World Literature 7/20/2011 Yellow Woman Analysis After reading “Yellow Woman” a sense of mystery is imposed on the readers. The story itself is very short and dreamlike. It is as if there is no beginning to the story. The narrator wakes up on the sand of a river bank next to a man she does not know. The man known as Silva acts very strangely towards her throughout the entire story. He is always laughing and smiling while at the same time forcing the narrator to do what he wants. By the same token, the narrator never puts up any sort of a fight to leave. The Narrator in the story knowingly follows Silva’s every word even knowing deep down she knows that she probably shouldn’t. She uses her time with him as an escape from her own …show more content…
But those desires are not strong enough to make her leave the domesticated life that she has chosen for herself. She becomes a storyteller herself as she recounts her own Yellow Woman story and believes that the other Yellow Women had names like she does, but they do not reveal them. The Yellow Woman stories allow the narrator to justify her actions as she considers herself another chapter in the Yellow Woman saga. To sum up, the narrator in the story is able to fulfill her instinctual desires by becoming a Yellow Woman. She transforms through her dream-like journey into the person she longed to be. It was not until Silva became violent and she sees “something ancient and dark” in his eyes that she begins to snap back into reality. The story reaches out to all of its readers and allows them to relate to the narrator because we all have unfulfilled desires throughout our lives. The sensational descriptions that are given of the landscape as well as her sexual interactions with Silva make the narrator’s thoughts and feelings very easy to understand. In fact many of us who have read the story “Yellow Woman” have a feeling of jealousy that the woman was able to have her adventure and return home and resume her life as normal, without consequence. Works Cited Silko, Leslie. “Yellow Woman”. The Norton Anthology: World Literature. Ed. 2. Peter Simon. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New
It is difficult to discuss the meaning in this story without first examining the author’s own personal experience. “The Yellow Wallpaper” gives an account of a woman driven to madness as a result of the
These expectations increased when she was in the presence of “great power, [her] mother talking story” (20). In one particular situation, the narrator recalls her mother singing about Fa Mu Lan, the woman warrior. Although her mother expected her daughter to become a wife or a slave, the narrator had a different idea; she would “grow up a woman warrior” (20). As a young girl, she said that she “couldn’t tell where the stories left off and the dreams began” (19). This is the case in “White Tigers.” The narrator’s dream-state takes readers into the mind of a girl who attempts to please her mother and entire family by becoming a woman warrior. This is possibly an attempt to subside much of the harsh ridicule she receives from her mother due to cultural differences. Although this is a key factor in her early childhood, she learns to block out these criticisms as she grows older.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to show how women undergo oppression by gender roles. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman’s changes in mental state. The narrator in this story becomes so oppressed by her husband that she actually goes insane. The act of oppression is very obvious within the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and shows how it changes one’s life forever.
The geographical, physical, and historical settings in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" were more than the primary character could handle. The geography would lead to think she could enjoy the environment, but she chose not to. The physical setting showed us the reader just how grotesque and unbearable it would be to live a room in which the wallpaper to over the narrators mind. Lastly, we looked at how historically women were not allowed to speak their minds about how they felt. Maybe now that John has seen his wife go completely insane for himself he will finally seek extra attention for
The Yellow Paper is a symbolic story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is a disheartening tale of a woman struggling to free herself from postpartum depression. This story gives an account of an emotionally and intellectual deteriorated woman who is a wife and a mother who is struggling to break free from her metal prison and find peace. The post-partum depression forced her to look for a neurologist doctor who gives a rest cure. She was supposed to have a strict bed rest. The woman lived in a male dominated society and wanted indictment from it as she had been driven crazy by as a result of the Victorian “rest-cure.” Her husband made sure that she had a strict bed rest by separating her from her child by taking her to recuperate in
The description of the house by the woman is positively somehow. However, she is disturbed by some elements such as; “the rings and things” in the walls, and that the bars on the windows keep showing up. In addition, what was disturbing her the most is the yellow wall paper which is creepy with a formless pattern and that leads her to be totally insane. Readers are introduced to the woman’s desperate thoughts and feelings, yet her husband came and interrupted her thoughts and she was forced to stop writing. Furthermore, she always complains that her husband John who is a physician belittles her illness, her own thoughts and that makes her more depressed. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a deep feminist story that shows the unequal relationship between women and men in the 19th century and uses the yellow
The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman discovers that the woman trapped in the yellow wallpaper is really herself and reflects that there are countless other women trapped and oppressed by society just as she is. Through her descent into madness, the narrator is able to finally free herself, but not without losing her sanity in the process.
In the short story “Yellow Woman”, Leslie Marmon Silko uses characterization and symbolism to address personal and cultural identity.
In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents the narrator, being the main character, as an ill woman. However, she is not ill physically. She is ill in her mind. More than any chemical imbalance that may be present; the narrator's environment is what causes her to go mad.
Since “Annabel Lee” and “The Highwayman” are both narrative poems, the speakers of each story influence certain features of the plots. The narrator of “Annabel Lee” is also the affected lover who is recalling the catastrophic incident that is his lover’s death. Since he is actually a part of the storyline, he conveys the plot the way he had experienced it as it began “with a love that was more than love” but progressed onward to the “killing [of his] Annabel Lee”. The passionate narrating establishes his reliability as a narrator as the audience can truly sense his pain. However, the narrator of “The Highwayman” is not involved with any aspect of the storyline and, therefore, tells the story from a bystander point of view. Even though the narrator is not directly impacted by the events, they are still able to captivate the audience by utilizing lifelike elements, such as the “tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot” of the horse, to institute their trustworthiness as a narrator. Therefore, both narrators within “Annabel Lee” and “The Highwayman” add different elements of persuasion to their narratives to establish an authentic storyline.
Rayona and her mother Christine grew up in different worlds but they are very similar in many ways. Christine faced various problems as a young child that are now being passed down to Rayona and she is now seeing how they are being affected by them. The novel “A Yellow Raft in Blue Water” walks us through Rayona’s coming of age story and the three perspectives that it is being told in, Rayona’s, Christine’s, and Ida’s. Although Rayona and Christine are very different, they both seem to be facing similar problems; they end up helping one another find their self identity and both are finally able to appreciate and understand one another.
When the readers meet the young, subordinated wife of a physician, who remains nameless throughout the entire story, perhaps hinting at the commonness of such situations where all those women are the same: faceless and nameless, this woman’s dilemma becomes obvious. She has been stripped off the only function a woman in those times had, the domestic one, due to the fact that she suffers from a mysterious illness which requires the infamous bed cure. Gradually, she is treated more and more as a child, unable and even forbidden to express herself in a creative way, namely to write, being persuaded that it cannot do any good to someone in her condition. This is why the protagonist (who is simultaneously the narrator), takes it upon herself to write a journal about her experiences and the mysterious woman that haunts her from the
Chapter one titled, “No Name Woman”, is an example of the narrator referring to her mother’s talk-stories and a prominent illustration of incorporating the past into the present. This talk- story is culturally based to express information about the past. In “No Name Women”, the narrator explains that her mother, Brave Orchid, would use the stories to give lessons on life that would stick with her children. She represents a bridge figure with one foot in the past, her Chinese culture that she relays on to the family and one foot in the present, her assimilation to American life. The bridge that Brave Orchid acts as brings together the two cultures and allows her to incorporate the family’s Chinese history into their present
In "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist symbolizes the effect of the oppression of women in society in the Nineteenth Century. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the author reveals the narrator is torn between hate and love, but emotion is difficult to determine. The effects are produced by the use of complex themes used in the story, which assisted her oppression and reflected on her self-expression.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story telling about a young woman who is eventually driven mad by the society. The narrator is apparently confused with the norm defining “true” and “good” woman constructed by society dominated by man. “The Awakening” addressed the social, scientific, and cultural landscape of the country and the undergoing of radical changes. Each of these stories addresses the issue of women’s rights and how they were treated in the late 19th century. “The Awakening” explores one woman's desire to find and live fully within her true self. Her devotion to that purpose caused friction between her friends and family, and also conflicts with the dominant values of her time.