Character Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper

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To what extent of fiction is make believe? Sure people don’t really have magical powers, but is there truth behind realistic stories. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, fiction is defined as, ”Something invented by the imagination or feigned.” Although some, fictional stories such as “The Yellow Wallpaper” are tragically realistic for women of the time period. There is little difference between Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the main character of, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Gilman suffered from a nervous condition, comparable to the one of the narrator. While the symptoms of the writer and the imaginy woman are similar, they are not identical. To aid understanding of postpartum depression, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a fictional story …show more content…
The narrator herself even doubts the therapy her husband arranges for her because she thinks stimulation would be good for her. “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.” In the large summer home, she is limited to one room, a yellow nursery. She detest this room because of the ugly wallpaper. Due to her confinement she begins to obsess over the wallpaper until it is her only focal point. Herr life becomes centered around the wallpaper because she is forced to look at it because she can not explore the rest of the home or see people other than John. The narrator never mentions her baby beyond this point, she only writes of the wallpaper and occasionally John because of his frequent distractions.
John threatens to send his wife to Weir Mitchell if she doesn’t get better quickly. This refers to a real life famous neurologist credited for the creation of the rest cure. The foundations of this prescription originated during the Civil War,Weir Mitchell specialized in veterans with nerve damage. These men often developed mental illnesses because of their physical disabilities and were deemed hysterical. To aid their physical and mental states, Weir Mitchell recommended bed rest and a fattening diet, the two main points of the rest cure
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