Mental Illness In Jane Eyre's The Yellow Wallpaper
There are many events that can foreshadow the rest of one’s life for the better, or, for the worst. In Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Jane (the narrator) struggles with a mental illness that causes her to become very weak so her husband, John, takes her to a country home to heal. While at the house she stays in a room that has old yellow wallpaper. Jane is deeply disturbed yet highly intrigued and maintains her deep inspections of the wallpaper as she stays there.
She proceeds to explain the contributing factors of the narrator succumbing to her “disease” of hysteria which was isolation from social interaction and the restriction of her own thoughts. She points out that the narrator is confined to a simple square room with nothing to offer in terms of mental health therapy. The narrator’s lack of the ability to interact with anything or anyone leads to infatuation with the wallpaper, which turns out to be “the
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins uses insanity to portray the mistreatment of women and how the solutions people thought worked back then only made them worse. A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner brings up insanity as negative response to what society thinks or says about a certain person. The gossips and the rejection of Homer only made her commit murder. Readers can learn from this short stories to not be so judgmental against women, or believe in stereotypes that society portray.
The woman in the wallpaper is trapped just like she is. The narrator creates a figure that she could relate to and then spends all her time focused on the figure and trying to figure out how to help the woman in the wallpaper escape her cell. As the story continues and she remains isolated, it is obvious Jane views herself as the woman inside the wallpaper. As a result of being trapped in her room, she begins to lose her sanity. She believes she is trapped in the wallpaper and must escape its holds.
In other words, Jane imagines the yellow wallpaper as a cage. Her confinement is stressing her and we can see that it is taking a toll on her. She describes the yellow wallpaper as if it was becoming a cage, in which she was trapped in with the girl who in a way is her. Gilman uses imagery by using many descriptive words to enhance the reader 's perception of the setting, making them understand the setting or plot better. The womimagean in the wallpaper is representing the situation that Jane is in, trapped.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about a woman who is suffering from temporary nervous depression after giving birth to her child. She is told by her husband John and her brother, who are both physicians, to get some rest and stay away from any kind of physical activity. Neither of the men believes that anything is wrong with her. Since they are both physicians of “high standing” she doesn’t know what else to do except to go through with their practices (Gilman 85). She is practically imprisoned in an upstairs bedroom that used to be a nursery.
What exactly defines one as “insane” versus “sane”, and where is the boundary between the two? Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” explores exactly that: the short story initially seems to be a tale of a 19th century woman forced into the notorious rest cure popularized at the time by male doctors--however, as the plot progresses, it becomes a much deeper commentary not only on societal limitations imposed on women, but also on the blurred line separating sanity from insanity. Gilman explores the boundary between sanity and insanity with the usage of different literary elements; she expresses how the boundary is “paper-thin” through the usage of symbolism, shows the subtle conversion to insanity by utilizing a stream of consciousness
(Perkins Gilman 13). Jane hallucinates so badly and makes her think she was trapped behind the wall. She finally fully accepts that she's the woman in the wallpaper. When John got home he went to go talk to Jane, ‘“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!”’
Firstly, the story is a journal that the narrator is writing while being treated with the rest cure, which she keeps a secret from her husband, sister and others who come to visit her. As the journal progresses, the narrator’s writing demonstrates her fall to insanity. In the beginning, the narrator sees her journal is an adequate method of escape from her illness and her situation. As the narrator’s mind grows more and more crazed, she develops an urge to physically escape from the room that she is isolated in, which occurs at the end of the story. The narrator’s journaling was simply a small step that contributed to her ultimate freedom.
At the beginning of the short story Jane absolutely hates the wallpaper in her bedroom, but at the end Jane claims that she is “getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper.” (page ) At the beginning of the story Jane is aggravated at John and after John’s treatment she describes him as “so wise” (page ) and “loving [her] so.” (page ) Throughout the “Yellow Wallpaper” John consistently makes Jane’s condition worse and worse until she finally has a mental breakdown.
The reader of this story can tell this woman is not only suffering from insanity, but also loneliness. She often finds herself crying and says, “I cry at nothing, and I cry most of the time.” She attempts to tell her husband how she is feeling but she is unable to, she says “I was crying before I had finished.” (681) the reader can see how this woman is upset and it is not only due to her illness. Infect, the woman makes many comments about how her husband is not reassuring.
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.
“Insanity: n. mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior” (Hill). This definition describes the narrator, a sweet yet deadly man, of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe seamlessly. (Appositive) A few prominent characteristics demonstrate the narrator’s insanity, and those include his motives, his actions, and his thoughts.
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
After reading “The Yellow Wall Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. You couldn’t help, but see Jane’s spiral downward into more absurd observations, from her acting even more crazy, to her constant ramblings and obsession about the wallpaper, to her constant returning to her moral conscience of being a good wife to John, Jane had quite the ordeal in this house and in her mind. As Jane said “I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I’ll tell you why--privately--I’ve seen her!
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