Women and Fiction in The Yellow Wallpaper - 1314 Words

Women and Fiction in The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper is a deceptively simple story. It is easy to follow the thirteen pages of narrative and conclude the protagonist as insane. This is a fair judgement, after all no healthy minded individual becomes so caught up with hideous and infuriating wallpaper to lose sleep over it, much less lock herself in a room to tear the wallpaper down. To be able to imagine such things as broken necks and bulbous eyes in the wallpaper is understandable, irrational and erratic designs can form rational patterns in our minds, but to see a woman locked inside of the bars of the wallpaper and attempt to rescue her seems altogether crazy. Her†¦show more content†¦The windows are barred, preventing not only entrance but any type of escape. The heavy and presumably immovable bedstead is needlessly nailed to the floor. The wallpaper, perhaps the most overtly symbolic image in the story, is introduced as hostile as well. From a recurrent spot in the wa ll the bulbous eyes stare out with vicious intent (7). She is surrounded by objects that symbolize women writers place in a male dominated society: restrained. Women authors have been troubled by male refusal to let them into their circles. Female writers have had to assume pseudonyms, publish anonymously, or simply wait until someone finds their genius and decides to publish it. Even publication included heavy criticism and faultfinding. Like previous women authors, she lives in a society of obstructions for female writers. If the house is symbolically a metaphor for the biased literary world, her husband John is one of the oppressors. John is not effeminate in the least, rather he is an archetypal male: practical in the extreme, he has no patience with faith, and does not believe in irrational superstitions. He is the stereotypical male writer who has his eyes on large, tangible topics such as death and war, and cannot fathom anything that is not felt and seen and put down in figures such as love, birth, and in this case, insanity (3). If John symbolizes the biased male writer, it naturally follows that he would not appreciate herShow MoreRelatedAnalysis of Charlotte Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper969 Words   |  4 PagesYellow Wallpaper Annotated Bibliography Frye, C.B. Using Literature in Health Care: Reflections on The Yellow Wallpaper. The Annals of Pharmacotherapy. (32: 7). 1998. 829.33. Print. Most people who wrote about The Yellow Wallpaper do so from the perspective of a literary scholar. This however is written by someone in the health care field. C.B. Frye says that fiction can impact the larger world; in this case it impacted mental health and the work of Gillmans doctor, S Weir Mitchell. AlthoughRead MoreFeminist Perspective on Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper1274 Words   |  6 PagesThe Yellow Wallpaper, Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is comprised as an assortment of journal entries written in first person, by a woman who has been confined to a room by her physician husband who he believes suffers a temporary nervous depression, when she is actually suffering from postpartum depression. He prescribes her a â€Å"rest cure†. The woman remains anonymous throughout the story. She becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her in the room, and engages in some outrageousR ead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman1271 Words   |  6 PagesCharlotte Perkins Gilman, author of the novel entitled, The Yellow Wallpaper significantly used the aspects of literature such as genre, stance, and register to express the social message concerning the sufferings that women undergo in their daily affairs. However, most of the females do not have control over the challenges that develop in their surroundings. Gilman also uses the book to entertain the society members thus providing relief to the readers. In essence, the author of the novel aboveRead More Imprisonment of Women Exposed in The Yellow Wallpaper1439 Words   |  6 PagesImprisonment of Women Exposed in The Yellow Wallpaper When asked the question of why she chose to write The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman claimed that experiences in her own life dealing with a nervous condition, then termed melancholia, had prompted her to write the short story as a means to try and save other people from a similar fate. Although she may have suffered from a similar condition to the narrator of her illuminating short story, Gilmans story cannot be coinedRead MoreThe Deeper Meaning of The Yellow Wallpaper1257 Words   |  6 PagesCharlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical rest cure prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just tw o years after the birth ofRead MoreComparison of William Faulkners A Rose for Emily and Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper815 Words   |  3 PagesThe two short stories â€Å" A Rose for Emily† and â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† are two very similar but at the same time very different. The main characters Emily Grierson, from William Faulkners A Rose for Emily, and the narrator, from Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wall-Paper, are both in the same boat that many women were placed in the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s. Both of these two stories were written in a generation that women were looked downed upon and made to feel less important thanRead More Gilman Exposed in The Yellow Wallpaper1290 Words   |  6 PagesGilman Exposed in The Yellow Wallpaper      Ã‚   Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical rest cure prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir MitchellRead More The Psychological Portrait in The Yellow Wallpaper1344 Words   |  6 PagesThe Psychological Portrait in The Yellow Wallpaper   Ã‚   Charlotte Perkins Gilman was famous in her time as a womens activist. Later, she began writing fiction. As noted in her Norton Anthology biography, Charlottes stories often reveal her worldview. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written to combat the modus operandi for curing depression in her day. This cure consisted of being completely sequestered from any intellectual or artistic engagements. Her addendum to the story alsoRead MoreObsessions Always Have Meanings Essay1218 Words   |  5 PagesIn the stories â€Å"The Birthmark† by Nathaniel Hawthorne and â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, they are similar because they both deal with the wives being obsessed with something. Also in both stories their husbands are concerned and want to help them with their obsessions. The wife in â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is obsessed with the wallpaper on the wall and sees it as another world. She believes that there is someone stuck b ehind the wall and is trying to get out. Tearing down the wallRead MoreThe Summer People, By Shirley Jackson And Smoke Ghost By Fritz Leiber1649 Words   |  7 PagesQUESTION 3 The assertion that all works by weird fiction authors are simply â€Å"ridiculous flights of fancy wholly detached from ‘real world’ issues and problems† is completely false. I could choose almost any example from our readings and pick out some sort of â€Å"real world† issue or important thing that I have learned from them. For the sake of time, however, I will focus on â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, â€Å"The Summer People† by Shirley Jackson and â€Å"Smoke Ghost† by