intellectual stimuli and condemned them to a domestic life to help their postpartum recovery. After being a victim of this treatment, Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Careful attention to the use of Gilman’s symbols in her short story allows the reader to analyze some of the themes concerning feminism and societal misogyny. Foreshadowing throughout, Gilman uses the house, the writing, and the wallpaper as symbols to show how man’s use of the “rest cure” limit women in society and offers that the solution to this issue is to persistently tear away at man’s injustice.

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Throughout the story The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte P. Gilman illustrates a unique relationship between a married woman and the wallpaper in her room. This particular woman went through a rough patch recently believed to be suffering with postpartum depression. Her husband – a doctor – seems to know what is best for his wife and keeps her locked away from friends and family all day long. Due to her captivity, the woman begins to imagine a woman trapped inside the awful yellow wallpaper. However, many people she sees herself trapped behind bars trying to escape to freedom.

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Her obsession with the woman in the wallpaper just becomes bigger and more concerning. Gilman makes the obsession apparent in these lines, “I've seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping” (10). She doesn’t sleep and watches the woman crawl all night.

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Throughout the story, Gilman illustrates different kinds of female identity and critiques the roles that women were forced into at the time. She uses imagery to both illustrate the setting that the narrator is in but also how this affects Jane, and her use of symbolism is meant to highlight the narrator’s struggles through various objects. Her serious yet innocent tone throughout the tale also highlights how the narrator is affected by her identity and experiences as a woman. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses imagery, symbolism, and tone to shows how the gender roles of her time negatively impact women’s mental health. First of all, Gilman shows how the narrator is trapped in both her physical place as well as her mental state through the use of vivid imagery showing the house, room, and wallpaper.

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The overall story depicts the struggles faced by women with mental illnesses and the social expectations they had to live up to during the 1880s. Gildman suffered from "severe and continuous nervous breakdown" like the narrator of our story and was asked to follow a similar treatment plan that made matters worse (Gilman). " The Yellow Wallpaper" was revolutionary as it uses horror to showcase the fault in the system and had life-changing impacts. Many women went through postpartum depression, however, physicians gave "solemn advice to “live as domestic a life as far as possible,” to “have but two hours’ intellectual life a day,” and “never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again” as long as [they] lived" which made their mental health plummet more and made things worse (Gilman).

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One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.” The patient’s aversion to the wallpaper reveals a psychological rebellion against societal norms, emphasizing how oppressive patterns contribute to her mental deterioration and framing the wallpaper as a symbol of societal expectations impacting her psyche. The patient’s desperate attempts to free the woman in the wallpaper reveal just how deeply she is feeling the effects of having to topple the expectations put on her by society, on top of her declining mental health. This conclusion can be drawn from her statement, “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled.” The patient’s relentless efforts to free “herself” from the wallpaper mirror her internal battle to free herself from the expectations put upon her by society in terms of being a mother and woman, as she feels she is incompetent when it comes to being a mother and is failing her duties as a wife.

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John liked the fact that their relationship wasn’t equal in any way and his ignorance distracts him from grasping the full problem of his wife. Not knowing how to think for herself only to be controlled Jane follows everything her husband says to cure herself not knowing his methods would push her to the brink of insanity. “I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window” (Gilman). Jane was dismissed by her husband so easily that it was common back then so she didn't even give it a second thought. Jane is bored a lot because John will not allow her to indulge in any brain-using activities which cause her to obsess about the wallpaper in her

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” writes about the extreme of the “rest cure” and how it can affect a woman mentally. The reader sees the narrators’ mental illness decline

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The yellow wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story plays a significant role in illuminating the narrator’s psychological unraveling. On a literal level, the wallpaper serves as a symbol of the narrator’s confinement within her oppressive domestic life. From the beginning, the narrator is presented as a woman who is struggling to find her place in the world. She is in a state of emotional limbo and her husband’s treatment of her only serves to further her sense of entrapment and powerlessness.

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Are we women or are we property? The Yellow Wallpaper, a dramatic short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, concerns a woman who is mentally ill and is misdiagnosed by her physician, confining her in a room. Her mental health state regresses as she goes from wanting to escape the room to accepting it and no longer wishing to leave. This state is exacerbated by the relationship with her husband, who is also her diagnosing physician. The treatment of the purposefully unnamed narrator mirrors the treatment of women in Victorian times.

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Women finally began to gain some control over their lives, no longer succumbing to their husband’s desires and practically being slaves to society. The story displays the struggles of many women at the time, reflecting Gilman’s past experiences. In 1887 a “wise man put [her] to bed and applied the rest cure,” but "came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that [she] could see over,” and finally decided that the treatment was no longer working and after a long three months she returned to the life she lived prior to the rest cure and ultimately “recovering some measure of power”(Gilman 1). Similarly, in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator, who exists at a similar time as Gilman, finally decides to free herself from the constraints of her husband and tears down the yellow wallpaper that had been progressively increasing her insanity, representing her moment of reform just as Gilman’s withdrawal from the rest of the cure had

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The narrator feels as if she is a burden on John but she is also growing tired of his constant dictation. She feels this especially since she knows what she needs but he does not allow it. She wrote that she, “meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort,” but she feels like a “comparative burden” (par. 44). John makes her feel that it is her fault for not getting well faster. The narrator feels that she can not talk to John about her case because, “he is so wise, and because he loves me so” (par.

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Sarah Harrison Ms. Caine English II Feb 10, 2023 Literary Analysis Essay From lobotomies to psychotherapy to drug medication, the treatment for mental health has worn many faces. In centuries past, the treatments for and understanding of women’s mental health has varied greatly. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson is set in the late 19th century and details a young woman’s descent into insanity. She is prescribed rest in an isolated house in the country-side and is dismissed by all those around her, most notably and repeatedly by her husband.

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The narrator begins to becomes obsessive over the "paper", believing it to be some kind of text only she can and must interpret. As her obsession grows, the paper begins to resemble the shape of a desperate woman, "stooping down and creeping about" (Pg.166) and the yellow pattern becomes reminiscent of bars on a cage, which is seen confining many women as they strangle themselves attempting to escape through the bars/ pattern. In this, Gilman masterfully creates the entrapping wallpaper as a mirror to society and its entrapment of women into an "acceptable" role. And as her fascination begins to continuously haunt the narrator, she is effectively silenced once again by her husband 's condescending attitude about her illness, "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in man. John is

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The Yellow Wallpaper was critical of the neglect of women’s mental health problems and the standard rest cure meant to get women back on their feet to enable them to carry out the

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