The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Submitted By lperdue
Words: 1261
Pages: 6
Open Document
Loretta Perdue
H205
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 several series of unusual treatments for her great depression. Those experiences are believed to have inspired her best known short story The Yellow Wallpaper in 1892. While Charlotte is best known for her fiction she was also known for being a great feminist, lecturer and intellectual, who’s work in a nonfiction publication called ‘Women and Economics” was published in 1898. As a feminist she called for women to gain economic independence and the work helped cement her standing as a social theorist. In 1900 Charlotte married for a second time to her cousin, George Gilman, and they remained together until his death in 1934. Following George’s death in 1934, Charlotte found out she had inoperable breast cancer and committed suicide August 17, 1935.

A brief synopsis of this story would go as follows; the narrator, a young woman married and severely depressed, moves into a summer home with her husband and child. She complains that her husband John, also her physician, belittles both her illness, her thoughts and concerns in general. John has recommended a treatment that requires that she do almost nothing active and she is especially forbidden from working and writing. She feels that the activity, freedom, and the interesting work would help her condition and she reveals that she has begun to write her secrets in a journal in order to “relieve her mind.” This expression show how the cultural setting of the dominant husband and if she knows what is good for her scenario plays out.
The story setting takes place in an old house, during the summer. Due to her depression her physician and husband John, banishes her to a room that once must have been a nursery, for the ugly yellow wallpaper was torn off in spots. She is intrigued by the patterns and designs in the wallpaper, and her imagination runs amuck.
Many of the similes the author writes of are from the narrator who is not entirely reliable and yet is prone to making very potent statements about her situation as an oppressed woman. Though she disguises her complaints about feeling trapped and unhappy with admissions that it all might be because of her nervous condition (as opposed to a legitimate sense of oppression by her husband) it’s impossible for the reader to ignore the fact that it might be her husband’s treatment of her that is the problem. For instance, Gilman’s narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper tends to make seemingly innocent remarks such as, “John laughs at me, if course, but one expects that in marriage” and “he is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction”. While such “offhand” comments about the nature of her relationship and marriage might not be taken seriously in another context, the narrator’s growing madness makes these statements about John’s habit of being overprotective and oppressive impossible to shrug off. It’s those chiastic traits that have turned me off from men, for the last 20 years. By creating a character whose narration becomes increasingly out of touch and “crazy”, the narrator’s statements that follow the more innocent claims are to be taken more seriously. For instance, just after one of her more innocent-sounding remarks about marriage, the narrator states in one of the impressive quotes from The Yellow Wallpaper, “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.” Though she
Show More

Related Documents: The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Yellow Wallpaper

The wife in the yellow wallpaper is middle-aged and has just given birth to her first child. Forced to live in a nice home, she is secluded from all its pleasures and her child. She is a well-educated and aspiring writer who is struggling with more than just postpartum depression. The symptoms of postpartum depression match the client's case perfectly, such as mood swings, crying, appetite problems, and anxiety (Depression Information Postpartum from the Mayo Clinic by Mayo Clinic Staff). She also…

Words 1332 - Pages 6

The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper is the story of a Female narrator who is sentenced to bed rest by her caring but misguided husband. Through this story she is slowly driven insane by her isolation as she begins to see women trapped in her wallpaper. I believe her marriage was the trap that helped this take place. A tool used to force women under a never ending contract and to give men a legal form of ownership over them. Through this story, Charlotte P. Gilman has helped to display man’s arrogance and unwillingness…

Words 782 - Pages 4

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

seen as hysterical and nervous beings and the advised treatment was that of “Rest Cure” in order to monitor the condition. Was the problem post partum depression? Or was it the “female condition” that women experienced in society? The story, “the yellow wall paper” is centered on the descriptions of the wall paper and the woman interactions with it which reveals more to the reader than just a mere state of depression. The female condition was characterized by women’s attempt to identify…

Words 1226 - Pages 5

The Yellow Wallpaper

Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper is a collection of fictional journal entries written by a woman whose husband, also a physician, has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of a house, which he rents for the summer. As part of her “Rest Cure” treatment, she is forbidden from working and has to hide her journal from him so she can recuperate from what he calls a “slight hysterical tendency”, now known as depression, which was a common diagnosis to women in the late 19th century…

Words 1487 - Pages 6

The Yellow Wallpaper

Madness “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1899 details the story of a young woman’s descent into madness, showing clearly the symptoms that are attributed to mental breakdowns. There are many different psychological issues present within the story, including the narrator’s condition of “nerves” and the very real issue of postpartum depression, and as a result of both of these issues not being treated in the manner that is needed in order to resolve these afflictions, the narrator…

Words 993 - Pages 4

The Yellow Wallpaper

In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman uses feminism to portray a society where males dominate over females. An inequality is shown towards women as they are displayed as weaker individuals in situations in relationships and outside forces. Later on in the story, the male and female roles change as the relationship between the inequalities of the two characters in the story. Gilman’s use of feminism sets the stage of the story as masculinity reigns over femininity in how the plot progresses…

Words 594 - Pages 3

The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper The story is about the narrator speaking of her own story and experiences. Kind of like reading her thoughts as she speaks to us. The narrator seems to be crazy and a bit insane which she is taught to believe of herself by the way her family, friends, and husband treat her. Story begins when the narrator and john move into a beautiful summer home. John has brought her out there so she can get better from a strong case of depression. He says you need the most rest you could possibly…

Words 634 - Pages 3

the yellow wallpaper

Carolina Rodriguez Sylvia Herrera English Literature 16 September 2014 Respond Paper: The Yellow Wallpaper The yellow wallpaper was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, this book is known for its feminists literary ties. The narrator wrote this during the Victorian Era. An era full of constrictment towards women.The story is a set of journals written from the point of view of a woman undergoing a -mental breakdown- defined as what we call "postpartum depression.” Gilman experiences oppression…

Words 1049 - Pages 5

Yellow wallpaper

were treated? Have we, women, done anything wrong that we deserved all those sufferings? In the story—“The Yellow Wallpaper”, the writer directly portrayed the harsh, difficult life of women in the early 20th century. Through the insane women, the author reveals how women were trapped by the structure of marriage and society and how they were oppressed by their husband. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story written in the late 19th century by Charlotte Perkens Gilman. It is written in the 1st person…

Words 1023 - Pages 5