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The Yellow Wallpaper Insanity Analysis

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From Yellow to Lunacy “We’re much more controlled now. We were kids back then we each had our own demons. It was insanity.” - Peter Criss. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman describes the summer of a woman’s journey to insanity. The woman felt controlled and overshadowed by loved ones, stubbornly defiant about following instructions, and consequently became a component of her own hysteria. Jane and John go to a summer house while their own home is being repaired. John is a doctor and is not concerned that his wife’s nervous fits are much to worry. ”You see he does not believe I am sick!...My brother is also a physician and also of high standing, and he says the same thing” (Gilman 1). She disagrees, but feels trapped by the supposed best opinion. ”But what is one to do?” (1) When someone feels restricted from being or …show more content…

She doesn’t mind that it wears her out because it keeps her sane. The yellow wallpaper of the room she is confined to irks her innards: the confusing pattern, the disgusting color, and the unusual shadows. “John would think it absurd. But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way - it is such a relief” (Gilman 6)! She wants to write and does whenever John or his sister Jennie isn’t looking. Ironically, writing about the walls keeps her grounded, yet leads to her madness. The shadows from a window above Jane’s bed, fueled by her imagination, fashion themselves to look like tiny women. The wind and normal flow of nature cause these images to seem animate. As the summer ends, she becomes obsessed with figuring the wallpaper out. Her mind was still quite uneasy about the shadows. “I don’t like to LOOK out of the windows even - there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast (Gilman 13). In her twisted fantasy these people have been weaving in and out of the walls all summer. Her creativity runs her mind so ragged it kills

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