Depression or Oppression: The Yellow Wallpaper
\\"The Yellow Wallpaper\\" is an amazing piece about Charlotte’s descent into mental impairment. Presented in diary form, the text recounts the experiences of Charlotte who is diagnosed with a nervous condition (i.e. hysteria) and is advised by her physician husband that she ought to be exposed to minimal mental stimulation in her path to recovery. Towards this end, she is essentially barricaded in her bedroom – a room wrapped in yellow wallpaper. While Charlotte is at first diagnosed with depression and supposedly put on treatment for the same, what informs her descent into further mental impairment is oppression, as opposed to depression.
It is important to note that human beings happen to be social creatures. What this means is that they thrive on constant interactions with each other. Charlotte is isolated and the only persons she has access to are the nurse and her husband. At some point, she points out that she has nobody to seek “advice and companionship” from. She lacks a social system that she could actively use to share her tribulations, vent her frustrations, or simply converse meaningfully with. This actively denies her an essential component of human nature. It should also be noted that Charlotte’s freedom of movement is curtailed. The ‘yellow wallpapered’ room could symbolically be viewed as her detention facility effectively meaning she is more or less a ‘prisoner’ whose right to both association and movement has been truncated. The short-story also alludes to the treatment of women as the weaker sex and paints a picture of an extremely obedient and submissive woman. Charlotte’s husband is in this case the dominant figure – a fact proclaimed by his male gender. Charlotte, on the other hand presents a typical 19th century woman disposition of passivity and meekness. She even hides that fact that she is keeping a diary from John so as not...…facts and the true state of affairs distorted or hidden from her view. This is particularly the case when it comes to her husband’s assurance that her condition is improving while to the contrary, it I actually deteriorating. She is in essence forced to a point whereby she blindly trusts her husband’s untrue assertions regarding her wellbeing and recovery. At some point, oblivious of the fact that her condition is deteriorating, she quips, “I wish I could get well faster.” Charlotte’s ‘rest therapy’ ends up doing more harm than good. It is because of her confinement that she loses herself and her mental condition further deteriorates. In the final analysis, this piece brings to light the misguided practices of the 19th century that instead of improving patients’ mental wellbeing ended up hurting them even further. In addition to being enlightening and informative, the piece also offers insight into the nature of mental stress. Its allusion to gender oppression is…
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
Yellow Wallpaper Breaking Free: The Ironic Liberation of "Yellow Wallpaper" Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a quintessential feminist story, even though it can be interpreted on many levels within that rubric. The narrator is married and has a child; she is thus engaged in some of the strongest trappings of a patriarchal society. However, she is removed both physically and spiritually from her stereotyped role as wife and mother. The
The constant suppression of her husband to let her roam around the house, and his insistence to rest and sleep all day, became the catalyst for her to have delusions about the intricate patterns on the yellow wallpaper. Her daily 'imprisonment' inside the bedroom, and constant deliberation of where the pattern leads to and what the pattern is, revealed to the woman an important discovery: the pattern in the
English Literature: Literary AnalysesTitle of the story: The Yellow WallpaperAuthor: Charlotte Perkins StetsonThesis of the StoryThe story �The Yellow Wallpaper,� written by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, is about mental illness, treatment for married women, and freedom of thought and expression that bring ups and down in their emotions. The writer has offered various symbols like the diary, the yellow wallpaper, and day and night light to symbolize the story and the
Charlotte Perkins Gilman�s �The Yellow Wallpaper�:A Decent into Madness or Feminist Liberation or Both?Charlotte Perkins Gilman�s �The Yellow Wallpaper� chronicles the so-called rest cure of a nameless woman who has just given birth. The woman�s physician-husband supervises the cure, during which the narrator is denied all mental stimulation. Rather than growing less anxious, the woman instead becomes more restive and miserable. Her mind, denied the mental outlet she craves, looks
John is completely blind to his wife's needs. In fact, he is being completely selfish in this situation because he is placing himself over his wife's needs. This fact, on top of everything else, allows us to see how easily oppression could transform into anger. Oppression, repression, and rage emerge as important aspects of "The Yellow Wallpaper." The narrator in this story represents countless women who suffered at the hands
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