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Charlotte Perkins Stenson's The Yellow Wallpaper

1649 Words7 Pages

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Stenson shows how Jane, an already ill woman, begins to become even more psychologically weakened due to solitary confinement. This story signifies how Charlotte Perkins Stenson, herself, was actually subjected to the slow departure of her own mental health. It allows us to view how isolation can inescapably drive a person to a certain breaking point and into a downward spiral that can ultimately end in lunacy. The story starts off sounding sweet and innocent enough. Jane, and her husband, John, are staying in a colonial mansion for a few months in order for her to get well due to an illness. Right from the beginning Jane has an issue with the mansion, by essentially noting something about the house seemed strange. Whereas, John, felt that it was absurd for her to even have such thoughts. Though, she does note that the home and the property is beautiful, it has a delicious garden, hedges, walls, gates and even homes for the gardeners to stay in. John and Jane’s brother are both prominent physicians. According to Jane, they think that she is not truly ill. …show more content…

Janes husband, John, seems to have unknowingly assisted her to become a target to such a fate. Imprisonment to a single room in the mansion, being secluded from nearly all social interactions, and targeted by her own thoughts is what ultimately pushed Jane over the edge and made her fall victim to insanity. Charlotte Perkins Stetson wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” to show first-hand the damaging effects that the rest cure could have on woman. She wanted to share her experiences and to inform people of how negative this treatment was and what it could and was doing to people who were seeking help for an already underlying mental illness. Charlotte eventually became well known for her boisterous feminist attitude, sociological views on women’s rights and equality, and most notably, her

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The narrator is certain she is really sick, and not just nervously depressed as diagnosed by her husband, but she is confined by her role as a wife and woman, and cannot convince her relatives and friends that something is actually wrong with her. In the story the narrator says, “”If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the

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In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is treated for depression by “rest cure,” isolation from society, which affects her mentality causing her to become secretive, withdrawn, and insane. With the treatment

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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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The Yellow Wallpaper Naturalism Analysis

917 Words | 4 Pages

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, exhibits the domestic entrapment of women by society in the 19th century by adopting a naturalistic approach to the mood, tone, and other literary elements used in the short story. Naturalism is a genre of literature that started in the late nineteenth century, around the time “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published, and is originated from realism. According to literarydevices.net, naturalism focuses on “natural forces predetermining a character’s decisions” while realism is about free will and the decisions a character makes in response to a situation. The major forces that control our unnamed narrator’s actions in “The Yellow Wallpaper” are her figurative and physical environment and her relationship with John.

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She then entered the controversial treatment in a sanitarium in philadelphia” (Gilman Society). The biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the hard times she had to go through. The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper is a story about what she went through. She went to a sanitarium just like

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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.

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“The Yellow Wallpaper” Literary Analysis The “Yellow Wallpaper” is a iconic short story written by Charlotte Perkins, a famous feminist author. The novel takes place the 19th century and deals with the issue of how women dealt with mental health issues, specifically postpartum depression. Back in the 19th century the way physicians dealt with women 's mental health was much different then it is today, back then they believed that the cure for depression was solvable by isolation and rest. As a result many women suffering from postpartum depression were forced into isolation which only made their situation worse. Jane; the narrator of the short story, is one of these woman forced into the rest treatment by her physician husband.

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