Examples Of Transcendentalism In The Yellow Wallpaper

In time, everything will decay; once great buildings, memories, sometimes even the mind itself. The Yellow Wallpaper, written in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, portrays this fact to its most terrifying extent. The short story follows the writings of a nameless wife who is diagnosed with a “nervous depression” by her husband, a physician. As the story progresses, the wife starts seeing strange patterns in a yellow wallpaper she despises, eventually seeing a woman trapped inside, whom she eventually sees as a counterpart to herself, causing her to rip apart the wallpaper to attempt to “free” her. In Gilman’s story, themes of transcendentalism and gothic romanticism are very prevalent throughout the story.

The Yellow Wallpaper clearly fits

From the very beginning of the story, the narrator questions the methods used to treat her. She is desperate more socialization with other people, and this is quite explicit in her writings, quote, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.”(Gilman) The narrator knows that the real way to actually combat her depression is to go out and distract herself and talk to people instead of sitting at home all day and letting it fester. The narrator also places an importance on her own thoughts and understanding of her own condition over her husband's opinions. These transgressions are visible many times in the text, but one instance can be found in the first portion of the story where the narrator writes, “John is a physician, and perhaps--(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)--perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick!”(Gilman) Even though the narrator doesn’t have it in her to say it aloud, she definitely believes and knows that she has a better grasp on what her condition really is than her husband. The narrator, while not being overly forward with her thoughts in her writings or with her husband directly, within her, she longs to make her own decisions and leave her