When writing a literary argumentative essay, I will need to choose a story and the topic from the story that I agree with and find reliable and credible sources to research and cite to support my thesis. In, Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's: The Yellow Wallpaper, for example one could argue as to whether the wife really had a psychological problem that her husband, a physician, was trying to treat, or if being confined and isolated drove her to
She decides that it would be the best to rip down the wallpaper to free the woman so she tears most of it off and creeps around her room. She fully loses her sanity. The ending of “The Yellow Wallpaper” should not have been a surprise because of the foreshadowing: descriptions of the room’s destruction, references to the narrator’s mental condition, and her changing attitude toward the wallpaper. One way the author foreshadows that the narrator is becoming mentally unstable is by describing the room’s deteriorating condition. Toward the beginning of the story the narrator feels as if the room is “a big, airy room.. with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore” (par. 31).
In Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” she tells a horrific ghost story about symptoms of the rest cure. The “rest cure” was a treatment developed by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell who restricted women of intellectual stimuli and condemned them to a domestic life to help their postpartum recovery. After being a victim of this treatment, Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Careful attention to the use of Gilman’s symbols in her short story allows the reader to analyze some of the themes concerning feminism and societal misogyny. Foreshadowing throughout, Gilman uses the house, the writing, and the wallpaper as symbols to show how man’s use of the “rest cure” limit women in society and offers that the solution to this issue is to persistently tear away at man’s injustice.
The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis Essay Identity is key to the one who seizes it. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator has an identity that the author demonstrates. The narrator has an internal battle within herself, that may express depression or a severe mental illness. The narrator shows identity from her actions, reactions, thoughts, and expectations.
Yellow Wallpaper Theme Paragraph Mental illness is the principal theme in the story because of the detrimental effects it has on the physical, emotional, and mental health of a person. This is done through numerous quotes like when Jane states: “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it’s due to this nervous condition” (2).
The woman was obsessed with the wallpaper she begins to hallucinate that something was creeping on her. She had locked herself in the room and would not let anyone in the bedroom with her because she was trying to trap the creeper that she thought she saw. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” say,“‘Open the door, my darling!’ , ‘I can’t,’ said I. ‘ The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf’”
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator 's husband John, who also happens to be her physician, prescribes the rest cure to help lift his wife of her depressive state and ultimately heal her depression. However, the rest cure does not allow the narrator to experience any mental stimulation. Therefore, to manage her boredom the narrator begins obsessing over the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. After analyzing the pattern for awhile, the narrator witnesses a woman trapped behind bars.
She has postpartum depression and staying home alone all day just makes it worse, and she does get worse. This causes her to do something at the end of the story that will show just how crazy she is. At the end of the story the women hits a breaking point. While she is home alone she starts ripping off the wall paper in hopes to let herself free. When her husband comes home,
The house is in a super-isolated place. The house represents the narrator 's personal emotions; restricted and isolation. In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the symbolism of the the wallpaper and the diary demonstrate the psychological difficulties, that were caused by being disrespected and thought less of, during the 19th century for women across the United States. In the “Yellow Wallpaper”, the woman 's husband John neglects her symptoms of postpartum and says she has a slight hysterical tendency.
In the 1800’s and even the 1900’s women were not considered as equal as they are today, and misogyny was expected. Even still women are constantly fighting for equal rights, so the idea of men always having power or superiority over women hasn’t gone away. Considering that the two texts The Yellow Wallpaper and The Story of an Hour were both written in the early 1880’s, they have a very different approach to the men and women’s relationships that are present in the texts. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, Yellow Wallpaper and Kate Chopin’s, The Story of an Hour both authors explore how the women in the stories have to hide their true identity, due to the influence of the men in their lives. The two writers each use similes/metaphors, a similar mood throughout the story and a great deal of imagery to outline
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story told through diary entries of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, becomes obsessed with the ugly yellow wallpaper in the summer home her husband rented for them. While at the home the Narrator studies the wallpaper and starts to believe there is a woman in the wallpaper. Her obsession with the wallpaper slowly makes her mental state deteriorate. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary devices such as symbolism, personification and imagery to help convey her message and get it across to the reader.
Furthermore, Gilman’s conditions as a woman of how society perceived women, and how her illness was misunderstood led to her mental illness. In the nineteenth century, female hysteria was a common topic in literature, in which the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper makes reference. Hysteria is a psychological disorder whose symptoms include conversion of psychological stress into physical symptoms (somatization) . The term hysteria has a controversial mental history, as this disease specifically targeted women in the 1900s – to which Sigmund Freud considered a female disease. In the fifth century, Hippocrates related hysteria, as a female disease.
If she is not actually insane, then the mere confinement and inactivity could have been sufficient to cause a mental breakdown. Either way, whether she is actually insane or not, the yellow wallpaper does serve a purpose as an obvious catalyst for her mental deterioration. We do not yet know if it is merely a symptom of her insanity or the cause. The narrator, however tears up the wallpaper at the end, which shows that she does not want to accept how insane she has become. She attempts to find the “women” when tearing down the wallpaper.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” Literary Analysis The “Yellow Wallpaper” is a iconic short story written by Charlotte Perkins, a famous feminist author. The novel takes place the 19th century and deals with the issue of how women dealt with mental health issues, specifically postpartum depression. Back in the 19th century the way physicians dealt with women 's mental health was much different then it is today, back then they believed that the cure for depression was solvable by isolation and rest. As a result many women suffering from postpartum depression were forced into isolation which only made their situation worse. Jane; the narrator of the short story, is one of these woman forced into the rest treatment by her physician husband.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of a young woman who is battling severe depression. The protagonist is essentially locked away for the summer as a cure for her psychological disorder(s) (Craig 36). Being locked in the house with the yellow wallpaper worsens her mental state and eventually drives her to insanity. Throughout the course of the story, the protagonist’s mental state noticeably declines; she claims there are people in the wallpaper and believes it is haunting her. Several Gothic themes are scattered throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”; however, the protagonist’s isolation, the presence of insanity, and the occurring idea of supernatural elements are most prominent and can be used to justify “The Yellow
