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The yellow wallpaper critical readings
The yellow wallpaper critical readings
The yellow wallpaper critical readings
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Insanity is a deranged state of the mind. Not everyone has the same experiences nor the same symptoms which lead to their mental disorder. In her story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents a peculiar case of insanity. The main character is put on bed rest to overcome her temporary nervous depression. However, while being stuck inside the room, the unreliable narrator increasingly becomes more and more symptomatic.
From this quote readers identify the change in mood of the story. As a reader, one is aware of the progress Brent is making from the Children’s hospital to the rehabilitation center. Brent believes that when he set himself on fire, that it was a big mistake and that this action has changed his life for the worse. Brent doesn’t have any suicidal thoughts anymore, and doesn’t self-harm anymore. However, when readers learn that Brent keeps a knife under his bed and keeps a paper under his bed that says “Death”, readers are surprised to learn that Brent is falling back into his bad habits.
PSYART.com) Pre-modern day gothic writers wrote about psychological issues hundreds of years before professionals addressed mental illnesses, by extension shows that gothic writers helped popularize and influenced the study of psychology. The connotation of the word "gothic" carries the stigma of the emotion melancholy and the grotesque. ("Stigma, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2017, www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/190242. Accessed 16 November 2017.) Humanitarians and those alike tend to believe that the Gothic genre is to showcase the darker side of people, the subconscious being of humans.
During the day, the wallpaper makes very little “movement”; it is almost as if the shadowy figure is being still and silent. The figures movements represent the protagonists movements, during the day she is prim and proper, trying to make her husband believe she is doing exactly what he wants by “sleeping”; at night the woman is alive, trying to discover herself and the things that she likes, realizing how trapped she is against her husband’s wishes, trying to break free from the bars that are holding her back. One can see the negative effects of John’s (and society’s) treatment of the narrator in her response to the rest cure. At first, she tries to fight against the growing lethargy that controls her. She even challenges John’s treatment
This is the case with Susanna, who is the autobiographical main character of the book. She provides a perfect reason as to why it is important that mental illness must be talked about more. Susanna is admitted to the McLean Hospital after she attempts suicide and is then diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She is at first convinced that there is nothing wrong for her, which is something that many patients go through, and is one of the important reasons that mental illness should be discussed more.
Edgar Allan Poe’s frightening gothic style poetry and short novels about fear, love, death and horror are prominent to Gothic Literature and explore madness through a nerve-recking angle. The incredible, malformed author, poet, editor and novelist is recognized for his famous classical pieces such as “The Raven”, “Berenice” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, pieces of work that mystically yet magnificently awakens readers with a gloomy spirit. Awakening the subject of madness through written work was viewed as insane during Poe’s times. Yet Poe published some of the worlds most magnificently frightening pieces of literature throughout history. In the following essay I will examine and cautiously analyze
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.
The narrator of the story is sick, but in the story does not disclose what her sickness is. The sickness that she has may be insanity itself, which is a mental illness. A reason she may be insane is that she has forced herself to be distant with her own creativity, so she slowly started to crave it. But since John, her husband, didn't like her having ideas/creative drive she had to hide it. The place that she hid it was in her own mind.
In most interpretations of Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, it is usually deduced that John, the unnamed narrator’s husband in the short story, is a flat character that is used solely for plot advancement. This is most likely due to the combination of indirect discourse, an unreliable narrator, and the ambiguous ending that negatively impacts the reader’s opinion of him. But, if the reader views the short story as a tragedy, John plays a more impactful role in the story. By analyzing the story from an Aristotelian perspective of tragedy, John becomes Gilman’s unintentional tragic hero.
Madness often occurs when somebody desires something that is not accessible to them. When somebody cannot have what they want most, they can go insane yearning for it. For example, if an individual struggling with alcoholism attempts to go sober, they will likely experience withdrawal symptoms because their body is so used to having alcohol that it has forgotten how to function without it. During this withdrawal period, the individual may crave alcohol to the point that their psychological instincts take over and they will do absolutely anything for a drink. In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator goes insane in her longing for freedom.
In the short story “the Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator, Jane who has just given birth becomes progressively more ill and depressed. Her husband John, who is a physician prescribes that she get lots of rest and fresh air so Jane and John rent a colonial mansion for the summer. Throughout the story John is one of the main causes for Jane’s deepening depression.
Psychoanalytic reading of The Yellow Wallpaper In Charlotte Gilman's short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the speaker seems to be suffering from postpartum depression or "temporary nervous depression." (648). Accordingly, her husband makes the decision for her and takes her to a country house because he believes that it would be good for her. The narrator is not allowed to take care of her own child as she was imprisoned in her room where she should do nothing but "rest."
Everything from how her interactions with her family to her perception of her environment and how it evolves throughout the story allow the reader to almost feel what the narrator is feeling as the moves through the story. In the beginning, the only reason the reader knows there may be something wrong with the narrator is because she comes right out and says she may be ill, even though her husband didn’t believe she was (216). As the story moves on, it becomes clear that her illness is not one of a physical nature, but of an emotional or mental one. By telling the story in the narrator’s point of view, the reader can really dive into her mind and almost feel what she’s feeling.
The story focuses on the main character who is a woman suffering from mental illness. It is very clear that the woman is ill when she states, “You see, he does not believe I am sick!” (677) speaking of her husband who is a doctor. So first she admits she is sick then later she states, “I am glad my case is not serious!”
The woman was obsessed with the wallpaper she begins to hallucinate that something was creeping on her. She had locked herself in the room and would not let anyone in the bedroom with her because she was trying to trap the creeper that she thought she saw. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” say,“‘Open the door, my darling!’ , ‘I can’t,’ said I. ‘ The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf’”
