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Mental Madness In The Yellow Wallpaper

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The narrator who lives in the patriarchal society is often controlled by the authority of her husband. John’s occupation as a physician reveals that he is standing on the dominant position in terms of his wife’s illness, and builds up the foundation of his authority in the family. John’s error method of treatment, and mental captivity of his wife leads to the ultimate tragedy. At the beginning of the story, John considers his knowledge is superior than his wife, which John thinks that he knows what is the best treatment for his wife. However, he does not believe that his wife is sick, just a slight hysterical tendency, ignoring her true thoughts and limiting her psychological and physical freedom. The text states: “ Personally, I believe …show more content…

The main reason for her madness is her living environment, loneliness and the frightening yellow wallpaper. She lives in a house where she is defined as a haunted house, and the layout of the house makes her feeling uncomfortable. As what she describes: “a haunted house” (647), her first feeling of this mansion is scary rather than enjoying, while later one, she says, “ I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room for long.” (Gilman, 649) It can be seen that she is extremely reluctant to live in this place. However, the yellow wallpaper is the critical factor that breaks her logic, which directly leads to her mental disorder, “ A smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.” (Gilman, 649) With the time goes by, she even fantasies out of a woman hiding behind the wall. Moreover, her lonely life is also one of the factors causing madness, whenever she wants to meet her families and friends, her husband repeatedly rejected her requests: “It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. […] to let me have those stimulating people about now.” (Gilman, 649) She was asked not to have any companions, except the yellow wallpaper. Even a normal person can’t live in such an unbearable environment for a long time, not to mention the narrator whose mental is devastated. However, these factors caused significant changes in narrator’s

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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

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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.

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For example, she most often relegates to her room to rest and not task her mind in any way. Ultimately and to her own detriment, she stayed to herself and left to her own devices for numerous hours on end. Eventually, her mental journey which details her internal trials and tribulations as a women, wife, and a new mother has her doubting her own opinions, feelings and overall wellbeing. Over the days and weeks she often and willingly confines herself to the dilapidated nursery that bears resemblance to a bedroom of sorts. Again, at the end of the day, she left only with her thoughts, creative fantasies and journal writings for company.

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Especially, for the sake of her health, she cannot read or write, which is the favorite thing of her, even she thinks that reading and writing is helpful to her health, but her husband forbids it. The yellow wallpaper of this room so attracted her that she becomes insane at last. In this book, Gilman mostly illustrate how the woman’s lack of freedom both in their mental and emotional in the patriarchal society. The husband in the book is a doctor, but he cannot treat his wife, even make her insane by his fault rest cure treatment. As for the heroine, the wife in the book, maybe become insane is also a

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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

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Secondly, throughout the story, the narrator describes seeing an evolving woman trapped inside of the wall. Although readers can assume that this woman is merely a product of the narrator’s mind, the woman can also be seen as a symbol of the narrator and her feelings of being trapped. Eventually, the woman in the wall aids the narrator in her escape. In conclusion, many elements of the narrator’s increasing madness throughout The Yellow Wallpaper contributed to her freedom from the confines of the room, the confines of society, and the confines of her

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As this progresses, the woman starts to go mad from ignorance and starts to believe there is someone behind the Wallpaper. In her room, the narrator starts to obsess over the Wallpaper. The Wallpaper symbolizes women starting to realize how unfair they were treated and how responded to this. As the women’s illness keeps getting subdued by her husband, she starts to go mad and the wallpaper demonstrates this. In the third entry of her diary she says, “Of

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However, we later see a shift in her feelings towards the wallpaper as she states that she is growing “really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper” and comes to a realization that it may be “because of the wallpaper” (Par 94) As her opinions on the wallpaper begin to change, the progression of her mental instability becomes increasing visible. She begins to build a relationship with the wallpaper and claims that “There are things in that paper that nobody knows about” (Par 22) her. As this relationship with the wallpaper builds, her sanity begins to slip, and the hallucinations begin in a somewhat minor manor. In her first mention of “the woman” she says that the pattern on the

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Throughout the story, Jane completely disagrees with John’s prognosis and form of treatment. This is shown when Jane says, “So I take phosphates or phosphites - whichever it is, and tonics and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas.” (page ) As the story continues Jane makes suggestions to John about what she thinks would improve her health.

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However as time moves on, and the woman in the wallpaper becomes more and more real to her, it’s clear that her mental state is rapidly depleting. Her first description of a figure in the wallpaper came when she stated that the wallpaper had a “recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (219). By the time the story ends, the narrator had turned into the

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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.

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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.

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(99). The woman on the floor trying to take the wallpaper down would not let her husband in as he tried to knock the door down, but she does not realize she is doing it to herself. For example, Catherine Golden states in her article that, “The narrator seems detached from the bits of wallpaper on the floor next to her and John wallpaper fragments that could be read as a literal representation of the source of her insanity. The narrator’s hallucinations and action of tearing down the wallpaper to free the woman trapped behind the wallpaper pattern condemn her to madness” (60).

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