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Examples Of Patriarchal Society In The Yellow Wallpaper

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A Analysis on Patriarchal Society in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Hysteria is a term that means uncontrollable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. It was a common misdiagnosis for women in the nineteenth century who were struggling with depression. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” describes how the narrator slowly drives into insanity as her mental state worsens when living in a "rest cure" mental institution on a country estate with her family. The story illustrates a mind that is already plagued with anxiety and depression deteriorates as it gets constantly taken away from performing healthy activities. Although mental illness is a condition where many could not feel. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she uses personification and symbolism in her story to represent how the narrator's mental health …show more content…

The narrator constantly depicts the wallpaper as a living creature and presents it with living characteristics such as being able to physically harm someone. One instance when she used personification is ''It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you.” (146) Forms of violence are often intensely connected in societies to the point of being perceived in common living organisms. She continues using this circumstance with “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.” (67) Obviously a wallpaper is unable to have a broken neck and eyes but it creates a very unsettling feeling when reading this quote. A broken neck is a way of threatening to hurt someone brutally because they are hostile with said person and two eyes staring are defined as omniscience or a gateway into a person’s soul. There are quite a few gruesome details about the wallpaper to set a very ominous tone to the point of paranoia and

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1549 Words | 7 Pages

The first instance of the protagonist in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” where one can see her internalizing her feelings is in the line “You see, he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?”. This shows that she is downplaying her mental health, that because someone she loves is telling her she ’s okay, she’s not validating the feelings she is experiencing.

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507 Words | 3 Pages

The bed in her room may represent her inability to leave the bounds of her own thinking, while the barred windows stand for her lack of independence as she is locked in a prison cell. The narrator’s imaginative descriptions of the room’s suffocating environment, from its “air of hush and secrecy” to its “queer odor”, build the sensation of psychological tension as the story goes on, making the reader more sympathetic to the narrator’s situation and circumstances. The narrator also goes in-depth about the issues of female oppression and the silence of women's voices in a patriarchal society using effective imagery that helps her get her point across. Symbolism At its core, the yellow wallpaper embodies the protagonist's deteriorating mental state and her gradual descent into madness. Initially described as "unclean" and "revolting," the wallpaper's vibrant yellow hue and labyrinthine patterns mirror the protagonist's fragmented psyche and a growing sense of

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348 Words | 2 Pages

When I read "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, the four main things that stood out to me were the narrator's mental state, the symbolism of the yellow wallpaper, the role of women in society during that time, and the isolation experienced by the narrator. Firstly, the narrator's mental state is a significant theme throughout the story. As she becomes increasingly obsessed with the yellow wallpaper, it becomes clear that she is suffering from some form of mental illness. This is particularly striking because it highlights the lack of understanding and treatment of mental illness during the late 1800s.

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2439 Words | 10 Pages

More often than not, traditional cultural norms are oppressive towards females, resulting in restrictions on their individual progression. In certain cultures, it is expected that women stay in their “proper social sphere”, which focuses primarily on childcare and domestic tasks. Consequently, this sphere causes major limitations in the activities that women can and can not take part in, thus affecting their individuality. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman illustrates the narrator as a hopeful woman, subjected to the rule of a male-dominated society and forced to undergo the rest cure because of her mental illness. While the story progresses, the woman grows restless as she pleads for other methods that may help cure her of her hysteria.

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1200 Words | 5 Pages

By this point the already nervous narrator was beginning to go downhill. She was allowing the wallpaper to take control of her life. She then begins to see things in and behind the wallpaper, and she believes that the things are crawling around. “Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd blinking eyes are everywhere” (Gilman, 86). At this point, it is evident that her mental health is quickly deteriorating due to the fact that she believes that her wallpaper is moving and is basically alive.

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1480 Words | 6 Pages

She begins to see strangles heads in the wallpaper, which can be a symbolic representation of the patriarchal order that stifled women. The bars on the wallpaper that cage the imaginary women are a reflection of her own situation where she is confined in the old mansion. Even the smell of the wallpaper, which she describes as being ‘yellow’ and present throughout the house, is a reflection of the mental repression that is always present in her life. She is so consumed by the smell that she thinks about burning the old mansion just to cover it

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1388 Words | 6 Pages

The narrator mentions the wallpaper before she even mentions her infant child, and it becomes increasingly prevalent in the narrative until it completely takes over the narrator’s mind. It traps her, slowly driving her to insanity. The narrator spends a great deal of time describing the wallpaper, and the terms she uses often hold deeply sinistar connotations. Early in the story she writes that the curving patterns within the paper “suddenly commit suicide”; a few lines later she likens the color of the wallpaper to sulphur, which brings to mind the supposedly sulphurous fires of hell

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963 Words | 4 Pages

In the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman represents how wretchedness is overlooked and changed into blended sentiments that eventually result in a significantly more profound enduring incongruity. The Yellow Wallpaper utilizes striking mental and psychoanalytical symbolism and an effective women's activist message to present a topic of women' have to escape from detainment by their male centric culture. In the story, the narrator's better half adds to the generalization individuals put on the rationally sick as he confines his significant other from social circumstances and keeps her in an isolated house. The narrator it's made out to trust that something isn't right with her and is informed that she experiences some illness by her own significant other John.

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1277 Words | 6 Pages

The yellow wallpaper represents the paranoia and illness she suffers. The obsession and paranoia she feels towards it reflects the transition of her illness, from bad to

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848 Words | 4 Pages

The narrator is alone most of the time and says that she has become almost fond of the wallpaper and that attempting to figure out its pattern for example she says “I lie her on this great immovable bed, it is nailed down, I believe and follow’s that pattern about the hour it is as good ad gymnastics I assure you I start we’ll say, at the bottom, down the corner over there it has not been touched and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow the pointless pattern to sort some conclusion.” (Gilman) As her obsession grows, the pattern of the wallpaper becomes clearer. It begins to resemble a woman trapped by bars trying to escape the wallpaper. In my opinion, the wallpaper represents her feeling trapped clearly by her

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814 Words | 4 Pages

The vast majority of people wouldn’t give the wallpaper much thought, however the narrator becomes obsessed with it. To the narrator, the wallpaper is alive and becomes the focus of all her time. Her overwhelming lure to the wallpaper becomes obvious when she first provides a very vivid description stating “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (217-218). As she begins to lose her grip on reality, the narrator beings to see faces and eventually a woman within the wallpaper. At first, her description of seeing faces in the wallpaper seems like it could be her mind making since of the varying patterns or just part of her imagination.

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562 Words | 3 Pages

(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”

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1155 Words | 5 Pages

Nonetheless, the narrator continues to pen her ideas about the wallpaper as it transpired from being perplexing to gaining clarity each day. Amidst arriving at a full conclusion of what the wallpaper depicts, the narrator says she sees “a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (Perkins Gilman, 50). As the days passed,

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484 Words | 2 Pages

(99). The woman on the floor trying to take the wallpaper down would not let her husband in as he tried to knock the door down, but she does not realize she is doing it to herself. For example, Catherine Golden states in her article that, “The narrator seems detached from the bits of wallpaper on the floor next to her and John wallpaper fragments that could be read as a literal representation of the source of her insanity. The narrator’s hallucinations and action of tearing down the wallpaper to free the woman trapped behind the wallpaper pattern condemn her to madness” (60).

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658 Words | 3 Pages

From the beginning of the story, the narrator claims there is something queer about the house (Perkins 380). Throughout the story, she voices her concerns about the house. She claims she can “feel” something strange about the house (Perkins 380). The narrator believes that the paper looks at her with viciousness (Perkins 382) and says that it has eyes everywhere. She also infers that there are things about the wallpaper that only she knows about and they come into focus more each day (Perkins 380).

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