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The Yellow Wallpaper Naturalism Analysis

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses naturalism as evident through her characterization of characters as victims from forces beyond control and as caricatures of animalistic behaviors to make her point about the oppression of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In this piece of work, the main character is struggling with a form of depression likely imposed from her oppressive husband and society. While trying to explain her illness to her husband, who is a physician, she is basically dismissed as being hysterical and having nothing wrong. She continues to seek support from her husband only to find opposition. She enjoys writing and seeks intellectual stimuli as possibly helping her with her melancholy, but is only turned against it by her husband, …show more content…

The woman is forced to stay in a room with bars on the window and the bed is nailed down with chew marks on it. This implies the nature of a caged wild animal. The wallpaper also ties into this characteristic as it is described as yellow with an odor implying human defecation such as a wild animal marking it’s territory, “It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper!” “Such a peculiar odor too! There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A stream that runs round the rom. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even smooch, as if it had been rubbed over and over.” (pg. 852) The longer she stays in the room the more her illness turns to madness as she begins to see things such as a woman trapped in the wallpaper. This madness turns animalistic as she starts tearing into the wallpaper and moving strangely, “But here I can creep smoothly on the floor”, “I kept creeping…”, “It is so pleasant to get out in this great room and creep around as I please!” “That was clever, for really I wasn’t alone a bit! 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 pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled…”

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Together the themes of manipulation and mental illness will trigger a series of events that change their lives. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the protagonist becomes increasingly obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom and seclusion from human contact. This was a cure that her husband John prescribed that proved detrimental to her mental health. As she spends more time alone in the room, she becomes fixated on the patterns and images, slowly becoming convinced there is a woman behind the wall that is trapped and that she must free, "The front pattern does move—and no wonder!

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In the Yellow Wallpaper, the Woman does not have this bond, and instead sinks further into her own nightmarish fantasy. As a child, the woman had an active imagination as she writes, “I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store” (Gilman 135). In her isolation, she is unable to do almost anything, and the only thing she can do entertain herself with her imagination. Her isolation causes her to see women in the wallpaper as she writes, “ The front pattern does move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!”(143).

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Analysis of the Insane Process of the Heroine in the Yellow Wallpaper The author of the Yellow Wallpaper is Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860—1935), an outstanding American feminist, writer, novelist and so on. During her life, Gilman has written so many poetry and short stories. She is a utopian feminist and is honored as a role model for future generations of females due to her odd concepts and lifestyle. The Yellow Wallpaper is not the first or the longest work of her, but it is a best-seller of all her works.

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, exhibits the domestic entrapment of women by society in the 19th century by adopting a naturalistic approach to the mood, tone, and other literary elements used in the short story. Naturalism is a genre of literature that started in the late nineteenth century, around the time “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published, and is originated from realism. According to literarydevices.net, naturalism focuses on “natural forces predetermining a character’s decisions” while realism is about free will and the decisions a character makes in response to a situation. The major forces that control our unnamed narrator’s actions in “The Yellow Wallpaper” are her figurative and physical environment and her relationship with John.

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Initially, the narrator is disgusted and irritated by the paper, claiming, “I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (339). This reaction mirrors that of a sane person’s--fearing the unknown, they distance themselves from insanity and any iteration of it, seeing it as grotesque and shameful. Yet, as she spends more time in the room, she grows interested in the wallpaper and begins to investigate. She comes to the conclusion that: “I didn 't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (346).

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Secondly, throughout the story, the narrator describes seeing an evolving woman trapped inside of the wall. Although readers can assume that this woman is merely a product of the narrator’s mind, the woman can also be seen as a symbol of the narrator and her feelings of being trapped. Eventually, the woman in the wall aids the narrator in her escape. In conclusion, many elements of the narrator’s increasing madness throughout The Yellow Wallpaper contributed to her freedom from the confines of the room, the confines of society, and the confines of her

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As this progresses, the woman starts to go mad from ignorance and starts to believe there is someone behind the Wallpaper. In her room, the narrator starts to obsess over the Wallpaper. The Wallpaper symbolizes women starting to realize how unfair they were treated and how responded to this. As the women’s illness keeps getting subdued by her husband, she starts to go mad and the wallpaper demonstrates this. In the third entry of her diary she says, “Of

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She begins to see strangles heads in the wallpaper, which can be a symbolic representation of the patriarchal order that stifled women. The bars on the wallpaper that cage the imaginary women are a reflection of her own situation where she is confined in the old mansion. Even the smell of the wallpaper, which she describes as being ‘yellow’ and present throughout the house, is a reflection of the mental repression that is always present in her life. She is so consumed by the smell that she thinks about burning the old mansion just to cover it

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Over the course of time, being in isolation, the narrator becomes fond of the wallpaper studying and attempting to figure out the pattern. As her obsession grows over the wallpaper the pattern becomes clear to her. She begins to see a woman bending down creeping behind the patterns that act like bars on a cage. The wallpaper dominates her imagination and she begins to sleep less. she sees the woman behind the pattern shaking the bars in the day and creeping during the night.

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman gothic tale of “The Yellow Wallpaper” wrote in 1892 is a classic in feminist literature. It is a wonderful and frightening gothic tale that can also be viewed into feminist terms. It is a story that contains many typical gothic trappings, but beneath the surface lies a tale of freedom and repression told in intricate symbolism as it is seen through the eyes of a mad narrator. Although it is represented as an innovative story of the narrator’s physiological meltdown it contains elements of classic gothic literature. “The Yellow Wallpaper” represents a woman being driven to madness because of the Victorian “rest-cure”.

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However, we later see a shift in her feelings towards the wallpaper as she states that she is growing “really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper” and comes to a realization that it may be “because of the wallpaper” (Par 94) As her opinions on the wallpaper begin to change, the progression of her mental instability becomes increasing visible. She begins to build a relationship with the wallpaper and claims that “There are things in that paper that nobody knows about” (Par 22) her. As this relationship with the wallpaper builds, her sanity begins to slip, and the hallucinations begin in a somewhat minor manor. In her first mention of “the woman” she says that the pattern on the

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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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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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484 Words | 2 Pages

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’”

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman was not just an author but a great feminist. Gillam inspired countless women to seek indecency with her work like "The Yellow Wallpaper. " The story is a fictionalized short story of a woman who is descending into madness while dealing with her mental illness and cannot heal due to her husband 's lack of belief. At the same time, the woman also known as the narrator feels imprisoned in her marriage. The story takes place during a time were women and had no independence and were not able to voice their own opinion.

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