The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a great example of Gothic Literature because of the way the story was

Various authors develop their stories using gothic themes and characterizations of this type to lay the foundation for their desired reader response. Although Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Peter Taylor’s “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time” are two completely different narratives, both of these stories share a commonality of gothic text representations. The stories take slightly different paths, with Poe’s signifying traditional gothic literature and Taylor approaching his story in a more contemporary manner.

Gothic Literature includes a gloomy mood and a dramatic description throughout the story. Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a good example of Gothic Literature because it has a gloomy mood which helps the story feel more eerie and also contains a dramatic description which makes the reader feel as if they are in the moment and living the event. For example, in Poe’s story,”...but the first glimpse of the building a sense of insufferable gloom prevademy spirit.”(13). He sets a gloomy and dark mood which is one of the requirements for Gothic Literature and describes it in a way that makes everything sound like a crucial event. He explains the building using words such as “spirit”

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is an excellent example of Gothic Literature because of the characters in psychological and physical torment. For example, in Poe’s story, “the writer spoke of acute bodily illness-of a mental disorder which oppressed him-and of an earnest desire to see [him]” (2). Roderick, being the writer, wrote to the narrator to come visit him because he is sick and mentally depressed. It shows that Roderick is not in the right state of mind and needs the narrator for assistance to keep him sane. Another example, “the disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent, although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character

Two works that pair well together are Betty Friedan’s “The Problem that has no Name”, and Anne Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, published in 1892, is a short story describing a woman’s condition in first person point of view. The narrator seems to be experiencing symptoms of depression, and her husband, a doctor, attempts to help “cure” her. Her husband, John, who refers to her as his “silly little goose”, takes her away and locks her in a bedroom, insisting that rest and isolation are the perfect medicine. In front of John, the narrator attempts to stay as composed as possible.

Through the story the narrator has describes her own journey that leads her to sanity and her obsession with the wallpaper of her sanitarium and ends with seeing a woman "crawling" behind the "bars" of the prisonlike pattern. Her attempts to free the woman behind the wallpaper as "trying to purge her of her color, to peel her from the yellow paper, so that the narrator can accept this woman as herself." The yellow wallpaper represent women in the 19th century where their own right are controlled under men’s authority. The narrator saw herself as she is a part of “the wallpaper and that the wallpaper is part of her.” Therefore, by freeing the woman, the narrator will have her

In his analysis, Peter Sarnacki writes “The yellow wallpaper [is] to coincide with the narrators mental state”. He establishes the clear contention that the wallpaper is a projection of her mental stability, adding “her

The narrator projects her inner wishes to leave to the woman and as a result, denies her true emotions to the point where she cannot handle it anymore. The yellow wallpaper, therefore, symbolizes

“The Fall Of The House Of Usher” is a suspense, novel written by the famous dark romantic “Edgar Allen Poe”. Poe is a master at making the creepy, even more horrifying by using specific tone. His tone is is the idea of prevailing darkness and pure gloom. Just about everything in this story is draped in darkness to add to his sinister plot. And at no point is there a happy feeling, the plot just keeps dragging the character into a deeper pit of despair.

Gothic literary traditions began in the middle ages and were used to evoke the reader’s emotions of fear and suspense. The elements within the stories were heavily described to add to the author’s tone and mood of the reader. Edgar Allan Poe is a well known author in Gothic literature, one of his pieces “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a Gothic short story that features a grim tone using Gothic elements to draw the attention of the readers. The intentions of Gothic authors were to give the readers a look into the dark side of the time in which the book is written. Poe uses a grim tone throughout “The Fall of the House of Usher” and expresses it through the setting of the story and the imagery he uses.

The narrator describes the yellow wallpaper, as the central symbol of this victoriously suffocating domesticity, with intricate and self-mindful artistic accuracy (Hume). The woman in the wallpaper, which she identifies as herself, is another use of symbolism it signifies that she feels trapped and cannot get out, like she cannot breathe. It characterizes not only the narrator’s own distributed self but all women who are bound and reserved by a society that claims that women are child -like and incompetent of

In the story “The fall of the house of usher” written by renowned author, Edgar Allen Poe is a tale with incredibly high, imagery upon which the author builds a fanatic story with horror the points the most vivid of pictures within the mind of the reader. The literary technique of imagery is seen in the opening line “During the whole of the dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low… (Poe1). Due to the fact that the narrative begins with such graphic detail, it is highly probable that this style will pervade throughout the text. From there and on the story will reveal that poe goes above and beyond to describe the falling house. Through an analysis of imagery particular to the mansion it can be demonstrated that there is a relationship between the shifting condition, of the mansion and the metamorphosis occurring to the usher’s family.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story narrated by John’s wife, she started describing the house where they have to stay for the summer –three months—and she described herself as a person with a depression problem and she talks about her husband (John) as a doctor that doesn’t believes on non-physical reasons. She did not like the house and she is upset because they have to stay there for the whole summer even if she doesn’t like it. She said that her husband got the house so she can have a good rest and at the end of the summer she should improve her condition a lot.

LENSES The wallpaper in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is symbolic of the gender-based oppression women of the patriarchal time period of its writing, faced; being infantised, not allowed to vote but expected to raise the children and take care of the house.

The yellow wallpaper is a type of antagonist to the narrator, it represents her entrapment in her marriage, “the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern just as if she wanted to get