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Compare And Contrast The Yellow Wallpaper And The Tell Tale Heart

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” are stylistically similar works with several parallels and differences. The two tales juxtaposed portray an overarching theme of mental illness in the 1800s, observing the way society sees and cares for mental disorders. Discussed in this essay are the narrators’ social roles and mistreatment, their motives to become destructive, and the distinctive ways in which they act in attempt to liberate themselves from their oppression and obsession, respectively. Without historical context, it is harder to understand why the narrators’ disorders devolve to induce such maniacal behavior. In the nineteenth century, the majority of “treatment” for mental disorders amounted to sticking victims in an insane asylum. Researchers still …show more content…

Living in a society lacking knowledge or proper medical procedures, it is reasonable that many people, including the narrators of the two stories, would deny their condition or try to avoid being placed in a harsh environment. Being highly misunderstood, however, mental illness was still treated as taboo. As such, those suffering disorders may not be taken seriously--especially if you were a woman. Elisabet Rakel Sigurdar outlines this issue, prominent in “The Yellow Wallpaper”: “The story depicts both the insanity of the narrator, as well as the helplessness that came with being a woman in the nineteenth century. The narrator's husband oppresses and infantilizes her, constantly belittling her needs and dismissing her concern that the treatment is only making her worse” (Sigurdar 18). Gilman

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Differences can be made whether you have nobody or someone who is there for you and trying to help you through the pain and suffering. " The Yellow Wallpaper" was first published in 1892 and written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Another similar but different story, "A Sorrowful Woman," was written by Gail Godwin and published in 1971. Although "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "A Sorrowful Woman" have similar thoughts, they are extremely different due to how loneliness and companionship can have different effects on a person.

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Although life during the 1800s and early 1900s weren’t all that great, to begin with, compare that to how asylums treated patients during this time, the normal population life should have seen life as a simple breeze in the wind. There is a reason that our first thoughts when thinking of asylums is horror and it’s because of all of the horror shows that actually happen at these areas. Then comes in a place that has a new idea of treating patients, a new of thinking that never had been seen before. A new revolution when it comes to the psychological medical field. Step in Danvers State Hospital.

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The wife in the story was not able to do things for herself because her husband did not believe that she could do things for she also did not allow her to do so. She also says, women around that time were dominated by their husbands; which means not only the wife in the story, even if she wasn’t mentally sick, she would still not be able to do things on her own because she would still depend on her husband for things just because that is how things would be done around that time. This is where the two stories come in “The yellow Wallpaper” and the “Saboteur” the reason is. When the husband was in jail, he couldn’t do things for himself, he had to rely on his wife although he did not believe that she would get him out on time. Although he would call her names and had a wrong attitude towards her, he was not thinking about how grateful he should have been because the wife did not have to get him out of that place if she did not want him

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Along with the isolation and neglect of individuals experiencing mental illness, the use of harsh medicines and torturous inhumane methods were present in the 1900s. One of these methods was shock therapy, “insulin shock therapy injected high levels of insulin into patients to cause convulsions and a coma,” (Fabian and Catchings). It was believed that once the patient were revived from this induced coma they would be cured of their “madness” (Fabian and Catchings). In the institutions, which were created with the intent to assist the mentally ill were instead torturing the patients psychologically, often causing more paranoia and insanity. Another treatment used in asylums were lobotomies.

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Humans are not perfect beings free from illness and corruption. Things can go wrong and often types people suffer for it. They can go insane. This is further explored in the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.” written by Edgar Allan Poe and “The Yellow Wallpaper.” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman they are similar due to the recurring themes in both texts featuring appearance vs. reality, and Madness.

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Modern artists today generally use images of physical and mental illness in literature. In The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, both short stories show the usage of illness, madness, and fear. The narrators in both stories try to convince the readers that the characters are physically and mentally ill. Edgar Allen Poe creates these vivid characters which successfully assist the building of plot and ideas. Poe demonstrates how a person’s inner turmoil and terror can lead to insanity through illustrative language.

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The films Girl, Interrupted and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest gave a glimpse into the conditions and treatments used in the 1960s and 1970s in mental health institutions. Both films follow the struggles of two individuals and give insight into the psychological health field. Each film demonstrated some accurate but also inaccurate portrayals of the treatment and conditions that patients received and lived in while staying at these facilities. Girl, Interrupted is a film that focused on the institutionalization of the main character, Susanna Kaysen, and her time that was spent at Claymore Mental Institution.

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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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The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 shows mental illness through the narrator first hand. The theme in this story is going insane verses loneliness as well as being trapped. These themes are shown through the main character (the narrator of the story) as she works through her own mind, life, and surroundings. First, the theme of the woman’s state of mind is the main focus in this story.

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a first-person written feminist short story that critiques and condemns the nineteenth-century American male attitude towards women and their physical as well as mental health issues. In the short story, Perkins Gilman juxtaposes universal gender perspectives of women with hysterical tendencies using the effects of gradually accumulating levels of solitary confinement; a haunted house, nursery, and the yellow wallpaper to highlight the American culture of inherited oblivious misogyny and promote the equality of sexes. The narrator and her husband, John, embody the general man and woman of the nineteenth century. John, like the narrator’s brother and most men, is “a physician of high

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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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The woman was going crazy in her own world as she saw something coming out the yellow wall. The wallpaper had a bright yellow color that drove the narrator crazy and tried to peel it down. The woman was fighting with her mental illness as she explains her influence of her personal life, a woman’s right, and her mental illness. A woman in the early 20th century wrote a story, her story was heard about her mental illness and she had no type of support. The narrator of the story “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper” says, “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked” (Gilman

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5). At the beginning of the twentieth century, when Woolf lived, the views on treatment of mental illness began to evolve (Holtzman, par. 3). Throughout the nineteenth century, treatment of mental illness occurred through institutionalization, the act of separating the individual from society and their family, and placing them in an asylum or a hospital (Fane-Saunders, par. 1). Woolf lived during a time when an alternative to institutionalization had started to become available. This alternative, the rest cure, allowed the patient to stay at home with family, but on bedrest.

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Obsession, internal conflict, and underlying guilt are all aspects of being human but when it’s associated with paranoia and insanity it may be just the recipe for the perfect crime as perceived by Edger Allan Poe in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe uses this as one of his shortest stories to discuss and provide an insight into the mind of the mentally ill, paranoia and the stages of mental detrition. The story 's action is depicted through the eyes of the unnamed delusional narrator. The other main character in the story is an old man whom the narrator apparently works for and resides in his house. The story opens off with the narrator trying to assure his sanity then proceeding to tell the tale of his crime, this shows a man deranged and hunted with a guilty conscience of his murderous act.

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Gothic Horror is a unique style of writing that is “characterized by elements such as fear and death along with romantic themes such as nature, individuality, and extreme emotion” while realism is a writing style that “presents the ordinary, familiar, or mundane aspects of life in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner that is presumed to reflect life as it actually is.” “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short, horror-filled story that vividly describes the mentally ill narrator’s experiences and emotional struggles of loneliness, anxiety, and uneasiness while being locked in a hideous room by herself for a long period of time. The story is definitely an example of realism, but the gothic horror writing style powerfully presents itself throughout the text with the use of eerie descriptions of the yellow wallpapered room, the narrator's

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