Moral Consciousness in "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a disturbing look into the moral and social position of women at the time the author wrote it in 1899. The narrator slowly goes mad as the story progresses, and it is easy to see why. She is stuck away in the country while her husband is gone all day, and she has nothing to do and no interests to keep her occupied. A nanny is even raising her baby. She cannot visit others and her husband keeps her nearly a recluse because of her "delicate condition." In reality, she is a strong and vital woman who begins hallucinating because her life is so empty and she is so lonely. He has even convinced her she is sick, and then says he does not really believe it.
The female author wrote this story to show how women were treated in Victorian times. This woman wants to work and participate in her life, but the men around her convince her she is better off doing nothing. Her husband is so controlling that he even makes the decision where they will sleep, even after his wife tells him she does not like the yellow wallpaper in the room he chooses. All of this shows how society looked at women at the time. They were "fragile" and emotionally irrational. They had no power or choice in a relationship, and they were seen as weak and unable to deal with the real world. This narrator may have mental problems, but it seems they came from the way she was treated by her husband and society. It was as if women did not exist. They could not work, many did not even care for their own children, and they had little to live for or strive for. Gilman wrote this story to raise the moral consciousness of readers, and to show the plight of women in Victorian times. The reader has to feel sorry for this narrator - not because she goes mad, but because she was driven to madness by the social and moral beliefs at the time. There is little social justice here, because the husband will just believe he was right, and his wife was crazy. He will not see his own participation in the situation, or how he could rectify it by treating his wife as an equal.
Similarities in Theme in the Two Stories Prisoners: Both of these stories place the characters in a kind of prison. On the first page of Yellow Wallpaper the narrator has already explained that the reason she doesn't get well is because of her husband. An irony of huge magnitude, to say that one's husband is a physician and that "perhaps" that is the reason "I do not get well faster" (3).
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
Babylon and Yellow River Valley Civilizations Compare and Contrast Political Religious and Social Aspects The history of the ancient world is mainly the history of the five great civilizations: Egypt, Babylon, China, Greece and Rome. These civilizations made a great contribution to the world culture as they set the basis for social development of the modern world. In this paper I would like to discuss political and social aspects of the
You see he does not believe I am sick!" (Gilman). In fact, there is a question as to whether the narrator drags her husband along with her in her journey into madness. Two feminist writers note, "At the moment when Gilman's narrator completes the identification with her double in the wallpaper, she experiences an epiphany. To John she exclaims, 'I've got out at last... In spite of you and Jane!'"
Also, the different moral patterns of between the genders, as analyzed by Gillian, remains controversial, as the inherently 'separate' moral system of men and women (to say nothing of psychologist's ability to define what constitutes adult morality at all) is part of the raging debate on how to create truly fair, gender-neutral tests and classroom environments. In terms of usefulness on a personal level, the different ways of dealing
Red Badge of Courage and Nabokov on "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" One of the easiest ways to understand how literature can implicitly function as propaganda in the service of the powerful is to imagine Henry Fleming, the main character of Stephen Crane's novel The Red Badge of Courage, if he had chosen to return home following his desertion rather than stay with the military. Crane's novel is a shameless piece
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