Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman first published in 1892. The story touches upon themes of patriarchy, misogyny, identity, disenfranchisement, and mental illness. Told from the perspective of a first-person narrator, the reader gets a glimpse into the effect of patriarchy on individual women and on women collectively. The story begins when the narrator and her husband John spend the summer in a holiday house. The narrator admits that she has "temporary nervous depression," but that her husband, even though he is a physician, does not recognize that she is sick. Instead, he believes that his wife should simply refrain from all work, including writing, and be house bound. When she protests, "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage." Thus, Gilman makes a poignant statement about the nature of heterosexual marriage within the first few sentences of the short story. The…...

Yellow allpaper
Breaking Free: The Ironic Liberation of "Yellow allpaper"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow allpaper" 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 narrator's removal from her role is, however, imposed upon her, or forced upon her by her seemingly well-intentioned but condescending husband. Therefore, the narrator calls into question her own dreams and desires. The reader is asked to investigate what a woman's dreams and desires would be independent of social norms or expectations. Although the narrator does break free from patriarchy at the end of the story, she does so symbolically and tragically: which suggests that there are few legitimate roles…...

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Work Cited

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." 1899. Retrieved online: http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

Yellow Wallpaper portrays that the protagonist in the story, Jane is mentally disturbed. Due to various factors and social pressures, Jane is affected with a mental condition that causes her to lose her mind and be out of touch with reality. The diagnoses that can be made about Jane from The Yellow Wallpaper are of Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type and Bipolar Disorder Type I.
Schizophrenia- Paranoid Type

As defined in the DSM-IV (APA, 2000), the Paranoid Type schizophrenia consists majorly of delusions and hallucinations. Other symptoms suggestive of Paranoid Type schizophrenia are disorganized speech, behavior and inappropriate effects. (APA, 2000) As the name suggest, this form of schizophrenia is linked to excess feel of anxiety and confusion. The patient feels as if everything and everyone is going against them and wants to harm them in one way or another. Just as is characteristic of any schizophrenic patient, Jane has an amalgamation of thoughts.…...

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References

American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of MentalDisorders, 4th ed. DSM-IV-TR. Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.

Gilman, C. (1973). The yellow wallpaper. [New York]: Feminist Press.

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 the more imaginative female consciousness and sensibility.

On a psychological level the structure of the rational male world interweaves with the mental domination of the women. The women states that she is sick and her husband, who is a physician, declares that there is essentially nothing wrong with her. This contradiction between what she feels and his views leaves her in a confused state.

A as she puts it, "If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and…...

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Works Cited www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=96539444

Delashmit, Margaret, and Charles Long. "Gilman's the Yellow Wallpaper." Explicator 50.1 (1991): 32-33. Questia. 30 Apr. 2007  http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=96539444 .

A www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=43074282

Herndl, Diane Price. Invalid Women: Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction and Culture, 1840-1940. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Questia. 30 Apr. 2007  http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=43074283 .

A www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=94721939

I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still... It keep me quiet by the hour" (Hunt, 179). ith 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" that clings to the walls of the nursery like some kind of dreadful disease.
Finally, the narrator, driven mad by the wallpaper in the nursery, peels all of it away and says to her husband, "I've got out at last... And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"which results in her husband fainting at her feet, "right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time" (Hunt, 183).…...

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Works Cited

Bauer, Dale. The Yellow Wallpaper: Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New York: Palgrave-

Macmillan, 1998.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader: The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Fiction. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper: A Sourcebook and Critical

Yet, in this case, the freedom that the author is talking about is not necessarily the liberation of women from the oppressive male society, but the freedom of each individual with mental problems to having a socially integrated life, with little or no confinement that would also make the mental problems develop.
In conclusion, although it may seem that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written with a feminist purpose, a more precise understanding of the situation is that this was written with medical purposes in mind, as the author so argues later on. Understanding this is important because it offers an insight not only in the real topic, but also offer a good understanding into the feminist approach to text. Even if it is not such a type of text, this form of analysis offers new insights in the social and individual fight for emancipation that women took…...

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Bibliography

Gilman, Charlotte. Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Ed. John Schlib and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford, 2003. pp1162-1163.

King, Jeannette; Morris, Pam. On Not Reading Between the Lines: Models of Reading in "The Yellow Wallpaper, Studies in Short Fiction, Winter 1989, Vol. 26 Issue 1

Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. New York: Greenwood P, 1995.

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,…...

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Works Cited

Clemens, V. (1999). What Gothic Nightmares Do. State University of New York Press.

Davison, C.M. (2004). Haunted House/Haunted Heroine: Female Gothic Closets in "The Yellow Wallpaper." Women's Studies, 33, 47-75.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. (1899) The Yellow Wallpaper. American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site. Online at http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/gilman.htm#INSERT%203

What I have told you are just my feelings and opinion, John. Though I am do not know exactly what is ailing your wife, I do know -- as a woman's intuition would know -- that your wife is not happy being alone in that room everyday, treated like a patient with a horrifying, yet undetermined, 'disease.' I can feel the hurt in her as she only see glimpses of her children every day, and nothing of the life that we experience everyday. I beg you, dear brother, to consider changing the form of treatment you have been giving her. I believe that allowing her to live the life she used to live will restore the energy and happiness that she had before this unfortunate, undetermined illness has taken over her. Dear brother, I will wait for your response to my letter, and I hope that your love for your…...

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 the right and most beneficial course of treatment for her depression.

To be fair, physicians of the 19th century were trained to ignore many of the symptoms that modern medicine now associates with diseases of the mind, particularly in the case of women. In all likelihood, had a male patient presented with identical symptoms, the same physician would have recognized the value of productive work, intellectual stimulation, and fulfilling social relationships in depression. Ultimately,

Gilman's romantic fictional narrative incorporates dark imagery, and…...

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References

Branden, N. (1998) a Woman's Self-Esteem: Struggles and Triumphs in the Search for Identity. Wiley & Sons: New York de Beauvoir, S. (1974 edition) the Second Sex. Vintage: New York

Kasl, C. (1990) Women, Sex, and Addiction: A Search for Love and Power.

Harper & Row: New York

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 characters feelings.Justification of Critical PerspectiveSince the story is written by a female writer and was married too, the female experiences are different from those of men, particularly in married life, which corroborated with the Feminist perspective. The narrative parts of male and female viewpoints would be scrutinized with the given story. The female authors take on the plot events and the protagonist should be better evaluated. How and why the author thought of married life, illness, and freedom of thought…...

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Works Cited

“Feminist Gothic in “The Yellow Wallpaper.”” Lone Star College, Accessed 3 Dec. 2021.https://www.lonestar.edu/yellow-wallpaper.htm.

“Literature- Critical Theory and Critical Perspectives.” St. John’s College HS,   Accessed 3 Dec. 2021.http://www.stjohns-chs.org/english/mgelso_courses/literature_critical_theory.pdf .

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 yellow wallpaper "... is like a woman stooping down and creeping about... By moonlight, it becomes bars!... [b]y daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still." This summarized and showed best the woman's own feelings about her constant 'imprisonment' by her husband, and in general, by the society. The woman became aware that the pattern is a 'woman' like her. In fact, the wallpaper served as her reflection of everything that was…...

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References

Gilman, C. E-text of the Yellow Wallpaper. Available at:  http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=GilYell.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1 .

St. James, S. 2002. "Hanging the Yellow Wallpaper: Feminism and textual studies." Feminist Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2.

Yellow allpaper" and Mental Illness in omen
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow allpaper" is an important short story that delves into the issue of mental illness. It illustrates how women and their problems are trivialized, with this closely related to the role that women have in society. Through the story, it is seen that women become prisoners of their mental illness because the medical community will not help them. This leaves women to manage their own problems, an action that lead to madness. By telling this story, Gilman is urging the medical community to take a new view on mental illness, to take women seriously, and to find a genuine way to help women before the condition worsens. This makes the short story an extended metaphor for medical discourse on women and mental illness, that shows both the problems that exist and calls for a solution to those problems.

In "The…...

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Works Cited

Crewe, J. "Queering 'The Yellow Wallpaper'? Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Politics of Form." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 14 (1995): 273-293.

Gilman, C.P. "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eds. Judith Tanka & Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003: 844-845.

Gilman, C.P. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eds. Judith Tanka & Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003: 832-844.

Haralambos, M., & Holborn, M. Sociology: Themes and Perspectives. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995.

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 allpaper 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). But then, she adds, this is "a dead paper and a great relief to my mind." How can a doctor (whether one's husband or not) possible cure a patient if the doctor doesn't believe the patient is ill? She is imprisoned by the wrongful prognosis of her husband. And she cannot be bailed out from this veritable jail cell she is in because she has "schedule prescription for each hour in the day." This imprisonment does not suit her, and…...

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Works Cited

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers

University Press, 1993.

O'Brien, Tim. In the field.

Yellow allpaper
How the antagonist in "The Yellow allpaper" by Charlotte Perkins contributes to the story's overall meaning.

The physician's wife is the main character and has just given birth. She suffers from postpartum depression, but the husband tries his best to treat her. Her husband prescribes a pattern of treatment that requires her to be locked in a bedroom with a yellow paper that is lurid. The main character is a writer who has been forbidden to write; however, she writes when no one is around her. Beautiful grounds surround the estate, but she is motivated to stay indoors and not to give into fancies. She has chosen a bedroom that is darks and decrepit. The floor has scratches and the walls have holes and dents. In addition, the bed has been permanently nailed on the floor.

Some sections of the floor have yellow wallpaper patches that the woman despises. Her…...

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Work Cited

Gilman, Perkins. Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'? Harvard: Harvard Business Press. 2003.

Print

Johnson, Greg. Gilman's Gothic Allegory: Rage and Redemption in 'The Yellow Wallpaper. New York: Penguin Books, 2009. Print

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' that kills. In the story, the unnamed narrator is forced to undergo a 'rest cure' in which she is denied all stimulation. Bored and unable to read or expend her intellectual or emotional energy, she slowly goes mad, eventually coming to imagine that there is a trapped, suffering woman behind the yellow wallpaper of her rented bedroom. The trapped woman is imaginary and is rather a fiction produced of the narrator's diseased brain. The imaginary woman is a metaphorical representation…...

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References

Gillman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." 1899. [8 Dec 2012]

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

1. The symbolism of the caged bird in Maya Angelou's autobiographical work, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."
2. The theme of captivity and freedom in Harper Lee's novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird."
3. Analyzing the oppression and confinement of women in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper."
4. The symbolism of the birdcage in Henrik Ibsen's play, "A Doll's House," in relation to gender roles and societal expectations.
5. Comparing the experiences of the caged birds in Richard Wright's novel, "Native Son," and Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, "The Handmaid's Tale."
6. Exploring the theme of captivity and liberation in Jean Rhys's....

1. The Deterioration of Mental Health: The Impact of the Yellow Wallpaper

2. A Haunting Presence: Analyzing the Symbolism of the Yellow Wallpaper in Mental Health

3. The Yellow Wallpaper and Its Devastating Effects on Mental Well-being

4. A Prison of Madness: The Significance of the Yellow Wallpaper in Mental Health

5. The Slow Descent into Madness: How the Yellow Wallpaper Affects Mental Health

6. The Yellow Wallpaper: A Reflection of Mental Health in Isolation

7. Breaking Down Walls: The Psychological Impact of the Yellow Wallpaper

8. The Yellow Wallpaper and Its Role in the Mental Breakdown of the Protagonist

9. Unraveling the Mind: The Yellow Wallpaper's Influence....

I. Introduction
A. Brief summary of "The Yellow Wallpaper"
B. Explanation of how the story reflects the supremacy of men and high expectations during the time period
C. Thesis statement: Through the character’s experiences and the symbolism in the story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" illustrates the oppressive nature of societal expectations and the dominance of male figures during the time.

II. The Supremacy of Men
A. Description of the protagonist's husband, John, as a representation of male authority
B. Examples of how John controls the protagonist's actions and decisions
C. Analysis of how male dominance is portrayed in the story

III. High Expectations
A. Discussion of the societal expectations placed....

1. "The yellow wallpaper symbolizes the protagonist's deteriorating mental health and her struggle against societal expectations in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'"

2. "Through the use of symbolism and imagery, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' explores the effects of patriarchal oppression on women's mental health."

3. "Analysis of the protagonist's descent into madness reveals the damaging consequences of Victorian gender roles in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'"

Your thesis statement effectively conveys the main ideas you will be exploring in your essay. It clearly highlights the role of the yellow wallpaper as a symbol of the protagonist's mental health struggles and societal constraints. To strengthen your thesis, consider providing....