In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the main character’s (MC) struggle with mental illness is connected to the differential treatment she receives as a woman. Her treatment, as well as the assessment of her wellbeing, is dependent on the men around her. They decide whether she is healed, in need of treatment, or sick at all. The MC’s opinion of their assessment is irrelevant to those whose care she is in. By analysing the decisions John, her physician and husband, makes regarding her care, the limitations patriarchal socialisation inflicts on women’s agency, autonomy, and health can be examined. This is done through the evaluation of gender stereotypes, mental health treatments, and their hallucinatory effects as demonstrated in the short story. Before the MC begins her confinement in the upstairs nursery, the house’s …show more content…
This oppressive aura surrounds the MC and embodies itself in the man responsible for her care, John (90). However, the sense of oppression within the entire estate intensifies within the nursery. The yellow wallpaper explicitly causes the MC immeasurable discomfort, and its pattern exacerbates her hallucinations, as she begins to see it as a prison caging a woman behind it (Gilman 654). Although the MC revises the pattern and projects “her own passion for escape into its otherwise incomprehensible hieroglyphics” (Gilbert and Gubar 90), the woman behind it cannot “climb through that pattern” (Gilman 654) without the help of the MC. The house, and more importantly the yellow wallpaper, demonstrate to the reader that they are symbolic of the MC’s confinement and suffering within patriarchal structures. Moreover, these structures promote the binary view of acceptable gender expression, which John seeks to reinforce. As a man, John is expected to lead the household in a rational and organised
The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is about a mentally ill woman named Jane. She lives during a time when women did not have much they could do. The men dominated everything and were to make the decisions for the women. The man’s primary role was to be the provider, while the woman’s primary role was to be the housekeeper and caretaker. During this time period, women would have to ask their husbands, fathers, or even brothers if they could do something.
The narrator of this story, The Yellow Wallpaper, is a young married mother who is suffering from a nervous disorder. The story is told through her hidden journal entries and depicts her descent into madness. Her husband is a well-meaning doctor and is taking on the responsibility of treating her with the “rest cure”. In the late 1800s, it was normal to cure women with nervous, depressive disorders with the “rest cure” and require them to stay away from intellectual and creative tasks.
The story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about a woman who is very mentally ill on her vacation with her husband. She is suffering from “nervous depression", which effect her greatly on her psyche levels and reality. While she is recovering she starts imaging a woman in the wallpaper looking at her trying to escape. Her mind start to believe that the woman in the wallpaper is real to the point that she consume her very mind. The narrator illustrate that the woman in the yellow wallpaper is a representation of mind failing to the illness she has. The reason why is because she suffers from neglect, depression, and the insanity that warps her mentally.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins, the author tells the story of a woman who progressively reaches a psychological state from which there seems to be no return. Throughout the storyline, readers gradually grasp how the protagonist is confined to her home because of her husband who claims to know what is best for her. As the storyline develops, the author reveals the detrimental effects of patriarchy and how this negatively impacts the protagonist’s mental health and well-being. Through doing this, Perkins critiques the societal norms and gender roles that were distinct during the late 19th century. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins skillfully outlines the detriment of confinement, mental illness, and patriarchy, all of
In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, the narrator has a “nervous condition” that is affecting her mental state of mind. The narrator of the story just had a baby and her husband, a doctor, has recommended that she stay in one room and not have any human contact nor read or write. The cure for her mental disease was a suggestion by Weir Mitchell, a doctor who felt that a rest cure was the best way to overcome this condition. The narrator shows us that she allows herself to be obedient to her husband, that she develops an obsession with the yellow wallpaper in her room and that her condition becomes worse by not being allowed to be herself. After giving birth, the reader developed a nervous condition and it caused her to have an obsession
In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman the narrator, Jane, is pushed to insanity because of the oppression of women. Jane is depressed and eventually goes in sane. Her mental state is attributed to the position of women in marriage and society in the nineteenth century. John, who is Jane’s husband and doctor, has full control over her treatment. Jane has no say in her treatment; in fact she keeps her thoughts to herself.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a Gothic horror short story written by author Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. The story depicts the struggles many women had to face in the late nineteenth century. The narrator delivers her story through a series of journal entries that she keeps hidden from everyone around her. She is a middle-aged American who is struggling with depression. Her doctor is her husband who often makes light of her mental illness.
Mental illnesses causes a person's personality to change. Issues like depression and anxiety will force a person to stay in bed all day. It can also head in the opposite direction, and drive a person to perform dangerous activities, like drink. A desire for revenge combined with a mental illness is a recipe for a disastrous situation. In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the woman suffers from post-partum depression.
The stigma of mental illness as well as the oppression of women are battles that are still being fought in society today. Charlotte Perkins Gilman authored the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper’ which depicts the story of a woman who has recently had a baby and whose husband has moved them into a summer house rental in the country in the hopes of helping her to recover from her mental ailments. Through a nameless narrator, Gilman uses a series of diary entries to portray the story of a woman who is suffering from mental illness who is prevented from getting the treatment that she requires due to being oppressed by the men in her life, which results in the narrator’s descent into insanity.
The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman brings a closer look at one woman’s psychological health. Gilman’s story influenced women’s mistreatment in the late nineteenth century in the American society. Rena Korb is a writer and editor says, “’The Yellow Wallpaper’ commands attention not only for the harrowing journey into madness it portrays, but also for its realism” ("The Yellow Wallpaper" 284). In the story "The Yellow Wallpaper," a woman falls into postpartum depression, and the doctor has recommended treatment of the “rest cure” that contributes to her madness.
In The Yellow Wallpaper, the story is narrated by a woman with a mental illness who seems trapped in her own mind as well as trapped in her room. As the story proceeds and her condition worsens, the images she portrays in the wallpaper become more disturbing. The woman is fixated on her hate of the wallpaper and it drives her insane.
Men can drive us women so crazy. We find ourselves looking at them and to ourselves asking “why am I with him?” You know you love them, but somedays… “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in a marriage” (Gilman, 1892, p.533) In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she was driven to craziness by her doctor who was also her husband. If her husband never locked her up in the nursery room, she wouldn’t be so ill.
In the story that Gilman narrated, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, The theme of A woman is mentally ill, and is not taken serious by her husband is shown by how the main character doesn’t get much attention from her husband. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”,it says that sometimes John (The husband), tells her to just take some air and rest as much as possible. If john would have taken her serious, then he would try to spend as much time with her as possible. Gilman feel like her husband doesn’t really pay attention to her illness. This makes Gilman seem like a pretty strong person because even though her husband doesn’t take her illness seriously, she still keeps trying to move forward.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman once said, ‘’There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver’’. Gilman’s belief that there’s no difference in means of mentality between men or women demonstrated through ‘’The Yellow Wallpaper’’. Gilman symbolically portrays that women suffer from psychological disorders caused by lack of love, care, and a constant pressure of secondary roles and personal unimportance in social life. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of belief. The story appears to take place during a time frame where women were oppressed. The short story can be analyzed in depth by both the psycho-analytic theory and
The combination of the protagonist’s insanity and the setting of the nursery with yellow wallpaper identify a theme of imprisonment of females in a domestic world. The anonymous wife is taken by her husband to a country mansion to recover from a state of hysteria. The narrator then takes it upon herself to actively study and decode the wallpaper, and through her downward spiral into insanity she untangles its confused pattern to reveal a woman trapped in the depths of the chaotic outlines. As time passes the narrator begins to relate to this encaged woman and believes that she too is trapped within the wallpaper. During the last few nights the narrator tears down the wallpaper in an attempt to escape from her cage. The use of the yellow wallpaper as a symbolic gesture to the entrapment of women shows how setting can directly relate to the theme of a short story.