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The Yellow Wallpaper Woman

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“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman deals with the exploitation of women during the fin de siècle. The story reveals the mind of a young woman who is, over of a course of time, going insane and finding her true self. Throughout the story the reader experiences the frustration of a woman who is suffering from postnatal depression, which is a type of depression that many parents experience after having a baby. During the late Victorian era, woman were forced into a certain stereotype, that of a mother and wife. The way men could, women were not allowed to challenge and express themselves. Just as the nameless protagonist of the story was trapped in an “atrocious nursery”, women were trapped in patronizing roles that did not allow …show more content…

The woman the narrator spots appears to be trapped within a bar like pattern of the wallpaper, as she moves the pattern she tries to break free. It could be argued that, the woman is a symbol of femininity. As the narrators insanity deepens, she believes she is trapped within the wallpaper too. Unable to break free from the wallpaper, like the narrator, the woman in the wallpaper has only the stereotypical option of taking the role as a wife or mother. The woman’s habit of “creeping” suggests that she must still be secretive after she has achieves in becoming free. Society and tradition will not accept her freedom therefore; she must creep and lie in the shadows of the …show more content…

It points out the cruelty women were placed under during the 1900’s and highlights the limits of this sexism by exploring a woman driven mad by a “rest cure”. By looking at the narrator’s role as a woman, her lack of encouragement, her thought process through the story and how others (such as her husband) treated her, the reader can see how this brutal and unjust environment drove the narrator insane. Overall “The Yellow Wallpaper” clearly shows “tradition is the main cause of decay” due to the fact that the narrative points out the problem in society which is sexism and oppression towards

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In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, author Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary techniques to allow the reader to understand the universal truth that a woman’s class is seen as lower than that of a man’s, due to their sex. We see this truth throughout the literary work, when the main character who is a woman, is put in confinement and later becomesdistraught and mentally unstablebecause her husband and brother who are both Physicians diagnoses her as “nervously depressed”. Two techniques author Gilman uses is tone and diction to illustrate how the narrator, among most women in that time period is treated as below men in class, with little say in their own mental or physical issues. Gilman utilizes tone to illustrate the universal truth of gender being in hand with class status, effectively. In the literary work,the narrator’s tone shifts from hopeless in the beginning, to determine in the end.

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Passage Analysis #1 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman, in this particular passage of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” explores the theme of female oppression through imagery and symbolism of the wall-paper. These elements of literature make the wall-paper come to life for both the narrator and the audience. “The front pattern does move”(55) personifies the wall-paper to be so animate and physically restraining that the woman behind it must shake it to attempt to escape. The italicization of “does” serves to further affirm that the wallpaper exhibits restrictive human-like behaviors - particularly those of dominant men in society. The narrator states that there are “a great many woman behind”(55), extending the metaphor to all Victorian women in the United States and others around the world who are oppressed.

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Although each story takes place in different settings, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Trifles by Susan Glaspell, both illustrate the traditional role of women during that era. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator introduces us to a wife, a submissive patient of her husband the doctor, who is being treated for a nervous disorder. Because of this she must follow a very strict seclusion treatment, severely limiting her ability to do anything but stay isolated in a room. This new environment becomes her obsession; her focus turns to freeing a woman she feels is trapped in the wallpaper, which I feel is symbolism for the way she feels trapped in her own mental and physical world. In the story Trifles, the women are brought to a crime scene for what the men feel is an insignificant purpose of gathering some belongs to bring to Minnie Foster.

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Through these texts it is evident to discern the decline of patriarchal norms that were originally embedded into society. Modern women eliminated the virtuous roles so deeply enforced, and have become aware of the abuse and victimization that roots from innocence. As females emerged from the happy homemaker ideal to breaking the set rules in education, workplaces, and expansion of rights, males accepted the female role that can provide more than just house life stability. As younger generations become exposed to more veracious knowledge behind the equality between women and men, humanity will thrive with respect and identification skills. The different tales of a young girl solely being manipulated behind the flesh of her innocence can be abandoned.

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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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Charlotte Gilman’s short story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, (1899) is a text that describes how suppression of women and their confinement in domestic sphere leads to descend into insanity for escape. The story is written as diary entries of the protagonist, who is living with her husband in an old mansion for the summer. The protagonist, who remains unnamed, is suffering from post-partum depression after the birth of her child and is on ‘rest’ cure by her physician husband. In this paper, I will try to prove that ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ acts as a subversive text by portraying the protagonist’s “descent into madness” as a result of the suppression that women faced in Victorian period.

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The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story set in the 1890s about a female narrator who struggles with postpartum depression. She moves into a home for the summer with her husband, John. Since she has this sickness, John forbids her from doing any sort of activities other than some houes work. If she was doing anything, her husband would want her to rest to help with her illness. This was a common "cure" known at the rest cure back then.

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(p 10). This sexism experienced by the narrator crushed any bit of blossoming individualism and slowly killed all who encountered it. By treating women as less than, society created an environment where women did not receive the help they

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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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However as time moves on, and the woman in the wallpaper becomes more and more real to her, it’s clear that her mental state is rapidly depleting. Her first description of a figure in the wallpaper came when she stated that the wallpaper had a “recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (219). By the time the story ends, the narrator had turned into the

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a first-person written feminist short story that critiques and condemns the nineteenth-century American male attitude towards women and their physical as well as mental health issues. In the short story, Perkins Gilman juxtaposes universal gender perspectives of women with hysterical tendencies using the effects of gradually accumulating levels of solitary confinement; a haunted house, nursery, and the yellow wallpaper to highlight the American culture of inherited oblivious misogyny and promote the equality of sexes. The narrator and her husband, John, embody the general man and woman of the nineteenth century. John, like the narrator’s brother and most men, is “a physician of high

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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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