As the text by Davison (2004) contributes, "given that the narrator in Gilman's tale is a femme couverte who has no legal power over her own person -- like her flesh-and-blood counterparts at the time the story was published -- and that her husband is a physician whose pronouncements about his wife's illness are condoned by a spectral yet powerful medical establishment, it is no wonder that his wife grows increasingly fearful of him and suspects him of conspiring with his sister against her." (Davison, 48)
This helps to drive what the research discussed here will promote as a distinct literary tradition to be known as Female Gothic, so-named for the shared condition of American women during the time of Gilman's writing, who lived in obscurity in spite of the instincts and inspirations driving them to desire more. In the narrator of this story, these instincts become a cross to bear, particularly in the way that they seem to threaten her empowered husband and a sister-in-law content in servility. This scenario carries with it the clear "implications of Gilman's choice of what later came to be classified as the Female Gothic mode, a form that is generally distinguished from the traditional Gothic mode as it centers its lens on a young woman's rite of passage into womanhood." (Davison, 48)
This passage is driven home by the titular analogy. When the symbol of the yellow wallpaper comes into play, shapeless and revolting but quite visibly falling away from the walls, its representation simultaneously of a sort of molting into womanhood and of an ugly female docility and domesticity is clear. The correlation between the rite of passage and the acceptance of a bland and uninspired context denotes something of the nation and culture into which this type of literature was maturing. Its sharp critical stance denotes a categorical rejection of the idea that America's modernity and familial stability were to be seen as inherently progressive.
Here is where the author not only cites a problem of typifying...
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
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"
Her account of his complete discounting of her expressed needs, (which he dismisses without a second thought), as well as her description of his attitude toward her engaging in any sort of productive work or mentally stimulating activity or social relationships of any kind also suggest that the protagonist is, on some level if not consciously, aware that her physician husband's wisdom may be lacking with respect to what is
Yellow Wallpaper" a feminist text. What work women American culture turn century? How wife defeat patriarchal culture represented attitude husband? Consider "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a feminist text. What does the work say about women and American culture at the turn of the century? How does the wife defeat the patriarchal culture represented in the attitude of her husband? The story of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story of a 'cure'
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
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).
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