The Yellow Wallpaper
The Yellow Wallpaper
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is about a woman who suffers from a mental illness, after three months of being trapped in her house & stared at the same disgusting yellow wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote this story in the minds of people about the changing role of women in their society, shows how women’s lack of autonomy is detrimental into their mental, emotional & physical well-being. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” has as her husband & male doctor into do demand, though the treatment they prescribe directly into their contrasts what she really needs – mental stimulation, & freedom, the monotony of space, into which it is restricted into escape. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was essentially a reaction into the doctor tries into cure the C
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Plenty of Historical Value,
Gilman’s novel is even more relevant today than when it was first printed. More than merely a narrative of female intellectual oppression or a critique of late 19th century social mores, “The Yellow Wallpaper” documents a practice that was common among the middle and upper class. Known as the “rest cure,” women who displayed signs of depression or anxiety were committed to lie in bed for weeks at a time, and allowed no more than twenty minutes of intellectual exertion a day. Believing that intellectual activity would overwhelm the fragile female mind, “rest cure” refers to the prevention of women from thinking, relying on the assumption that the natural state of the female mind was one of emptiness. Seeing as how the women were confined to empty rooms with no exercise or stimulation of any kind, the obvious consequence was that the women became still more anxious, which reinforced the convictions of the doctors and husbands that their wives needed further rest.
The “rest cure” was prescribed most commonly to women who had recently given birth. Suffering from what we now know is post-partem depression (caused by hormonal fluctuations of seratonin that result from the female body adjusting to not having a fetus to delivering hormones to), women were locked up and kept from seeing their newly born children.
Gilman’s book, therefore, is not only an American literary classic, but it also provides insight into America’s social history; a history which will not be forgotten as long as people continue to carefully read this psychologically wrought story.
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|Very good, inspirational!,
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an American short story author, writes “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In this literary work Gilman illustrates the unfortunate injustices women are forced to accept. Gilman portrays a woman who needs to escape societies pressures, yet seeking her true identity she finds only insanity. This is a sad story that outlines the repression of the women in the late 1800′s due to male supremacy. Furthermore, Gilman expresses these three over arching themes: gender, struggle for identity, and survival. These three issues question the position and role of women in a male dominated society. For many years Gilman suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to Melancholia. In stir of hope she sought the best specialist in nervous disease, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. He applied a “rest cure” treatment at once; this treatment involves total bed rest, isolation and confinement. Unfortunately his directions of bed rest, two hours of intellectual life a day and not touching a pen again, led Gilman to the border line of total mental breakdown. Using her remnants of intelligence she discontinued this treatment. She was so inspired by her escape and regained enough power to write “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This piece was not only controversial, but helped stop other women from being driven to insanity themselves. The narrator in the story is also diagnosed as having a temporary nervous depression, which is later know as postpartum depression–a depression caused by a hormonal imbalance after giving birth. The narrator’s husband, John, prescribes the same “rest cure” treatment Gilman was subjected to. Obviously the narrator loves her husband and trusts him but she too has some underlying feeling that maybe his prescription of total bed rest is not working for her. Gender segregation is completely outlined within this short story. The men, seen through the eyes of the narrator, are capable and stable. For example the narrator writes, “John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.” Here she is clearly portraying the male chauvinism and unreasoning within this male character. Her husband’s role also plays a big part in her spiritual suicide. Although she may disagree with John and her brother she still states, “But what is one to do” (726). This clearly portrays that women, although they held an opinion, must learn to keep it to themselves. Even though, John had his wife placed in a big airy room the room did not help her much. Instead the yellow wallpapered room subjected her to total loneliness and tormented her with this distinct odor and a hideous view. While the men are perceived one way the women are perceived as the weak sex, that depend on men for strength. For example Mary, her sister-in-law, is the expected ideal woman of the 1800′s. For instance, she writes, “She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession” (729). So one can see how women are displayed in the Victorian period. The narrator is also treated like a child or as having the same mentality of a child. For example John say’s, “What is it, little girl…Don’t go walking about like that you’ll get cold” (732). It is clear throughout the short story that women are looked upon as illiterate children, not adults. The men clearly think women are to irrational to make dissuasions of their own, which means they are not even close to being at the same level as men. A common misrepresentation at that time. The second theme portrayed is search for identity. This is when the narrator starts to question her position in a male dominated world. Although she has yet to figure it out she knows there is a hidden motive in the wallpaper that may be a link to her true identity. For example; the narrator, with absolutely nothing else to do, is reduced to staring endlessly at a pattern in a wallpaper, thus creating some image that she feels is necessary to find out. The narrator says, “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” (733). Once the narrator determines that the image is in fact a woman struggling to become free, she some how aligns herself with the woman. She continues to persue this project of getting the woman out. This woman becomes her sanity and that’s the only one thing in her life she can control. The narrator soon develops this burst of curiosity, because the wallpaper becomes even more and more mysterious. She tells how the women tries to get through, but the pattern seems to strangle her and hold her back (735). The narrator finds herself reflected in this picture. It is…
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