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Essay Comparing The Yellow Wallpaper And The Black Cat

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In the Literary Eras of Romanticism and Realism, the theme of hysteria is written about in multitude, which is apparent in the two short stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Kate Chopin and “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe. These two short stories highlight the unnamed narrator's descent into insanity. The man and the woman emphasize madness during this period in different ways. Kate Chopin’s goal in her writing about women was to stress the stigma and lack of knowledge during this time of women’s health. This is why the narrators reason for going insane is different as the man abuses alcohol, avoiding a real problem. Compared to the woman who is locked away, fighting to remain sane. Their partners contributed to their madness through ignorance of their significant other’s condition. Finally, by …show more content…

She fell dead upon the spot without a groan”(Poe 11). At this point in the poem, the wife is referred to as the body. Proving no significance to the man, as this participates in driving the man to insanity; similar to the women from The Yellow Wallpaper. Likewise, the woman's spouse plays a role in her hysteria since he is the doctor who diagnosed her and gave her the remedy of the rest. Her husband, John, treats her like a child and belittles her. In turn, this provokes her to look for any companionship, which she finds with the woman she hallucinates trapped in the wallpaper. The woman did go insane due to her husband's measures of forcing her to be locked away, as her only form of human connection is him. Just like the wife from The Black Cat, she saw the man’s struggle with alcohol and the abuse of the animals, but since she never confronts her husband, the man continues to justify his actions. In the end, the justification of the man and the ignorance of the wife ended up killing

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Paula A. Treichler from the University of Illinois analyzes “The Yellow Wallpaper” and its effects of the diagnosis given to the main character effectively in her article “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”. In her article, Treichler emphasizes the reasons why the main character was lead to believe her diagnosis from her husband and the other contributing factors that played a role in her hysteria, such as lack of social interaction and confinement. In the introduction to her article, Treichler gives the background of the story and hits on every area of importance. The diagnosis made by the narrator 's husband is highlighted by Treichler in her opening paragraph to illustrate the significance and informality of the diagnosis and its unreliability.

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Since her husband, a physician of high standard, has prescribed a "rest cure" for her nervous condition, the protagonist is forced to suppress her creative urges and conform to societal expectations of a submissive and passive wife who is to remain still in a room with “the yellow wallpaper.” This suppression ultimately leads to her descent into madness as she struggles to reconcile her own desires with the expectations placed upon her. While the lady narrates the entire story, it is interesting to note that she is not in control of her own life and decisions. Rather, she is a victim of societal norms and gender roles that restrict her agency and

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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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Mohra Gad Dr. Meloy HON 272 19 April 2024 Gender Confinement The main character in Charlotte Gilman’s novel “The Yellow Wallpaper” experiences confinement – both physically and mentally. Similarly, Suzanne is physically jailed in the convent, which spirals into numerous other forms of confinement in Denis Diderot’s epistolary novel “The Nun”, including mental incarnation. " The Nun," which was written in 1796, and "The Yellow Wallpaper," which was published in 1892, over a century later, are set in quite different eras. However, both female characters face oppressive forces in their respective societies.

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As she understands that the women trapped in the wallpaper is a reflection of herself she free herself mentally. Resulting in her going

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Especially, for the sake of her health, she cannot read or write, which is the favorite thing of her, even she thinks that reading and writing is helpful to her health, but her husband forbids it. The yellow wallpaper of this room so attracted her that she becomes insane at last. In this book, Gilman mostly illustrate how the woman’s lack of freedom both in their mental and emotional in the patriarchal society. The husband in the book is a doctor, but he cannot treat his wife, even make her insane by his fault rest cure treatment. As for the heroine, the wife in the book, maybe become insane is also a

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In these two short stories, "Story of an Hour," Kate Chopin and "The Yellow Wallpaper," By Charlotte Perkins Gilman, both authors faced similarities as women of the 19th century. They do an awesome job portraying their own personal experiences through their fictional characters Mrs. Millard from the "Story of an Hour," and Jane or the women in, "The Yellow Wallpaper. " As most people know by now that it was not very common to be a women writer, a doctor, or anything of that profession. Most professional careers were mainly dominated by the male figure. God forbid if a woman attempted to study and become more than a housewife in this time period.

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The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson were both written by women to express how they were treated in their time period. Both of these stories were criticized because they challenged the belief that a woman should not be just a docile wife. These two pieces of literature utilized symbolic imagery, repetition, and dramatic irony to convey the common theme shared that women are opressed by the standards of society. In Chopin's Story of an Hour, Mrs. Mallard sees the outside world through the only window in her room.

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This differs greatly from Jane, who begins to sympathize with the plight of all domestic women through her experience with the woman behind the yellow wallpaper. Although she initially frowned upon the woman’s efforts to escape, the more her mental health deteriorated, the more she began to relate her plight to that of the trapped woman, both prisoners desperate for escape. With her newfound revelation, she sought to save the trapped woman from her prison, subconsciously freeing herself in the process. “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her…I wonder if they all came out of that wallpaper as I did?… “I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane!

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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 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story. It’s clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator’s point of view greatly differs from that of her husband’s and other family in her life.

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She begins to slip away from reality and into her dreamlike world. The woman seen in the wallpaper mirrors the narrator 's plight for freedom. While she is free from the restraints of marriage and motherhood, she has been consumed by madness. John dominates the relationship, both as doctor and husband.

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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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Enclosed to the four wall of this “big” room, the narrator says “the paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it” because “it is stripped off” indicating that males have attempted to distort women’s truth but somehow did not accomplish distorting the entire truth (Perkins Gilman, 43). When the narrator finally looked at the wall and the paint and paper on it, she was disgusted at the sight. The yellow wallpaper, she penned, secretly against the will of men, committed artistic sin and had lame uncertain curves that suddenly committed suicide when you followed them for a little distance. The narrator is forced to express her discomfort with the image to her husband, he sees it as an “excited fancy” that is provoked by the “imaginative power and habit of story making” by “a nervous weakness” like hers (Perkins Gilman, 46). Essentially, he believes that her sickness is worsening and the depth of her disease is the cause of the unexpected paranoia.

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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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