¶ … Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" writing styles; James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" compare to my own life.
Modernism vs. postmodernism
Over the course of the late 19th and early 20th century, American literature began to turn inward. Instead of looking to outer manifestations of the human character, American authors began to use interior monologues as a way of creating a narrative arc. Stories such as "The Yellow Wallpaper," "Winter Dreams," and "Sonny's Blues" manifest the characteristics of both realism and modernism in the ways that they address relatively mundane subject matter, such as failed familial and romantic relationships. They also begin to show signs of the fragmented, postmodern narrative style which is more fully realized in Baldwin's "Winter Dreams." But their main, characteristic feature is the degree to which they use mundane details in the style of realism and the psychological state of the character in the modernist style to create suspense and drama, versus more traditional exciting exterior plot turns.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," the heroine is on an enforced 'rest cure' from which she is banned from all stimulating activity, including intellectual activity. The story is narrated in a first-person, limited narrative style and...
Her mother gave her little affection, believing she would never know the pain of rejection if she never experienced love. (Vosberg para. 13) The clear need her character has for a family and for overt family support, as well as the suspicions that develop in her mind about the others in the house, reflect this sort of youth in many ways. The enclosed world of the protagonist is a representation of
Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Specifically it will discuss the effect that point-of-view has on the story. The narrator in this story slowly descends into madness as the story continues, and the first-person point-of-view helps the reader truly feel how the woman feels, and why she goes slowly mad in her own home. The author chose first-person for this story to graphically illustrate how women's lives were ruled over
I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still... It keep me quiet by the hour" (Hunt, 179). With this, it is clear that Gilman sees herself as trapped in a very disruptive and confined world, one which ultimately drives her insane; also, this mysterious woman is a symbol of her physical self caught within a maze of confusion and despair, all because of the "yellow wallpaper"
For example, she edited feminist publications in San Francisco in 1894 and helped with the planning of the Women's Congresses of 1894-95. At the congress she met Jane Adams, the social reformer. Charlotte also toured the United States, lecturing on women's rights. Throughout the subsequent lectures and written works she was adamant about the need to reform the status of women in society. "Women are human beings as much as
As the narrator is denied access to the world and the normal expression of her individuality, so she becomes a true prisoner of the room with the yellow wallpaper. Her life and consciousness becomes more restricted until the wallpaper becomes an animated world to her. There is also the implied suggestion in this process of a conflict between the rational and logical world, determined and controlled by male consciousness, and
Weir Mitchell, is an allegedly 'wise' man of medicine" (Hume pp). The woman considers her child lucky because he does not have to occupy the room with the horrible wallpaper and stresses that it is impossible for her to be with him because it makes her very nervous (Hume pp). She believes that the room was once a nursery because of the bars on the windows and the condition of
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