ipl-logo

Repression In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

1651 Words7 Pages

The Yellow Wallpaper and Repression In a multitude of ways, people are constantly being held back and suppressed. Now this could just be seen as the way of life and too often a time it is, but that’s not to say that being subjugated to this doesn’t have its effects. Sigmund Freud once said that “unexpressed emotions will never die; they are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.” Obviously this is true whether it occurs to someone or not and it explains perfectly how the force of repression will take its toll and arise in an unpleasant way later on. There are of course several different types of repression though emotional repression is unbelievably common. In Charlotte Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, the main character is …show more content…

When the main character and her husband move into their temporary house, she is very distraught by the wallpaper in the room she is put into. This causes her to fuss about it and instead of her husband asking why it could be bothersome, he merely brushes it off with a chuckle. In fact he “laughs at [her] so about [the] wall-paper! (Gilman, 2)”. This is a wonderful example on how the she is repressed because this wallpaper truly does antagonize her. When someone is being antagonized, it is customary for a loved one to try and ease their pain to make them comfortable but this does not happen in the main characters marriage. The pain she is enduring is being ignored and dismissed therefore creating an even greater problem which results in an unresolved conflict in her subconscious. This unresolved problem is a driving force in the story. It shows the reader the repressive ideologies the husband, John, lives by and the detrimental effects it has on the main character. Leading into this is the unresolved conflict. Her conflict is with the wallpaper yet the conflict is swept under the rug advancing to an unresolved

Show More
Related
935 Words | 4 Pages

Together the themes of manipulation and mental illness will trigger a series of events that change their lives. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the protagonist becomes increasingly obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom and seclusion from human contact. This was a cure that her husband John prescribed that proved detrimental to her mental health. As she spends more time alone in the room, she becomes fixated on the patterns and images, slowly becoming convinced there is a woman behind the wall that is trapped and that she must free, "The front pattern does move—and no wonder!

Read More
210 Words | 1 Pages

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.

Read More
1405 Words | 6 Pages

The Restriction of a Wallpaper The narrator in 'The Yellow Wallpaper', whose name we never learn, is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression. She is being treated by her husband, John, in a big beautiful house that is far off the road. Her husband, as well as others, believes that isolating her from everyone and everything will cure her. John is a physician, so he and the narrator convince themselves that he knows what is best for her. After spending some time alone in this house, while being inconsiderably taken care of by her husband, the narrator's condition worsens.

Read More
1253 Words | 6 Pages

One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.” The patient’s aversion to the wallpaper reveals a psychological rebellion against societal norms, emphasizing how oppressive patterns contribute to her mental deterioration and framing the wallpaper as a symbol of societal expectations impacting her psyche. The patient’s desperate attempts to free the woman in the wallpaper reveal just how deeply she is feeling the effects of having to topple the expectations put on her by society, on top of her declining mental health. This conclusion can be drawn from her statement, “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled.” The patient’s relentless efforts to free “herself” from the wallpaper mirror her internal battle to free herself from the expectations put upon her by society in terms of being a mother and woman, as she feels she is incompetent when it comes to being a mother and is failing her duties as a wife.

Read More
658 Words | 3 Pages

The woman in The Yellow Wallpaper has emotional problems because society had told women to be quiet in such an abusive relationship. When the woman looked at the wallpaper, she started to see things that weren’t real. Most women in today’s society do not have to go through such hardships like being a man's property, or being forced to stay inside a confined

Read More
807 Words | 4 Pages

Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, wherein she is locked into an upstairs room. Her condition begins to worsen because her exposure to society and people is limited and the yellow wallpaper is what keeps her from thinking about society and peoples; she is kept busy by it and, in fact, wants to stay until she is finished with the wallpaper. She says that “I don’t want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more, and I don’t think that will be enough” (Gilman 400). Although she is isolated and not getting the exposure and people’s presence, the wallpaper is keeping her

Read More
1232 Words | 5 Pages

Oppression is defined as prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control. Cruel and unjust punishment is just the beginning for the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Charlotte Gilman while writing the “The Yellow Wallpaper” deciding to make it into a series of diary entries from a woman who is suffering from post-partum depression. The narrator begins by describing this large home that she and her husband have rented for the summer. Their summer house stands away from the road and contains many locks and little houses.

Read More
1480 Words | 6 Pages

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ depicts the restrains that were imposed

Read More
1214 Words | 5 Pages

She at first describes the wallpaper that she becomes obsessed with as just a patch on the wall that bothers her. A little bit later in the story the reader finds out that the narrator has become obsessed with patch of wallpaper. The wallpaper, in particular, symbolizes many different things and is one of the main points of the narrator’s focus. There are also many more elements of the setting that symbolize something in the story. The two main things the setting symbolizes are feminism and the decline of the narrator’s mental health.

Read More
556 Words | 3 Pages

The main character addresses the fact that the room, even with its restraining rings and bed nailed to the floor, does not bother her. Instead, it is the yellow wallpaper. The color is an unsightly yellow that vexes the main character mind into further. The main character openly admits that her husband contributes to her mental deterioration by neglecting to acknowledge that there is a problem. In conjunction, she also admits that, in spite of the devoured

Read More
814 Words | 4 Pages

The vast majority of people wouldn’t give the wallpaper much thought, however the narrator becomes obsessed with it. To the narrator, the wallpaper is alive and becomes the focus of all her time. Her overwhelming lure to the wallpaper becomes obvious when she first provides a very vivid description stating “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, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (217-218). As she begins to lose her grip on reality, the narrator beings to see faces and eventually a woman within the wallpaper. At first, her description of seeing faces in the wallpaper seems like it could be her mind making since of the varying patterns or just part of her imagination.

Read More
562 Words | 3 Pages

(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”

Read More
1155 Words | 5 Pages

Nonetheless, the narrator continues to pen her ideas about the wallpaper as it transpired from being perplexing to gaining clarity each day. Amidst arriving at a full conclusion of what the wallpaper depicts, the narrator says she sees “a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (Perkins Gilman, 50). As the days passed,

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
883 Words | 4 Pages

The story focuses on a young married woman who is suffering depression and her wild obsession with the wallpaper. The narrators husband John can be considered the villain of the story although this is subtly implied. John can be classified as being ignorant as he thinks he knows what is best for his wife and disregards her opinions

Read More

More about Repression In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Related Topics

Open Document