ipl-logo

Comparing The Yellow Wallpaper 'And Jury Of Her Peers'

994 Words4 Pages

Madness can drive any seemingly rational person to perform completely irrational and potentially deadly actions. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Susan Glaspell both observe the effects of madness in their respective fictional short stories. Gilman’s work, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a first person short story in which madness is the central theme throughout. The narrator, who is also the protagonist, is driven into insanity after being prescribed the “rest cure” from her husband; her descent into madness is apparent as the story goes on. Glaspell’s work, “Jury of Her Peers,” is a third person short story in which madness acts as a secluded theme. In this story, Minnie Wright, the protagonist who is never present, murders her husband. Her drastic …show more content…

Each author portrays this state of madness with profoundness and great intricacy. Both Gilman and Glaspell show a metamorphosis of their respective protagonists from sane and logical to a twisted and demented cognitive presence. In Gilman’s story, the madness of the narrator culminates as she “kept on creeping just the same” (Gilman 10) after her husband fainted. With Glaspell’s story Minnie Wright’s slow and painful descent into a raging madness is discovered throughout the story. Her agonizing fall climaxes as Mrs. Hale realizes that “She was going to bury it (the canary) in that pretty box” (Glaspell 16), uncovering a motive for the killing of her husband. The respective protagonists were also driven into madness by their husbands and a lack of support from their friends. With the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” her husband as well as her husband’s sister were simply ignorant to her pleas for help. Minnie Wright, on the other hand, suffered from a mentally and physically abusive relationship and a lack of support from any friends at all. Despite the commonplace of men in powerful positions in each story, they are both considered feminist works as women are given a larger role and have better ideas than

Show More
Related
558 Words | 3 Pages

Insanity is a deranged state of the mind. Not everyone has the same experiences nor the same symptoms which lead to their mental disorder. In her story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents a peculiar case of insanity. The main character is put on bed rest to overcome her temporary nervous depression. However, while being stuck inside the room, the unreliable narrator increasingly becomes more and more symptomatic.

Read More
1006 Words | 5 Pages

The men of the group, much like John in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” consider themselves more capable than the women and refuse to consider Mrs. Wright as anything other than irrational. The men leave the women to their “trifles” on the first floor, where they discover a broken bird cage, and the bird’s body, broken, carefully wrapped in a small, decorative box. They realize that Mr. Wright had wrung the neck of his wife’s beloved bird and broken its cage. Mrs. Wright, once known for her cheerfulness and beautiful singing, she stopped singing when she encountered Mr. Wright. Just like he did with the bird, Mr. Wright choked the life out of his wife until, finally, Mrs. Wright literally choked the life out of her husband.

Read More
455 Words | 2 Pages

In the words of Christopher Moore, “If you think anyone is sane you just don’t know enough about them.” In William Faulkner’s short story As I Lay Dying, Darl is one character whose actions are interpreted as signs of madness by his family and community. To the discerning reader, however, his actions reflected a deep situational understanding and contribute effectively to the story in its entirety. In As I Lay Dying, the storyline follows a dysfunctional family as they try to bring their dead mother to her burial site in a distant town, while on the way encountering various mishaps and struggles that nearly stop them multiple times.

Read More
120 Words | 1 Pages

A Jury of Her Peers, is abused in ways that are very well hidden. There is no physical evidence of abuse, simply because it is not physical abuse, it is mainly emotional and mental abuse and it has been let go of for numerous years. Minnie Wright, overtime, is dealing with various amounts of stress and abuse. It is only a matter of time before Minnie Wright reaches her limit and has enough of the abuse and then everything will take a turn for the

Read More
1217 Words | 5 Pages

This description highlights the dreary and oppressive atmosphere within the household, reflecting the emotional state of Minnie Wright and her isolation. Moreover,

Read More
1505 Words | 7 Pages

and I understand?” (Glaspell, 17), which is why they try to hide the evidence at the end. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters know why Minnie killed her husband because they too live in similar households, but the men leading the investigation will not because they are blind to what they do to the women around them. The men continue to throw jabs at the ladies not even knowing the women they are making fun of had just found everything they needed to send Minnie to jail,

Read More
544 Words | 3 Pages

Passage Analysis #1 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman, in this particular passage of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” explores the theme of female oppression through imagery and symbolism of the wall-paper. These elements of literature make the wall-paper come to life for both the narrator and the audience. “The front pattern does move”(55) personifies the wall-paper to be so animate and physically restraining that the woman behind it must shake it to attempt to escape. The italicization of “does” serves to further affirm that the wallpaper exhibits restrictive human-like behaviors - particularly those of dominant men in society. The narrator states that there are “a great many woman behind”(55), extending the metaphor to all Victorian women in the United States and others around the world who are oppressed.

Read More
1248 Words | 5 Pages

Eventually, we realize that the woman in the wallpaper is the narrator. Throughout the story, the narrator 's mental state continues to deteriorate. Being both the narrator 's husband and physician, John assumes that he knows what’s best for his wife. However, in this essay, I will argue that Gilman portrays John as an antagonist or “villain” in her story because, through his actions, he is the main reason for his wife 's descent into insanity which proves that he didn’t know what was best for his wife after all.

Read More
1846 Words | 8 Pages

In most interpretations of Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, it is usually deduced that John, the unnamed narrator’s husband in the short story, is a flat character that is used solely for plot advancement. This is most likely due to the combination of indirect discourse, an unreliable narrator, and the ambiguous ending that negatively impacts the reader’s opinion of him. But, if the reader views the short story as a tragedy, John plays a more impactful role in the story. By analyzing the story from an Aristotelian perspective of tragedy, John becomes Gilman’s unintentional tragic hero.

Read More
1113 Words | 5 Pages

Madness often occurs when somebody desires something that is not accessible to them. When somebody cannot have what they want most, they can go insane yearning for it. For example, if an individual struggling with alcoholism attempts to go sober, they will likely experience withdrawal symptoms because their body is so used to having alcohol that it has forgotten how to function without it. During this withdrawal period, the individual may crave alcohol to the point that their psychological instincts take over and they will do absolutely anything for a drink. In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator goes insane in her longing for freedom.

Read More
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
814 Words | 4 Pages

The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story. It’s clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator’s point of view greatly differs from that of her husband’s and other family in her life.

Read More
562 Words | 3 Pages

The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 shows mental illness through the narrator first hand. The theme in this story is going insane verses loneliness as well as being trapped. These themes are shown through the main character (the narrator of the story) as she works through her own mind, life, and surroundings. First, the theme of the woman’s state of mind is the main focus in this story.

Read More
779 Words | 4 Pages

The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a brilliant piece of fictional literature. The tale involves a mentally ill woman who is kept in a hideous, yellow room under the orders of her husband, John, who is a physician. The ill woman is conflicted due to the fact that the horrifying yellow wallpaper in the room is trapping a woman who she must help escape, but the sick woman is aware that she must get better in order to leave the terrifying, yellow room. The setting and personification applied in the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, allows readers to develop an understanding of the sickness of the main character faces.

Read More
484 Words | 2 Pages

The woman was going crazy in her own world as she saw something coming out the yellow wall. The wallpaper had a bright yellow color that drove the narrator crazy and tried to peel it down. The woman was fighting with her mental illness as she explains her influence of her personal life, a woman’s right, and her mental illness. A woman in the early 20th century wrote a story, her story was heard about her mental illness and she had no type of support. The narrator of the story “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper” says, “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked” (Gilman

Read More

More about Comparing The Yellow Wallpaper 'And Jury Of Her Peers'

Related Topics

Open Document