ipl-logo

External Influences In The Yellow Wallpaper And In Cold Blood

2414 Words10 Pages

Literature serves as a powerful means for individuals to articulate their ideas and convey messages, providing valuable insight into how external influences can shape one’s personality and psychological state. This can be seen through how a person may react to a situation that forces change on them from an external influence, such as a traumatic event. These reactions can be seen through the defence mechanisms to cope with external influences through these four texts: Shutter Island, The GodFather, The Yellow Wallpaper, and In Cold Blood. These texts showcase the interplay of id, ego, and superego, as described in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, accompanied by shared themes present in each. Each text showcases unique changes to these characters …show more content…

The text includes themes of insanity, patriarchal control, women's repression, and control, which the author, Perkins, expressed in her text as a way to inform the reader of the societal and patrilocal impacts they were having on women. The narrator is married to a physician named John, who tells her that they have a sickness that can be cured by being forbidden to do any “work” until they are well again. Despite being told not to “work”, the narrator writes a diary with their thoughts throughout the days describing their opinion of the nursery room, with the entries going with the narrator describing a woman in the wallpaper attempting to escape and they try to help by peeling the wallpaper off only to see multiple women creeping around resorting to tearing the wallpaper anyway possible; biting or tearing until John arrives and faints due to the shock of the state of his wife. A passage describes the unequal relationship that the narrator and John have, with the narrator explicitly stating that they don’t feel sick only to be laughed at by John, saying “John laughs at me, of course, one expects that in marriage”, with this line going into the societal views which go into the superego of a person. The superego is a preconscious activity that follows the ideals and morals a person may have, with this case going into the societal views during the Progressive era where the patriarchy views women as being acquiescent to the men in their relationships. This influence made the narrator question their superego, trying to follow their desires ‘id’ by questioning and giving their own opinion on the matter, which was viewed as abnormal in the general view of a married woman in the Victorian societal view. The narrator later talks about

Show More
Related

Yellow Wallpaper Downfall

896 Words | 4 Pages

She is oppressed by not only her husband, but her illness as well and she wishes to break free just as the woman in the wallpaper does. Jane feels as though this oppression is inescapable and the battle of breaking free is impossible. Shortly thereafter, the reader can see that Jane’s oppression turns to distrust. When she first began to unravel the wallpaper, she didn’t share what she saw because she wanted to be the first to figure it out, but now she proclaims “I have found out another funny thing, but I shan’t tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much” (319).

Read More

The Yellow Wallpaper Rhetorical Analysis

766 Words | 4 Pages

Perkins's first-person account features a protagonist grappling with postpartum depression who considers her confinement and the medication her husband, a physician, prescribed for her. This analysis will dive into the rhetoric and other strategies that were used by Perkins in her short story. At first, the most seen rhetorical strategy that Perkins uses is ‘imaginary’. The narrator emphasizes that the windows in the nursery that was converted to a bedroom were closed for young kids, signifying both mental and physical isolation. The narrator claims “windows that look all the way” This highlights that the narrator feels like she’s being watched all the time, there’s no such privacy.

Read More

The Role Of Her Husband In The Yellow Wallpaper

366 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout the story the readers see a woman who suffers a certain type of disorder, in which her husband is her caretaker throughout the whole story. She starts to fascinate on the wallpaper in her room and begins to imagine that there are creepers in the wallpaper. However, at the end she feels the woman who has been creeping is she herself. This story symbolizes her journey of always being captive by either her husband’s doctor or her husband’s sister that seems to act in the story as her housekeeper or nurse. She was never able to live a life she desires.

Read More

Gender Roles In The Yellow Wallpaper

556 Words | 3 Pages

Gender Roles in “The Yellow Wallpaper” In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a lady is married to a man named John, who is a physician. John tells his wife that she has nervous depression and will not let her “live” because of this condition. She becomes trapped inside a room and becomes overly obsessed with the yellow wallpaper. Her husband believes she is getting well, but she is actually growing mad and insane.

Read More

The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis

1139 Words | 5 Pages

In The Yellow Wallpaper, the cruel and disdainful nature towards women, especially women who don’t quite agree with convention, is displayed by several main characters and by the yellow wallpaper itself. My stance is that through symbolism and characterization, the yellow wallpaper represents the abstract concept of oppression, especially for women in a general sense, and John represents the concrete concept of oppression--the oppressor. Gilman pushes the yellow wallpaper throughout the story as the central figure of blame for the narrator’s descent into madness. The narrator becomes blindingly obsessed with this one key element of the setting, and makes this her prime instigator of insanity.

Read More

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower Literary Analysis

803 Words | 4 Pages

Psychoanalytical Literary Essay Childhood sexual abuse can have some long term effects on someone’s life. For example, being a victim of sexual abuse as a child can result in developing trust issues, or eventually be involved in an abusive relationship themselves. In some cases as the victim grows older they start to develop anxiety, depression, flashbacks, and sometimes can repress memories that were stimulated and brought back up by some sort of gesture, or phrase, causing them to remember that they’ve been sexually abused when they were children. In the book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, the choice that Charlie made by being intimate with Sam had some big repercussions that impacted his life, by having very vivid dreams, which helped him remember the molestation that he went through when he was younger. Although he experiences a severe panic attack, this ultimately leads to emotional and mental healing

Read More

Research Paper On Dracula

1080 Words | 5 Pages

In this work, I aim to demonstrate how these internal conflicts impact character actions. Sigmund Freud created the

Read More

Oppression In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1232 Words | 5 Pages

The house is in a super-isolated place. The house represents the narrator 's personal emotions; restricted and isolation. In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the symbolism of the the wallpaper and the diary demonstrate the psychological difficulties, that were caused by being disrespected and thought less of, during the 19th century for women across the United States. In the “Yellow Wallpaper”, the woman 's husband John neglects her symptoms of postpartum and says she has a slight hysterical tendency.

Read More

Descent Into Madness In Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

1480 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More

Isolation In The Yellow Wallpaper

570 Words | 3 Pages

Her descriptions of the room, with the furniture seemingly being nailed to the floor and the windows being “barred” show an underlying understanding that her thoughts and personality is being confined. The irony present in this description, due to her belief that the room used to be a nursery, shows her early denial of her husband’s dominance over her. As the story progresses and she begins to see the woman behind the wallpaper, the reader is exposed to the narrator’s realization that she is the one that is actually being suppressed. The descriptions of the wallpaper, showing how confining it is for the symbolic woman behind it, shows how the narrator is being trapped by those bars in both her marriage and in her mental illness. Thus when she says, “At night in any kind of light… it becomes bars,” the reader is shown how restricted the narrator feels, reflected through the wallpaper.

Read More

Psychoanalytic Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper

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.

Read More

The Yellow Wallpaper Gender Analysis

1123 Words | 5 Pages

Through her hatred of the wallpaper, she is repelling that notion, and is showing her interest in shedding the boundaries that accompany a female role. At the beginning of the story, she has a initial dislike of the wallpaper, but her disgust grows exponentially, and quickly becomes completely fixated on the pattern. As she examines the paper, she sees the image of the trapped women inside, which symbolizes her feelings of confinement. On the surface, she appears to be coping, but precisely like the wallpaper, when she focuses on what is under the top pattern, she reveals a anguished women underneath. At the climax of the story, the narrator tears the paper from the wall, showing her desire to eliminate traditional norms and John’s

Read More

Ralph Ellison's Character Development

1237 Words | 5 Pages

Character development within novels with complex plot structures proves to be a difficult task necessitating the author to add their own inner thoughts and experiences to weave a more realistic story. The historical background of a writer helps glean on information about that person’s unconscious and subconscious processes that become apparent within an author’s literature. As the author develops their thoughts throughout a novel attempting to paint a clearer picture of their purpose, their own persona becomes a part of the literature. Psychoanalytic theory attempts to further this claim by taking information from one’s childhood, inner taboo thoughts and hidden motivations, and synthesizing them for a better picture of the author’s processes

Read More

Hysteria In Wide Sargasso Sea And The Yellow Wallpaper

648 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More

What Is Feminism In The Yellow Wallpaper

1155 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More

More about External Influences In The Yellow Wallpaper And In Cold Blood

Open Document