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The Yellow Wall-Paper

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” written in 1892, is a short narrative told through the journal entries of Jane, a woman who is presumably suffering from postpartum depression. Jane’s husband, John, who does not believe she is sick, has arranged for them to spend three months at a rented mansion so she can recover from what he claims to be slight hysterical tendencies. In the interim their newborn baby is being looked after by, Mary, whose relation to the couple is not stated. As part of her recovery, John has forbidden her to write, have any form of stimulus or social interactions, as well as think, or make any decisions as to the course of her own recovery. Though Jennie, John 's sister, has accompanied the couple, Jane, spends most of her time alone while her husband is away tending to patients. During the three month stay at the mansion, Jane constantly debates her inner thoughts; the need to be the woman she was expected to be, versus having the freedom she longs for. Jane begins to hallucinate about a woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper that covers the walls of her room and subsequently has a mental breakdown. One can conclude, that the cause of Jane’s breakdown was the oppression she suffered at the hands of her husband. …show more content…

However, one can also conclude, that her struggle to adhere to the expectations of a woman, her dire need to continue writing, the overall oppression she inflicted upon herself, and her fanatic search for the woman behind the yellow wallpaper, were equally contributing factors to her mental

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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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The heavy bedstead, which was nailed to the ground, was another feature that represents the room as a jail cell. Therefore, the room that she is prisoned shows how the madness benefited her to gain control and achieve a way to escape her confinement. In conclusion, the diverse literature 's do share a common theme that shows women fighting to overcome societal expectations due to the female gender not valued as thinkers capable of being their equals and mental illness can be caused by society’s stereotypical

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The nineteenth century was a breeding ground for many literary movements, including realism, romanticism and naturalism. Realism consists of literature that is consistent, predictable, and sticks to the “simple truth” of how regular people live and talk. Romanticism is literature that contains things of intellect, strangeness and remoteness and tries to make the familiar unfamiliar. Finally, naturalism is literature that has regular people in extraordinary circumstances; the hero is at the mercy of larger social and natural forces, which are cruelly indifferent; traces of social Darwinism can be found in the literature and there is generally a brutal struggle for survival. Realism can be seen in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman,

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The Struggle of Many Women The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, reflects the life of many women during the difficult times they were living in. The narrator can relate to many people during the Victorian age where the woman’s role was to be a wife and a mother only. The narrator is a woman who is imaginative and is dissociated from herself and from the world.

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Throughout the generation, women have always been trapped in some way or another. In the short story, ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ and the novel ‘The Awakening’ highlights the struggle of women in the late 1800’s and the early 1900s in society. The Yellow wallpaper is a short story about women giving birth and being imprisoned in a room with a weird view of the yellow wall-paper. This resulted in her hallucination lead to the development of mental illness. By the end of the story, she rips off the yellow wallpaper and kills her husband.

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This differs greatly from Jane, who begins to sympathize with the plight of all domestic women through her experience with the woman behind the yellow wallpaper. Although she initially frowned upon the woman’s efforts to escape, the more her mental health deteriorated, the more she began to relate her plight to that of the trapped woman, both prisoners desperate for escape. With her newfound revelation, she sought to save the trapped woman from her prison, subconsciously freeing herself in the process. “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her…I wonder if they all came out of that wallpaper as I did?… “I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane!

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Being a woman in the early twentieth century, she simply followed what her husband told her. She did not have her own voice and kept her thoughts to herself. With that being said, it is as if her identity is simply that of the average woman during her time. However, the days she spends in confinement go by, the identity of that woman drifts away and she is overtaken by the identity of her own mental illness. As said in Diana Martin’s journal on “Images in Psychiatry”, while the narrator in isolation she becomes “increasingly despondent and nervous”.

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“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.

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At the beginning of the short story Jane absolutely hates the wallpaper in her bedroom, but at the end Jane claims that she is “getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper.” (page ) At the beginning of the story Jane is aggravated at John and after John’s treatment she describes him as “so wise” (page ) and “loving [her] so.” (page ) Throughout the “Yellow Wallpaper” John consistently makes Jane’s condition worse and worse until she finally has a mental breakdown.

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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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Enclosed to the four wall of this “big” room, the narrator says “the paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it” because “it is stripped off” indicating that males have attempted to distort women’s truth but somehow did not accomplish distorting the entire truth (Perkins Gilman, 43). When the narrator finally looked at the wall and the paint and paper on it, she was disgusted at the sight. The yellow wallpaper, she penned, secretly against the will of men, committed artistic sin and had lame uncertain curves that suddenly committed suicide when you followed them for a little distance. The narrator is forced to express her discomfort with the image to her husband, he sees it as an “excited fancy” that is provoked by the “imaginative power and habit of story making” by “a nervous weakness” like hers (Perkins Gilman, 46). Essentially, he believes that her sickness is worsening and the depth of her disease is the cause of the unexpected paranoia.

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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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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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After reading “The Yellow Wall Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. You couldn’t help, but see Jane’s spiral downward into more absurd observations, from her acting even more crazy, to her constant ramblings and obsession about the wallpaper, to her constant returning to her moral conscience of being a good wife to John, Jane had quite the ordeal in this house and in her mind. As Jane said “I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I’ll tell you why--privately--I’ve seen her!

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