“True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.”- Jean Cocteau. The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a very compelling realism story, but what is realism? Realism is a type of storytelling that occurred in 1814 after romanticism. This movement was formed to reject the ideas of romanticism and show people the true world. It is realism because it shows issues from the real world without including supernatural elements.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a story about a wife whose husband John is also her doctor, so when she starts to feel insane John locks her in a house. This made sense for the time period since there was no real doctors/medicine. He decides to lock her into a single room with yellow wallpaper and not let her out. This room gave her an eerie mood, it had bars on the windows and ripped wallpaper, but for the
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The three prominent examples are the act of locking her into a single room by her husband, her journal, and ripping up the wallpaper. Her being entrapped into a single room by her husband symbolizes how women were trapped in marriages. The wife would often say things like, “but John would not hear of it,” and, “John thought it might do me good…” These statements show how during this time period men had all of the control. The other example is her hidden journal that her husband forbade, “There comes John, and I must put this away, -he hates to have me write a word,” The wife says. This quote shows her lack of freedom because her husband doesn’t want her to be able to write which is her form of expression. Finally, her ripping up the wallpaper shows us her trying to take back her freedom from John. “ ‘ I've got out at last,’ “ said I, “ ‘in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!’ “ This shows the main character's escape from being