The first instance of the protagonist in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” where one can see her internalizing her feelings is in the line “You see, he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?”. This shows that she is downplaying her mental health, that because someone she loves is telling her she ’s okay, she’s not validating the feelings she is experiencing.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Jane is a mentally ill woman whose surroundings are only worsening her condition. Jane’s husband, a physician, thinks that a change of scenery will benefit her condition and takes it upon himself to relocate to a summer home, not knowing that this new environment will be Jane’s downfall. The entire story is written as a journal, inscribed by Jane whenever she can stealthily disobey her husband to write. Gilman writes the story from Jane’s point of view to coax the reader into a deeper understanding of Jane’s mental battles and the overall theme of oppression. Gilman’s choice of style for this short story exponentially enhances the effectiveness of the text because the reader is opened
“The Yellow Wallpaper” highlights the ignorance of ignoring and neglecting mental illness. The article ““The Yellow Wallpaper”: Overview, Summary, and Analysis” mentions that Jane,“has been told she has a "nervous condition" by her husband and brother who are both doctors. They don't believe she has a physical illness but instead suffer from too much thinking and feeling.” (Oettel). Women were often called hysterical and denied basic self-expression, which was why Jane slowly went mad.
The narrator reinforces that there are many influences in one’s life. First, the narrator’s husband has a demanding impact on her personal truth as he enforces his thoughts in her life. Similarly, the narrator’s activities throughout her journey to insanity demonstrate that each person approaches mental illness differently. In addition, the narrator’s childhood interests influence her beliefs and the truth by which she lives. In summary, the text, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman demonstrates that as the narrator fights through insanity, she determines her personal truth in her own reality.
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.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” a man trying to cure his wife’s mental illness actually causes her to become more
Oppression is defined as prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control. Cruel and unjust punishment is just the beginning for the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Charlotte Gilman while writing the “The Yellow Wallpaper” deciding to make it into a series of diary entries from a woman who is suffering from post-partum depression. The narrator begins by describing this large home that she and her husband have rented for the summer. Their summer house stands away from the road and contains many locks and little houses.
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.
Intellectual Relief in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” The Yellow Wallpaper presents the story of a woman’s descent into madness. The narrator’s declining mental health is reflected through the characteristics of the house she is dwells in and her husband, while trying to protect her, is actually damaging her. The narrator of the story goes with her husband to stay in a colonial mansion for the summer.
Traditionally, women were described in a sense that is dominated by men in literary works. However, Charlotte Perkins Gilman connected the social phenomenon in that time with her personal experience to create a fictional narrative about feminist “The Yellow Wall-paper” which is about an unnamed woman who has postpartum depression and is sent to a house by her husband in order to cue her mental illness, and finally gets mad because of her self-centred and dominating husband. The narrator, a nameless woman in order to symbolize any wife, mother, or woman, is oppressed and clearly represents the significant influence from the oppression of women. Gilman uses symbolism to portray the narrator’s self-expression and the oppression she suffers in the society in the nineteenth century.
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.
The woman was going crazy in her own world as she saw something coming out the yellow wall. The wallpaper had a bright yellow color that drove the narrator crazy and tried to peel it down. The woman was fighting with her mental illness as she explains her influence of her personal life, a woman’s right, and her mental illness. A woman in the early 20th century wrote a story, her story was heard about her mental illness and she had no type of support. The narrator of the story “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper” says, “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked” (Gilman
Gender Inequality: A Woman’s Struggle in “The Yellow Wallpaper” In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman captures the lives of women in a society based on societal expectations during the late nineteenth century. She focuses on the issue of gender inequality where women were often discriminated against and expected to fulfill the role of a perfect wife and mother. The narrator is based on on Gilman’s personal experience of suffering from her treatment for postpartum depression due to the social restrictions on women which represents a reflection on women's social status in society. The narrator, who remains anonymous, is depicted as a depressed and isolated prisoner who is oppressed under her husband’s control and struggles to break free.
It is known that doctors should not treat their own family members. Physicians are now being taught that they should have a doctor-patient relationship so they can be professional. There are many doctors who treat their family thinking that they are protecting them, but instead they sometimes harm them more than actually helping them. Being treated by a family member can tear a family apart and can cause many problems to arise. The need of wanting to make them feel better can cause malpractices, and a doctor can lose their medical license for not treating the patient right.
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.
