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Identity In The Yellow Wallpaper

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Identity is formed through a variety of factors. Elements such as culture, society, and friends all have a huge influence on forming identity. However, the social pressure to fit in has especially affected the female population. For years, women have changed their identities in order to be accepted into society. While this theme is prominently seen in today’s society, it is also commonly seen in a variety of older novels. Female identity is transformed to fit male’s desire for dominance and society’s ideal image. In The Yellow Wallpaper and Wide Sargasso Sea, the relationship of male dominance over female power is displayed. In both pieces, the female protagonists identities are transformed to accompany the male’s perspective of them. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the protagonist’s identity is changed due to John’s …show more content…

Rochester’s feels discomfort and weak when he arrives in first arrives in the Caribbean. While he experiences vulnerability in the environment, he feels more threatened by the powerful women he encounters. In order to impose his dominance, Rochester strips Antoinette of her confident identity. In the beginning of the novel, Antoinette is trying to determine who she is. She questions her mixed ethnicity and her ancestry of madness. However, through Rochester’s manipulation, Antoinette becomes the mad women he perceives her as. The author writes, “I scarely recognized her voice… a breathless but curiously indifferent voice” (162). The quotation supports the concept of Rochester shaping Antoinette’s identity so drastically that he does not even recognize her. In both texts, the male assumes the role as the husband, forming the notion that it is their job to fix the mad females to fit society. As shown in both examples, the male’s efforts to assimilate the “sick” women into society result in the female loosing her power and

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Identity is an important aspect in the novel Passing by Nella Larson, and it is tied within race, socioeconomic class, and gender. However this novel challenges the very notion of self- perception and how circumstances regarding your race, gender, and overall identity can change as you encounter obstacles and adversities ; as seen with Irene Redfield who’s own self-identity especially with respect to her race, family, and general livelihood is morphed and challenged with the reemergence of Clare in her life. One of Irene’s early encounters with Clare, the one where Irene is introduced to Clare’s husband, reveals how even though identity is such a pivotal part of one’s character we must still adapt to and act accordingly to the

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Throughout literature the constant theme of identity has been explored, with Northrop Frye even suggesting “the story of the loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework for all literature.” For characters, true identity isn’t always apparent, it needs to be searched for. Sometimes the inner struggle for identity stems from ones need for belonging. Whether one finds their sense of identity within friends, family, or in a physical “home”. It’s not always a place that defines identity.

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Steven Herrick gives us a brief understanding of identity in his verse novel ‘by the river’. The main themes that I will be discussing are – grief, relationships, and coming of age. Identity is formed through many ways; however, it is sorted into two categories – getting born into and adopting. Our identity that we get born into are sex, race, and family but identity that we adopt are our attitude, beliefs, and actions. Herrick shows the use of identity in the narrative verse ‘by the river’, by making a story about a young man named Harry, and Harry’s journey through his teenage years, and occasional flashbacks from Harrys younger self experiences.

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Identity is the “condition of being oneself”. This identity is predominantly based on relationships formed with peers and family. Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, explores the life of Josephine Alibrandi and her journey to find her real identity. At the beginning of the novel, Josephine is unsure of her cultural, social and personal standing within her society. The novel Divergent by Veronica Roth presents similar issues in relation to uncertainty of the protagonist’s identity.

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It could be argued that Rochester’s malevolent wife, Birtha Mason represents the complete oppression of a woman, by patriarchal domination In both novels, there is a prominent power struggle between partiarcle masculine power and famine inferiority. Referring back to their pertinent feminist reading of jane eye, Gilbert and Gubar note that in male-authored books, if women are not categorized as ‘angels’, then they are villainized as a ‘monster’ (Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar, 1979). Alike both female protagonist, the male figure uses zoomorphic diction to describe Birtha, depicting her as an almost primal being, who has lost all intellectual communication, and instead resorted to ‘snarl’ and “crawls like an animal. ”(JE). In their pertinent feminist reading of Jane Eyre, Gilbert and Gubar describe bertha mason as Jane’s “truest and darkest double.’

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It is evident that change is a natural component in the average person’s life. Some however, are more drastic than others. This is exhibited through the first-person narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall Paper”, who undergoes a drastic change in her health due to postpartum depression, her relationships with the individuals around her, and her isolation. These changes later develop an internal conflict in the form of a troubling identity plight.

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The identity a person holds is one of the most important aspects of their lives. Identity is what distinguishes people from others, although it leaves a negative stereotype upon people. In the short story Identities by W.D Valgardson, a middle-aged wealthy man finds himself lost in a rough neighborhood while attempting to look for something new. The author employs many elements in the story, some of the more important ones being stereotype and foreshadow. For many people, their personal identity is stereotyped by society.

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Rochester was a major influence on Jane as this was a critical time she was maturing, yet she did not let him get in the way of her work. The work that was expected of her what always her top priority, Rochester was her second. “I believe he is of mine;—I am sure he is,—I feel akin to him,—I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him” (Bronte 266). The relationship between Rochester and Jane was undeniable.

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Another thing Antoinette mentions, which is arguably her main point, is that he “abused the planters” and does not like black people. This shows that Rochester is not as progressive as he seems in Jane Eyre, and it creates a much darker undertone for what happens to Antoinette near the end of the novel, as she seems to go insane. In both the source text and the 1996 adaptation we, much like Jane, are expected to dismiss Bertha’s behaviour as insane and as a villain attempting to come between two forbidden lovers. However, after reading Wide Sargasso Sea, it is clear that this is not the case, and Antoinette’s insanity is possibly brought on by Rochester’s cruel mistreatment of her and is the direct cause of her

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In Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “The Changeling”, the hardships of gender stereotypes are exposed. The contrast between a young girl’s imagination and the reality of her gender role is clear by her attempt to appease her parents. She is neither manly enough to gain the attention of her father nor womanly enough to attain the respect of her mother. Her dilemma of not being able to fit in is emphasized by Cofer’s use of imagery and repetition.

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However, in postmodern fictions there is other attempting to define the concept of gender identity in light of the psychological perception. Carter’s postmodern feminist assumption emphasizes the role of the psychological aspects in forming individual’s gender identity. For example, in School of Sympathy (1948) Nancy Roberts defines identity as, “who we think we are who we tell our-selves we are or ought to be” (p. 19). She suggests that gender identity is a sense that we try to form.

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Identity is often a cornerstone in a many important works of literature. The struggle of a protagonist to reconcile with their identity and the expectations or restrictions that accompany this struggle often mirrors real life endeavors and makes important critiques on social structure. The essay A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf makes an influential claim that a woman’s identity as lesser than a man’s in society prevents her from the opportunity to fill her role as a writer while the novel The Bell Jar written by Sylvia Plath describes a woman’s struggle to reconcile with her expectations as a woman in the 1950s. Both pieces make a statement about the impact of identity and its influence on the women faced with the consequences of these societal expectations.

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In Wide Sargasso Sea, it is Daniel Cosway—in his first letter—that informs Rochester that Antoinette’s family suffers from madness. Daniel writes, ‘There is madness in that family. Old Cosway die raving like his father before him’ and further writes about Mrs Cosway’s descent into madness, and that Antoinette is showing the same symptoms (Part Two, 58-59). Depending on the perspective, this could be seen as something Rochester echoes in Jane Eyre, ‘Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family;—idiots and maniacs of three generations!’ (249).

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- Edward is an economically independent man with a favorable status and influential connections still looking for a profitable match. Jane will be the one in charge to unmask him to the audience: “I saw he was going to marry her [Blanche Ingram] for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connections suited him” (Brontë 205) This manner of conduct converts Mr. Rochester from a hero into a villain, a perpetrator and “his project of

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This novel is also autobiographical. Throughout history, women have been locked in a struggle to free themselves from the borderline that separates and differentiate themselves from men. In many circles, it is agreed that the battleground for this struggle and fight exists in literature. In a

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