Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Yellow Wallpaper

Submitted By aminasalah25
Words: 8493
Pages: 34
Open Document
The Yellow Wallpaper Notes/Research Documents

http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/index.html

Dr. L. Kit Wheeler’s Website of Literary definitions
Manuscripts from the Gothic period of art likewise have strange monsters and fantastical creatures depicted in the margins of the page, and elaborate vine-work or leaf-work painted along the borders. The term has come to be used much more loosely to refer to gloomy or frightening literature. Contrast with horror story, Gothic literature and Gothic novel (below).
GOTHIC LITERATURE: Poetry, short stories, or novels designed to thrill readers by providing mystery and blood-curdling accounts of villainy, murder, and the supernatural. As J. A. Cuddon suggests, the conventions of gothic literature include wild and desolate landscapes, ancient buildings such as ruined monasteries; cathedrals; castles with dungeons, torture chambers, secret doors, and winding stairways; apparitions, phantoms, demons, and necromancers; an atmosphere of brooding gloom; and youthful, handsome heroes and fainting (or screaming!) heroines who face off against corrupt aristocrats, wicked witches, and hideous monsters. Conventionally, female characters are threatened by powerful or impetuous male figures, and description functions through a metonymy of fear by presenting details designed to evoke horror, disgust, or terror
PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM: The sense that characters in fictional narratives have realistic "interiority" or complex emotional and intellectual depth, including perhaps subconscious urges and fears they are not aware of. On an outward level, this realism typically involves reacting to external characters and situations in a manner consistent with the expectations of readers (verisimilitude). On an internal level, it may involve the revelation of characters' thoughts and internal meditations about themselves and others. Such internal machinations are a standard part of Elizabethan drama in the form of the soliloquy. However, psychological realism is associated most closely with the movement toward "realism" and "naturalism" in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. After psychoanalysis appeared, Freudian ideas influenced many writers who sought to incorporate his theories into their own depictions of characters.
Whether or not we can speak of psychological realism in literary works before the Renaissance is a thorny issue. Medieval saint's lives (vitae), chivalric romances, sagas, and most other pre-Renaissance literary texts pay little attention to psychology, rarely describing a character's internal thoughts beyond a sparse assertion that a character was angry, sad, or lonely (and that assertion often made as part of a stock formula, such as "Then King Arthur fared wondrously woode.") Often ancient works are so focused on allegory to the exclusion of psychology that some critics assert pre-Renaissance writers and readers had very little sense of interiority or any unique "self" apart from tribe, family, religious caste, occupation, or social standing. The difference is so marked that some scholars like Harold Bloom speak of "the invention of the human" in the Renaissance. On the other hand, it is difficult to read something like The Confessions of Saint Augustine without getting a sense of a real human being intensely aware of his own psychology. Possibly, the difference is rooted in conventions of literature rather than any actual historical change in human self-awareness, but the debate continues.

Date: 1892
Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
From: Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction.

"The Yellow Wallpaper"

that concentrates so completely on the psy chology of the narrator-protagonist that the events described could be either supernatural or delusional.

The symbolism is very obvious. Trapped in her own life by the pattern imposed by her husband, she "escapes" through a series of rebellious acts. Whether this breakdown was inherent in her situation or whether the
Show More

Related Documents: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Professor Woessner 5, February 2013 The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Biographical information about the author of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was a writer and a social reformer born July 30, 1860 in Hartford Connecticut. Charlotte had a long and difficult childhood. Her father left her mother with t two children to raise alone. Charlotte married an artist by the name of Charles Stetson in 1884 and they had a daughter named Katherine. Charlotte suffered greatly from depression and underwent…

Words 1261 - Pages 6

An Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Women were treated as insane or unworthy. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman we see this happening. The narrator of this story seems to be in some type of insanity, but as we read on we see that in reality she is going through postpartum depression. The narrator is left alone with no one to talk to or nothing to do, so she starts to get obsessed with the yellow wallpaper. Hysteria cases occurred during the late 1800’s and…

Words 1153 - Pages 5

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Sydni Weis English 160 Tammy Johnson 25 March 2015 Deeper Meaning of The Yellow Wallpaper In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper , the narrator goes through a mental crisis. Some could analyze that Gilman’s story was written about an event that happened in her life. Some could say she just wrote it because she could. In The Yellow Wallpaper , the narrator known as Jane, does not become mentally stable. Her condition slowly seems to become much worse. Jane’s loving and naive husband John…

Words 387 - Pages 2

Postpartum Depression In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

born and can include seeing and hearing. In the short story, “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a young woman is diagnosed with severe mental illness and suffers from her husband's understanding and trust. The patient has postpartum depression because of the baby she had, a nervous disorder from the suspicion that her husband, and hallucinations as well. She starts to see things that aren't really there, like the wallpaper she has been observing for almost 3 months. The narrative suffers…

Words 587 - Pages 3

Did Charlotte Perkins Gilman Create Suspense In The Yellow Wallpaper

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The New England Magazine. January 1892. pp. 647-656. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a famous American novelist with her best-seller semi-autobiography entitled ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’ Her outstanding contributions in feminist and reformist movements has made her name inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Her support towards feminism is due to the feelings of resentment toward her father who abandoned her mother and siblings. Since she had…

Words 670 - Pages 3

Essay Depression in the eyes of Charlotte Gilman

Carlie Sterner Sophomore English Level 2 Mr. Dylong March 5, 2015 Depression in the Eyes of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Charlotte Perkins Gilman started her career as a feminist poet in the late 1800’s due to her controlling relationships with men. Growing up, Gilman never had a strong male role model to look up to, but instead saw a world where men dominated over women. Her childhood was very unstable; it lacked the presence of a father figure, and she and her family moved 19 times over a span of…

Words 3018 - Pages 13

Research Paper

thought from mood of mind exalted at expense of the general intellect,”(Edgar Allan Poe; Complete Tales and Poems). Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” was a feminist and social critic during the 1800-1900’s, and was also a successful lecturer and intellectual. She also suffered from severe and continuous breakdowns. On August 17, 1935 Charlotte Perkins Gilman committed suicide. “Both her fiction and nonfiction addressed the sexual, social, and economic oppression of women…

Words 1060 - Pages 5

The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” "It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.” - Charlotte P. Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman experienced depression in a time that society failed to accept people with mental illness, nor did they recognize its symptoms as those of a true physical condition. In addition, the “epidemic” of depression and mental illness in…

Words 549 - Pages 3

The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis Essay

Beyond The Wallpaper In our world, we have a constant struggle for power, one group trying to remind while another attempts to gain. One instance is the gender divide—a sum of the differences between the equality of men and women. This is an age where we have the ability to do the unthinkable with science, see the imaginary with arts, live longer and healthier with medicine, but we still oppress half of our population because of what resides between their legs. The major problem in correcting this…

Words 1579 - Pages 7

Yellow Wallpaper Mental Health

but their minds. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jane, a woman admitted to a mental institution, struggles with her depression in a hostile environment during an unaccepting era. Throughout the story, Jane must resist her urge to leave the room she has been placed in for rest, and ignore the inner struggle that the wallpaper in the room causes for her. Eventually, the wallpaper becomes the only thing anchoring her to reality. Charlotte Perkins Gilman also endeavored through…

Words 976 - Pages 4