Isolation In The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” tells of the journey into insanity (brought on by postpartum depression?) of a physician’s wife. Persuaded by her husband that there is nothing wrong with her, only temporary nervous depression, a diagnosis that is confirmed by her brother( Gilman, 647). What is telling is that she suspects perhaps her husband John is the reason she does not get well faster. She and/or we are led to believe that they have rented a colonial mansion for the summer for her to get well. She is however isolated in a home three miles from the village and on an island. (Gilman, 648). She wants to stay in the downstairs room with roses and pretty things, but her husband insists on the room at the top of the house ostensibly because it has room for two beds. But the room’s description of barred windows and walls with rings and things in them (Gilman, 648) could leads the reader one to conclude that this is his own private asylum, and not “a nursery first and then a playroom and gymnasium” (Gilman, 648) as the woman believes. It is this room, and more precisely the wallpaper in the room

In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator’s husband has rented an old mansion in the country for the summer. John is relying on this getaway as time for his wife’s nervous condition to resolve itself with rest and medicines. As the story unfolds for the readers, it becomes apparent her husband, John, is dominating, and controlling. She feels somewhat doomed that she is unable to change her circumstances and she ends up as a victim, thus confirming the dominance of men over women during that period. Between the narrator’s controlling husband and the deterioration of her mind, she snaps and becomes completely delusional.

In the beginning of the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, John and his wife relocate to an ancestral home located some 3 miles away from the nearest village. John is a medical practitioner and is very well known around the area. It is very common that her husband will be called to come to very serious cases that many times result in his staying away for days at a time. Originally John believed that his wife suffered from severe depression. This idea was also backed by her brother who is also a doctor.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the story edited based on the author’s own experience. She fell into depression after giving birth to her daughter, and she was treated by her doctor with his famous treatment “rest cure”. Gilman described in her autobiography, the treatment drove her insane, and her thoughts were ignored by her doctor and her husband, which was identical to Jane’s situation. The feminine characters in the story represent the general condition of women in the late-nineteenth-century society. As a female writer, she used her personal experience to create a story which embodies the thoughts on life and society from a feminist perspective. At the beginning of the story, Jane was diagnosed with mild depression, her husband- John; the man has strong confidence in his medical skills, sent her to an ancestral house for the popular depression treatment “rest cure” regardless of her own advice. The house is a hereditary estate, located miles from the village, elegant environment with fresh air, and magnificent high rents, but also appears desolated. For John, he thinks it is the ideal place for Jane to get on her treatment, for which he did not hesitate to pay the rent for three months to observe the efficacy of the treatment. The room John chooses for Jane is a spacious and bright room, designed specifically for recuperation purposes. The room is surrounded with yellow wallpaper, which Jane hates at first

In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, both women are suffering from emotional situations. This pain is coming from the controlling male influences in there lives. The protagonist in “A rose for Emily” is a young, slender girl who is tormented by her father’s influence in her life. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Jane, is a wife who is suffering from post partum and loneliness. Both of these women suffer from similar emotional depression, but differ in the way they go about becoming free.

As the novel elaborates on Botkin’s insanity, it begins to reveal more about his obsessive, and, at times aggressive qualities. Botkin describes his disturbing tendency to spy after his beloved poet: “The view from one of my windows kept providing me with first-rate entertainment [...] From the second story of my house the Shade’s living-room window remained clearly visible so long as the branches of the deciduous trees between us were still bare…”(p. 23) He proceeds to study the shade’s household in a maniac - like way by placing a phone call in order to analyze Sybil Shade’s habits.(p. 23) Botkin describes shade’s disappearance from his line of view as a “terror”, brought upon him by the coming of the night; displaying the level of obsession and predator - like behavior slowly building up inside him. Botkin’s quick interaction with the instructor on page 24, following the snide remark: “I contented myself on my way out with pulling Gerald Emerald’s bow - tie loose with a deft jerk of my fingers as I passed by him”(p. 24) demonstrates his violent tendencies, bottled up inside, giving the reader reason to believe that Botkin’s true violence is limitless.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is about a creative woman whose talents are suppressed by her dominant husband. His efforts to oppress her in order to keep her within society's norms of what a wife is supposed to act like, only lead to her mental destruction. He is more concerned with societal norms than the mental health of his wife. In trying to become independent and overcome her own suppressed thoughts, and her husbands false diagnosis of her; she loses her sanity. One way the story illustrates his dominance is by the way he, a well-know and

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" takes a close look at one woman's mental deterioration. The narrator is emotionally isolated from her husband. Due to the lack of interaction with other people the woman befriends the reader by secretively communicating her story in a diary format. Her attitude towards the wallpaper is openly hostile at the beginning, but ends with an intimate and liberating connection. During the gradual change in the relationship between the narrator and the wallpaper, the yellow paper becomes a mirror, reflecting the process the woman is going through in her room.

The yellow wallpaper is a story about John and his wife who he keeps locked up due to her "nervous condition" of anxiety. John diagnoses her as sick and has his own remedy to cure her. His remedy s to keep her inside and deterring her from almost all activities. She is not allowed to write, make decisions on her own, or interact with the outside world. John claims that her condition is improving but she knows that it is not. She eats almost nothing all day and when it is suppertime she eats a normal meal. John sees this and proclaims her appetite is improving. Later in the story, the woman creates something of an imaginary friend trapped behind the horrible looking yellow wallpaper in

It is believed the narrator (sometimes identified as Jane) in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression after having a baby. Her husband, John, denies she has a “real” problem (Gilman 87). He takes

First published in 1982, The yellow wallpaper is an engaging narrative , written in first person in which the narrator suffers from some type of nervous disorder . Her husband who prefers to refer to her condition as a temporary nervous depression or a slight hysterical tendency recommends that the narrator seeks solitude so as to recuperate . The short story mimics the form of secret and private entries on journals by the author. The haunting short story chronicles that descent of the narrator and protagonist into maddened and paranormal activities. Some people however interpret it as her chronicles to freedom .The author effectively employs the use of literary

Through out the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and the film, “Santa Sangre,” the main characters finds themselves led into a state of insanity. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator explains that she is suffering from post partum depression, leaving her husband to treat her with rest cure or bed rest. During this time, she is placed in a solitary room with walls covered in yellow wallpaper. Similarly, through out “Santa Sangre,” Phoenix grows up with his family in a circus, only to end up losing them. He was locked in a trailer as his father had an affair, murdered his mother by cutting off both her arms and then committed suicide in front of Phoenix. He is then

Vasilisa shows how independent she has really become with everything that has happened to her by stepping up and telling the old woman she would like to do more than nothing. Vasilisa, at this point, no longer relies on her doll to do things for her anymore. This is shown in the text written, “She spun as fast as lightning and her threads were even and thin as a hair” (83). She has taken the responsibility to do this emphasizing her self-sufficiency. If she were ever alone, she would be able to do things for herself as well as provide since she knows how to spin so well. People would love her clothes that she creates allowing her to make money and pay for necessities. The old woman also shows the linen Vasilisa made to the tsar which leads to him asking for a dozen shirts. In the tale the author explains, “She [Vasilisa] locked herself in her room and set to work; she sewed without rest and soon a dozen shirts were ready” (84). For the first time in the entire tale, a large workload was done only by Vasilisa without any help for the doll. This is a huge milestone in the story because it portrays the growth Vasilisa has gone through. She is now capable of being self-sufficient while in the beginning of the tale she kept turning to her doll to do everything or help. Eventually she no longer needed the doll as much, but only kept it around to have her mother with her. This

Just as Emily is destroyed by her father's over-protectiveness, the first-person narrator of "The Yellow Wall-Paper," is secluded from both life and reality by her over-protective husband. The narrator is both creative and eccentric; her husband is "practical in the extreme" (160). She believes that "congenial work, with excitement and change, would do [her] good" (160). Her husband, however, believes in the strength of conventional medicine such as the "rest cure" for nervous diseases (164). Like Emily's father who denies her a family and a life of her own, the husband of Gilman's narrator denies not only her desire to write, but also her craving for "society and stimulus" as she struggles to find a creative outlet (160). This appears a type of solitary confinement for such a creative being, and it should come as no surprise that she is crazed after months of lying in bed with no company other than

"The Yellow Wallpaper" tells the story of a woman living in the nineteenth century who suffers from postpartum depression. The true meaning implicit in Charlotte's story goes beyond a simple psychological speculation. The story consists of a series of cleverly constructed short paragraphs, in which the author illustrates, through the unnamed protagonist's experiences, the possible outcome of women's acceptance of men's supposed intellectual superiority. The rigid social norms of the nineteenth century, characterized by oppression and discrimination against women, are supposedly among the causes of the protagonist's depression. However, it is her husband's tyrannical attitude what ultimately