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The Yellow Wall-Paper

1343 Words6 Pages

Written by Mrs. Charlotte Perkin Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper is a daring piece of literature written by a woman who was well before her time in the field of women’s rights. Mrs. Gilman was a female activist who envisioned the possibilities of women working outside of the home. Using her writing as an outlet, Mrs. Gilman managed her own depression and expressed her strong feminist beliefs. The Yellow Wall-Paper captivates the mind with a creative image of a fragile woman while simultaneously incorporating aspects of feminist beliefs. Using a clear, intelligent, and artistic style Mrs. Gilman was able to practice self-expression in an era that was far from accepting. According Clara Park’s book review, The Living of Charlotte Perkin; Mrs. …show more content…

Throughout the story the narrator begins to form an odd infatuation with the yellow wallpaper that decorates the room she lives in. A first, the fixation is innocent, then eventually metaphors into an unhealthy obsession with what she believes is a reflection of her own feelings and situation. Just after the narrator resolves that no one but she can figure out the wallpaper, she states “Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be” (Gilman, 441). This captures one of the exceptional qualities of The Yellow Wall-Paper: Mrs. Gilman’s imagination and creative writing ability. At this point in the story, the narrator has become completely consumed by the wallpaper, spending all day and night thinking about it. Life has become more interesting by reason of her new fixation. Soon, the narrator begins to observe a creeping woman who appears to be imprisoned behind the wallpaper and decides that she will free her. Just as she had torn off the last piece of wallpaper the two women become one and the narrator admits; “I don’t like to look out of the window even – there are countless of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of the wall-paper as I did” (Gilman, 444)? The woman behind the patterned wallpaper was an image of herself – she had been the one stooping and creeping. Additionally, she knows that there are several other women in similar situations as hers, several that she is fearful to glance at. The question she asks in this quote is gripping, complex, and underlines the purpose of Mrs. Gilman’s story: Must all of them struggle the way I did? Were they trapped within homes that were actually prisons? Need they all turn their lives upside down to be free? The narrator is unable to answer these questions and leaves them up for other women, and readers to contemplate. As if she is seizing the opportunity to ask another

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The Yellow Wallpaper Syntax

1178 Words | 5 Pages

Critical Statement: In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman employs exclamatory functions within her syntax to display the symbolism of the woman within the wallpaper to illustrate her own constricted freedom due the influence of the masculine dominance. In the beginning of the story, Gilman illustrates the wallpaper as a catalyst for exhibiting the intensity of the narrator’s psychological disorder. After the narrator and her husband settle into their new house, the narrator inspects her room, and begins discerning ominous relations and elements within the wallpaper.

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Symbolism In Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'

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At first glance, Gilman’s short story,”The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a very strange story. The story is based on a woman who eventually becomes taken over by the yellow wallpaper in her room, even to where she eventually is driven insane. Although the story only tells you the main details, the wallpaper is so much more than just a terrible decoration choice. When annotated, the wallpaper is made out to be a symbol of all the terrible things that are to come. The room at the top of the house was not just a room, but a place that caused the unfortunate woman to become crazy.

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Symbolism In 'The Yellow Wallpaper'

457 Words | 2 Pages

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Gilman critiques the restrictive nature of patriarchal society through the bars in the female narrator’s bedroom window that represent her relationship with her husband. As the narrator’s mental health deteriorates near the end of the story, she recognizes that the bars on her window physically confine her to her room. She states that “To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try” (Gilman 1694). Thus, Gilman clearly reveals to the reader that the narrator desires freedom but is kept in her room by the bars on her window. These bars directly relate to the narrator’s relationship with her husband, John.

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Paula Treichler's The Yellow Wallpaper

278 Words | 2 Pages

“The Yellow Wall-Paper" was written in 1892, and is seen as a feminist short story. The woman in the story goes ‘mad’ due to her very limited role within society at the time. Along with her madness, the ability to express herself creatively is also being confined within the very yellow walls of a room, that has bars on the window, and a lock on the other side of the door, on the top level of the house her husband has her locked up in. Forbidden to write due to her doctor husband’s prescription of ‘absolute and complete rest of body and mind’, the narrator, who is unnamed. This narrator soon becomes obsessed with the room's wallpaper.

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Literary Devices In The Yellow Wallpaper

941 Words | 4 Pages

It is not a mere coincidence that the woman in the wallpaper is ensnared behind a design. Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman demonstrates how a person’s isolation and restriction to freely express their own uniqueness can lead to undesirable results such as hallucinations and insanity. The narrator’s mind is restrained from reading and writing, therefore her mind in its place turns to her surroundings and settles upon the wallpaper as an intellectual task and literacy imagination that she obsess over to an unhealthy degree, which is the only place she can maintain some control and exercise the power of her imaginative mind. By having the woman, whom the narrator imagines, be seen as though she is trapped behind a pattern is merely a more straightforward personification of that metaphorical restriction of self-expressing, creativity, and desire to be independence. For Gilman, a person’s mind that is kept isolated without any intellectual activities is condemned to self-destruct just like a ticking

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Women In Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

2622 Words | 11 Pages

In the story, "Yellow Wallpaper," Charlotte Gilman claims that women were submissive to man. Gilman shows this by using some past background from her life. Gilman uses a female in comparison with the male characters from her past to prove that men were most dominate in their relationships with women. Throughout her life the narrator has endured isolation, control, and depression; allowing her to use her-life comparison in relation with her story. The author’s use of: imagery, irony, and symbolism becomes clear to the reader as the struggle she endured is embodied in her written work.

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Mental Illness In The Yellow Wallpaper

1157 Words | 5 Pages

At the beginning of the story, the narrator has a hope of getting better one day and is willing to do whatever is best to return to society. By the middle of the story, the narrator loses all of the responsibility in her life, leaving her to do nothing but dwell during the day. By the end, the narrator becomes overpowered by the thoughts and allusions in her head causing her to descend into a state of madness. Thus, in the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman depicts the potential effects of postpartum depression and emphasizes the need for proper

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Imprisonment In The Yellow Wallpaper

1414 Words | 6 Pages

The protagonist of The Yellow Wallpaper anthropomorphizes the floral elements of the yellow wallpaper, wherein wallpaper is typically a feminine floral decoration on wall interiors. These elements signify the scrutiny Victorian society makes of lives of its womenfolk, particularly of women who are creative and insubordinate to their spouses. The protagonist is one such woman; her writing denounces her imaginative character and the surreptitious persistence of her writing denounces her matrimonial and feminine disobedience which were considered radical in her contemporary society. Gilman expresses the suppression felt by women from societal scrutiny to be one of “strangling”, through the narrator, who in one instance describes the wallpaper pattern like so: “it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads… the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!” Her anthropomorphizing of the pattern of the wallpaper adopts a grimmer facet when she writes that “when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide.”

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Identity In The Yellow Wallpaper

1008 Words | 5 Pages

It is evident that change is a natural component in the average person’s life. Some however, are more drastic than others. This is exhibited through the first-person narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall Paper”, who undergoes a drastic change in her health due to postpartum depression, her relationships with the individuals around her, and her isolation. These changes later develop an internal conflict in the form of a troubling identity plight.

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Portrayal Of Victorian Women

774 Words | 4 Pages

She wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in an effort to open the public’s eyes to the unfairness of this treatment. By infusing Jane’s narrative with childish language and actions without ever actually calling “Jane” by her name, Gilman creates a universal experience any woman of the time could insert herself into. This allowed women to fully realize the injustice they faced. John’s belittlement of Jane also serves to create both a universal and eye opening experience for the women reading it. Additionally, for those who were willing to read into the symbolism, the nursery and the meaning underlying it added to the injustice Gilman conveys.

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Charlotte Perkins The Yellow Wallpaper

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman, born in 1860 in the United States, was an influential intellectual and feminist who fought intensively against women 's inequality in north- american society. In many of her novels, shorts stories, poems, and nonfiction work, Charlotte Perkins portrayed the oppression suffered by women, and talked about the social changes she thought were necessary to achieve gender equality. Her most famous work the novel “The Yellow Wallpaper”, considered a classic in feminist literature. It is the story of an emotionally fragile woman who is taken by her own husband to therapeutic retreat in which the wall is clothed in a dark and scary yellow wallpaper.

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The Yellow Wallpaper Point Of View Analysis

814 Words | 4 Pages

The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story. It’s clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator’s point of view greatly differs from that of her husband’s and other family in her life.

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The Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism Essay

1202 Words | 5 Pages

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.

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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,

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1106 Words | 5 Pages

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator, Jane, has postpartum depression. In order to cure this depression, John, Jane’s husband and a doctor, administer the rest treatment on her. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” through her personal experience. Along with writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” she wrote an explanation for why she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

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