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Personification In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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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. The unsatisfying setting that appears around the ill woman unravels an understanding …show more content…

For instance, there is an understanding of the woman’s feelings as she describes “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” and the pattern looking at her “as if it knew what a vicious influence it had” (Gilman 437). The personification is symbolic in displaying how the woman felt as she was stuck in the lonely room with allowance of her husband and Jennie, their child’s nanny, keeping their eyes on her with the dependence of her healing. Additionally, the woman specifies that behind the yellow wallpaper she can see “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman 438). As the appearance of the wallpaper is personified, the author taps into the hidden meaning that the woman’s sickness is taunting her as she is attempting to heal. In the end, readers are given the most significant piece of personification in the statement, “and then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared that I would finish it today!” (Gilman 445). This impactful sentence proves to the audience that when the day for the woman to leave the room came, her sickness was now in full control of her mind and she embraced it. The personification used in the short story followed the reactions of how the ill

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The central idea in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins, Is that a person’s environment can lead to insanity. A writing strategy, which develops this idea, is symbolism. In Stenson’s short story, the narrator’s room symbolizes her confinement and being oppressed. An example where the narrator’s room symbolizes confinement is when she describes her room as, “a big airy room… for the windows are barred for little children…” (648). By the narrator describing the windows as barred, it gives off the feeling of being trapped.

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Point The author of “The Yellow Wallpaper” utilizes similes in order to give the reader an image of what the main character is describing. Evidence 1 Main character compares a specific pattern on the wallpaper to a “broken neck” and “two bulbous eyes staring at you upside down.” This successfully creates a clear image of what the main character is describing.

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“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story that deals with the concepts of madness and gender inequality. The narrator in the story is a suppressed woman who is trapped in a small room as part of the treatment of her illness. She is unable to write or take care of her baby as a good and healthy mother can. The narrator, who suffers from a mental illness and resents gender inequality as well as her inability to express herself, is a vehicle through which Gilman criticizes mainstream opinions and closemindedness regarding these issues through the use of symbolism and imagery.

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She describes it as “The paint and the paper… It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide- plunge off at outrageous angles, destroying themselves in unheard of contradictions” (Gilman 487) The “rest” period she was prescribed in this room drove her to the brink of insanity over the several months that she was there. The woman seems to use the wallpaper as an image of her being trapped. Stuck in her own mind, she is seeing herself in the wallpaper, when she is ripping off the paper she maybe feels as she is ripping herself inside an internal struggle or conflict she is trying to break free

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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.

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She is given a treatment plan because she is seen as damaged by her husband John, who thinks that this “Rest Cure” will fix her. This “Rest Cure” only drives the woman to insanity. Symbolism,which is a key literary element in Charlotte Gilman’s work , is used to portray many different messages throughout the story. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman, it is very evident that Gilman symbolically shows the narrator feeling trapped, depressed, and damaged throughout the

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Everything from how her interactions with her family to her perception of her environment and how it evolves throughout the story allow the reader to almost feel what the narrator is feeling as the moves through the story. In the beginning, the only reason the reader knows there may be something wrong with the narrator is because she comes right out and says she may be ill, even though her husband didn’t believe she was (216). As the story moves on, it becomes clear that her illness is not one of a physical nature, but of an emotional or mental one. By telling the story in the narrator’s point of view, the reader can really dive into her mind and almost feel what she’s feeling.

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Gilman uses her own experiences from “rest cure” to relate and provide an inside feeling to what it felt like to be under these conditions. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story that uses symbolism to illustrate an authoritative medical mindset and martial controlling husband along with a domestic setting that implies imprisonment and the pattern in which women, specifically the narrator, are trapped. Continuously, the narrator is living in fear of her husband and is not permitted to form her own opinion on her illness. Gilman uses the symbolic nature of the journal and the “typical” marriage of this time period to paint the picture of the narrator’s oppression. Her husband uses the fact that he is a respected physician against her and makes her feel like she is voiceless on her own illness.

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