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The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

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"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late 19th century, which explores the physical and mental deterioration of a woman who is prescribed the "rest cure" for her postpartum depression. The protagonist is a married woman who is forced to take the "rest cure" by her husband and Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell. In the process of the "rest cure", she was locked in a room with yellow wallpaper, which gradually deteriorated her mental state. The “rest cure” was a popular treatment for women's mental illness at the time, and it consisted of total bed rest, isolation, and a lack of intellectual stimulation.
There are many elements related to Gothic literature and Gothic style in "Yellow Wallpaper". Gothic literature …show more content…

The house is a large colonial building. It has fine details, but these details are like a prison cage, which trapped the protagonist in it. "It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls." (The Yellow Wallpaper). Here "barred" appears more than once in the story, obviously not only for the safety of the children in the story but also for the imprisonment of the heroine in the story. This architectural style expresses the depression and restraint of the protagonist, this constraint comes from the expectations of society and the stereotype of women. In addition, the symbolic significance of the architectural style during the colonial period is also manifested in the color of the house. The house in the novel is described as "yellow wallpaper". This color shows the oppression and control of the protagonist as a woman. The protagonist expresses her inner changes and liberation through the changes in the wallpaper, and also symbolizes that she tries to get rid of the constraints of society and family. However, the architectural style of the colonial period is still the cage that she cannot escape, reflecting the long-term adverse effects of colonialism on …show more content…

Silas Weir Mitchell is a doctor in "Yellow Wallpaper". He recommends and performed the “rest care” for the protagonist. The protagonist's dissatisfaction and resistance to the “rest care” was regarded as a symptom of hallucinations and strengthened her restrictions on the “rest care”. This mandatory medical method will only exacerbate the hero's condition, making her more desperate and helpless. And Mitchell didn't understand the real situation of the protagonist. He just heard her husband's report and judged the protagonist's condition. This also shows that doctors do not listen to patients, but treat them as the targets of medical

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The narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the main character in the short novel. She is a young newly married mother in the upper middle class who is very imaginative. The narrator is going through a stage of depression and believes the house they have temporarily moved into is haunted. What the narrator is actually experiencing is called Postpartum depression, depression suffered by a mother following childbirth. This illness can arise from the combination of hormonal changes, psychological adjustment to motherhood, and fatigue.

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“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 is a short story that explores the effects of challenging patriarchal and social oppression on a woman’s mental health. The story’s protagonist is an unnamed woman who is prescribed a rest cure by her physician husband, John, to help her recover from what he describes to be a “nervous depression”. The woman is confined to a room in their summer home decorated with yellow wallpaper. As the days pass, she becomes increasingly fixated on the wallpaper and begins to lose touch with reality. In the final moments of the story, the woman descends into madness, and her husband passes out after discovering the states she is in.

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In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is treated for depression by “rest cure,” isolation from society, which affects her mentality causing her to become secretive, withdrawn, and insane. With the treatment

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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.

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The Rest Cure And The “ Yellow wallpaper” What is anxiety and why do we experience it? What are things like postpartum depression and psychosis? In the 1800’s mental illnesses such as these were perceived differently than they are now. Written in 1892 The “Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman having had experiences of her own with the rest cure writes about a character suffering from depression and hysteria. Gilman is able to illustrate throughout the short story the ineffectiveness of this treatment developed by Weir Mitchell.

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It is a story that could actually happen. In the story, Jane expresses concerns about her mental health to her husband, John, a doctor, who through good intentions and believing that he is doing the right thing, requires that his wife stays in bed all the time, and not do any of the things she would normally or would like to do. Due to being bed ridden, Jane becomes worse until she reached the limit and goes crazy. John’s behavior and decisions at this time were considered to be completely normal. The Yellow Wallpaper is considered to fall in the genre of realism because it represents the way life was for women during the nineteenth century.

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In the Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is forced into bed rest to treat her mental condition. This does not work and her mental condition worsens as she gains an obsession with the yellow wallpaper in the room. One way the

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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.

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Martin states that the narrator’s confinement in the upstairs bedroom fortifies her mental illness developing into “a frightening hallucinatory world constructed around the pattern of the yellow paper on the wall.” This shift in her identity happens as the shift in her disposition towards the wallpaper changes. The wallpaper is a visible metaphor that eventually becomes her identity. In the beginning of her stay in the bedroom she says the wallpaper is “committing artistic sin” (Par34) and can push anyone to “suddenly commit suicide” (Par35) These comments show her despise towards the wallpaper and the separation she originally has from it.

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It 's here where she discovers the yellow wallpaper that leads to her mental demise. What is the symbolic meaning of the yellow wallpaper and how do her interactions with the wallpaper represent the change in her feelings towards her husband and society. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes women 's suffrage and the struggles women went through, and her interactions with the wallpaper represent the problems woman had with their husbands and society. The main symbolism present in the story is how the yellow wallpaper represents woman suffrage and the problems they endured during the 19th century.

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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 story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 shows mental illness through the narrator first hand. The theme in this story is going insane verses loneliness as well as being trapped. These themes are shown through the main character (the narrator of the story) as she works through her own mind, life, and surroundings. First, the theme of the woman’s state of mind is the main focus in this story.

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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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The yellow wallpaper is not just the dreadful décor the narrator is stuck within the story but the most important symbol in the story. It symbolizes how women were not allowed to change or free to make their own decisions. The narrator once said that the wallpaper "sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it" (Gilman). She felt like the wallpaper stuck and not able to succumb to change she demonstrates this as well when she says "The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out" (Gilman). The narrator herself became the women she saw in the wallpaper that she felt trapped in a life without change which manifested itself into the wallpaper further increasing the symbolism and importance of yellow wallpaper.

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