...The Yellow Wallpaper: Narrator’s Perception Of Reality "The color is hideous enough and unreliable enough and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you." (Gildman, p. 71) The story of the Yellow Wallpaper tells us about the madness of the “nameless” main character as she is suffering from a nervous depression. Her husband john, a physician, takes her to a leased summer home to try to relieve her with rest-cure. Rather than curing his wife from her disorder, John worsens the effects sending her into a severe depression. The role of the yellow wallpaper plays a dominant role in the story reviling her insanity through her writings, her husband’s treatments that worsen her health; and the lady behind the wallpaper. The narration in the Yellow Wallpaper is written in a unique first person point of view. Because of this we are able to see the deterioration of her state throughout the whole story. The narrator of the story is isolated from the outside world only exposed through a barred window to look out. She has no contact with the outside world, except john and their housekeeper Jennie, which leads her to writing. John does not want his wife to write because he thinks it will diminish her treatment, but she does anyway, which is exhausting for her to do it in secret. As the narrators...
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...1. Introduction - What are the major issues and problems facing Chabot? Background – current situation – future plan - challenges confronted – problems need to be solved Chabot is facing a lot of issues and problems in the wallpaper industry. As the number of wallpaper manufacturers is highly decreasing over last years the competition among remaining companies becomes fiercer. Some manufacturers face difficulties supplying large and powerful retailers. So does Chabot as a privately owned, small company selling products with short life cycles and highly valued at a reasonable price. Due to fashion orientated product industry and broad range of product preferences other types of wall covering are favored by consumers as well. To keep up with competitors Chabot is providing new items every 4 month but speeds up obsolete wallpapers as well. When wallpaper pattern and designs become obsolete, markdowns are necessary to help get rid of old inventory. Problems with inventory turnover lead to mark downs which decrease profits. Caused by inaccurate demand forecasting Chabot has to deal with a high amount of obsolete inventory and a resulting low turnover rate. Since customers base their decisions on style and appeal of the design as well as on in stock availability retailer want low inventory and expect quick order fulfillment. But Chabot cannot keep up with demand and causing a low level of customer service due to long production runs and lack of flexibility in manufacturing process...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper, is about a woman that is trying to escape the man orient society that she is living in. So, during the summer he husband has rented this "colonial mansion, of romantic felicity,"(594) for the summer trying to get his wife over this "temporary nervous depression,"(595) and feels that fresh air will do her some good. She wanted to say down stairs but he feels that upstairs is a better idea that they stay up stairs. This is showing that men rule the world and whatever they say goes. So, they up stirs they are staying in this "big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, windows that looks all ways, and air and sunshine glory," (595), because the husband feels that sunlight and fresh air will do his wife some good and help her get back to normal health faster. Because during this time period the woman wasn't really aloud to get sick and her main job was to take care of the house and children and this shows that she has lacked her position of the wife all because her husband does not trust his wife, at this point at time. All the wife wants is husbands to understand her and see her for who she is and he just ignores her and not worry herself with any problems and that her main goal in life right now is get better. The room that they are staying in has bars on the all the windows, there is this dull colored wallpaper that is hung in sections on the wall and the bed is nailed to floor. The husband leaves his wife in this room all day and there isn't much that she...
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...a very brief wallpaper history…. wallcoverings • a finish material used to cover the construction wall surface • all encompassing - paint, wallpaper, mirrors, wood, metal etc….. • we will focus on paint, wallpaper, and resilient wallcoverings • wall “paper” - use of terminology wallpaper terms today, huge variety of products available...not all terms apply to all products • strips • vertical butt joint – vertical strips meet edge-to-edge, no overlap • 200 BC – China, primitive rice-paper • 16th century - first manufactured papers, from France (marbleized) • 17th century – flocked papers.... “poor man’s tapestry” • 18th century – pictorals from French arch. • wallpapers were hand-painted or hand-blocked until..... • Industrial Revolution saw the industry revolutionized by machine printing • mid 20th c. – silkscreening allowed mass-production of high quality papers; demand rebounded wallpaper terms • pattern number • dye lot – numbered for a particular production batch: all rolls exact match – slight variations can be found between batches pattern match/repeat – distance from beginning of pattern to point where it starts again – larger repeat = greater amount of waste in installation single/double/triple roll - waste product in installation straight-across match – each strip same at ceiling wallpaper terms random match – no match necessary at ceiling half-drop match – alternates same at ceiling every...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper The narrator starts off the story by talking about a large old house. She and her husband John are on a summer vacation for three months at this house. The house is a large estate that has been empty for many years, she describes it as haunted. She goes on and says she is sick with temporary nervous depression, one of the reasons they are staying at this house is to help her feel better by getting her fresh air. The house is standing alone far back from the road and three miles from the village. There are gardens, small houses for grounds keepers, and old greenhouses surrounding the house they are staying in. The narrator’s treatment requires her not to do any physical activity including writing. The narrator feels that activity, freedom, and writing would help her condition and says that she has been writing her secret journal in order to relieve her mind. She continues to describe the house, but more specifically the room she is staying in. There are bars over the windows, “rings and things” on the walls, an old mattress that has been through the wars, and a horrid yellow wall paper that has been ripped in spots. Her husband John is very controlling of the narrator and what she does because of her illness. He is a doctor and is limiting things that his wife wants to do. The narrator likes using her imagination but her husband discourages it. She continues describing the bedroom; she thinks it was a nursery for young children. She describes...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper: A Woman's Struggle Pregnancy and childbirth are very emotional times in a woman's life and many women suffer from the "baby blues." The innocent nickname for postpartum depression is deceptive because it down plays the severity of this condition. Although she was not formally diagnosed with postpartum depression, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) developed a severe depression after the birth of her only child (Kennedy et. al. 424). Unfortunately, she was treated by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who forbade her to write and prescribed only bed rest and quiet for recovery (Kennedy et al. 424). Her condition only worsened and ultimately resulted in divorce (Kennedy and Gioia 424). Gilman's literary indictment of Dr. Mitchell's ineffective treatment came to life in the story "The Yellow Wallpaper." On the surface, this gothic tale seems only to relate one woman's struggle with mental illness, but because Guilman was a prominent feminist and social thinker she incorporated themes of women's rights and the poor relationships between husbands and wives (Kennedy and Gioia 424). Guilman cleverly manipulates the setting to support her themes and set the eerie mood. Upon first reading "The Yellow Wallpaper," the reader may see the relationship between the narrator and her husband John as caring, but with examination one will find that the narrator is repeatedly belittled and demeaned by her husband. On first arriving at the vacation home John chooses...
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...and freedom from domestic duties. Therefore, Austens examination of privacy serves as a critique of limitations on female intellectual growth. The issue of female privacy is perhaps most associated with feminist works published long after Pride and Prejudice, but Austens depiction of the matter can be seen as a precursor to these later arguments. Both Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Virginia Woolf published works pertaining to the physical and mental privacy needed for women. A Room of Ones Own, for instance, clearly establishes a link between female creativity and physical privacy. In fact, Woolf directly states that without a private room, a woman cannot effectively engage in the mental task of writing (Woolf 52). Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper presents a similar argument about mental privacy by depicting a protagonist whose mental functioning is handicapped by an abrasive, belittling male character, to the...
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...Analysis on “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut. Gilman was a writer and social activist during the late 1800s and early 1900s. She had a tough childhood. Her father, Frederick Beecher Perkins, but he abandoned the family, leaving Charlotte's mother to raise two children on her own. Gilman moved around a lot as a result and her education suffered greatly for it. Gilman married Charles Stetson in 1884 and the couple had a daughter named Katherine. Sometime during her ten year marriage to Stetson, Gilman experienced a severe depression and suffered a series of uncommon treatments for it. This experience is believed to have inspired her to the short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892). The story takes the form of undisclosed journal entries written by a woman who is supposed to be recovering from what her husband, a physician, calls a "temporary nervous depression”. This haunting psychological horror story chronicles the narrator's descent into madness, or perhaps depending on your interpretation, into freedom. The author’s use of setting, conflict and point of view, provide this short story with the drama needed to capture the reader’s attention. The author begins the story using the key element setting to keep the readers mind in a constant roam. The narrator's view of the setting is colored by her limited and troubled perspective. She sees the yellow wallpaper in the room as a mostly evil and troubling...
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...Charlotte Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a feminist’s tale of a woman who is spoken to like a child, ignored like a piece of furniture, and treated medically in a way that is horrible to most sensibilities. The horror she tolerates starring at the dreadful wallpaper day after day is really just a side effect of her abuse, and her frustrating lack of fulfillment, which was forbidden by a fool-hardy psychologist and enforced by the patriarchy of her husband. The short story was published in a New England magazine in 1892 and was received with mixed reviews. “Such a story ought not to be written” said one Boston physician. “Another physician, in Kansas, I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen” Crazy, or not, Gilman’s work was quickly recognized for its feminist message. “Gilman's story quickly evolved from a relatively obscure and subversive magazine piece of the late nineteenth century to a formative feminist classic” (St. Jean, 2002,). There are several examples of Gilman being spoken to by her husband the way a parent would speak to an anxious four year-old. “What is it little girl?” he said, “Don’t go walking about like that – you’ll get cold” (Gilman, in Kirszner, 2010, p. 465). “Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug, “she shall be as sick as she pleases…[go] to sleep, and talk about it in the morning” (p. 466). Thrailkill confirms that The Yellow Wallpaper is indeed a feminist manifesto by writing:...
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...“Black Swan” - “Yellow Wallpaper” Why can one only lose their self entirely or free oneself by creating an alternate reality in their own mind? If we compare the “Black Swan to the “Yellow Wallpaper,” maybe then we can begin to answer this question. “In the film 'Black Swan', Nina, always a white swan, begins to explore her Shadow (her black swan) for her lead role in 'Swan Lake'. I'm struck by the factors and presences pushing and pulling Nina into and out of her Shadow: namely, her creepy, infantilizing mother and her abusive, seducing director.” (Tally) Nina doesn't get to explore her notorious dark side in any remotely safe or healthy ways. Her mother has trapped her inside a pink, endless childhood--her bedroom full of stuffed animals, her mother physically dressing and undressing her, with Nina calling her 'mommy' in a needy, babyish voice which is the only thing, it seems, that will talk her mother back from the extreme edge of her bouts of rage.” (Tally) “Nor can Nina explore her Shadow in the world of the ballet--dominated by the forceful and dangerous director and a cut-throat group of ballerinas, many of whom seem to share Nina's eating disorder and her willingness to do anything to be on top in the company.” (Tally) “So from the beginning, is there any chance for Nina? At the end of the ballet, the swan queen can only find freedom in death: a fate that Nina shares.” (Tally) When Nina crosses over to...
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...Yaqi Wan Instructor: Joshua Weathersby EN 210 September 20, 2015 Feminist For the first paper, I want to talk about a fiction called “The Yellow Wall-paper” which made a profound impression on me. This short novel is written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman who is a well-known American novelist and wrote so many works about feminist. She also made a huge contribution of feminist movement from 19 to 20 century. If we want to know well about a fiction, the first thing we need to do is to understand the experience or background of the author. According to the introduction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the book “The Norton Anthology American Literature”, she was born in Hartford, Connecticut and had an unfortunate childhood. When she was young, her father divorced with her mother. Then, she lived a hard life with her father. Maybe because of this reason, she showed a high degree of autonomy and independence in her young age. Gilman got married in 1884, and had a daughter. However, her marriage is not so lasting and it ended in 1888 (484). Housework always troubled her and made her almost breakdown. As for this fiction which called “The Yellow Wall-paper”, it was published in 1892 and this novel was written based on Gilman’s life experience. At the beginning, the heroine was send to a villa which was in a remote suburban for recuperating by her husband, because she suffered from mild postpartum depression. She was forced to accept medical treatment in this villa, and lived like...
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...The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the story about a woman named Jane, who writes in her journal about a summer home her and her husband will be staying at. Her husband John, who is a physician assures others that she only has temporary nervous depression. Because of her illness she is not supposed to do anything active, including writing. She feels that writing and having freedom can help her get better, so she begins to write in a secret journal. Particularly when she writes in her journal she describes a disgusting yellow wallpaper she sees in her room. She becomes fixated on the wallpaper and instead of hating it, grows fonder of it. She becomes more and more obsessed with it that she starts to see a woman trying to escape. As the summer goes on she continues to write about the yellow wallpaper, and the woman trying to escape from the paper. She has completely gone insane when her husband breaks down the door and faints at the site of her creeping around, and peeling off all the wallpaper. The theme behind this story is that lack freedom can lead to insanity. Throughout Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the elements of fiction conflicts, symbolism, and characters all represent the theme, that lack of freedom can lead one to insanity. The first element of fiction that connects with the theme that lack of freedom can lead to one’s insanity is the conflicts Jane faces throughout the story. The first main conflict...
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...Consider “The Yellow Wallpaper” As A Feminist Text Before the 20th century, women were mostly controlled by men. Men chose the women’s role for them. Most women suffered from this, but a majority of it came from the lower and middle classes. Men controlled women and made them feel like they were trapped, or in prison. In present time this would be an issue, but in the 19th century and before, this was so common that it was seen as normal. Women were to be home serving their families. The men made them into servants. Women were led to believe that their duty in this world was to serve their man. Many women were unable to breakaway from this lifestyle because of the strong religious beliefs they had. If they had any desires to leave or not do as they were told, they would think they were sinning and letting down God. When the “Yellow Wallpaper” first came out, many were surprised and thought that such a story shouldn’t have been shared. It was described as insane and crazy and wasn’t an accurate description of society. Some Men refused to allow their wives to read it, thinking that it could lead them to start believing in other things. People were shocked by the story but quickly played it off as a fictional story. Some women who read it started envisioning a different life. "The ideal woman was not only assigned a social role that locked her into her home, but she was also expected to like it, to be cheerful and gay, smiling and good humored" (Lane, To Herland 109). At the...
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...which she records how she is feeling during her “sickness.”One can conclude from her journal especially as one reads further and further into the story, that she is going out of her mind, from this yellow wallpaper.In the story it states,“The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight... I’m really getting fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper”(649). The main character is giving us insight to the fact that she is becoming angry with this yellow wallpaper that is haunting her in her room. It gets to point where she starts seeing shadows and figures in the wallpaper staring at her through the night. Another example from the story, “ I tried to lift and push it until I was lame and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner but it hurt my teeth. Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor”(655). Our character is growing so angry with this wallpaper, that she is starting to peel it off of the walls of the room. She has even thought of jumping out of the window to get away from...
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...Judy Champion Mrs. Patty ENG 252 17 April 2014 The Struggle for Equal Rights Throughout history women have fought against the stigma of being considered fragile creatures incapable of rational thought and in need of male guidance and protection. Women continually fight for common rights not controlled by gender guidelines. In fact, groundbreaking progress has been made over the past one hundred years. It is not always a winning battle but women continue to witness the growing acceptance within many of the previously male dominated professions, such as author, poet, and journalist. One noted writer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in her short story “The Yellow Wall-paper”, told of the insensitive treatment of women’s mental health by medical professionals during the 1800’s. Some of the most notable examples of inequality are vividly evident in the basic rights and privileges we enjoy in the 21st century. Rights that were denied women in the US in the 1800s such as the right to vote, the right to retain ownership of her property upon marriage, and competent medical treatment. Women’s right to vote was a long, difficult battle. Early leaders of women’s rights like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony began their work as abolitionist with the intention of stopping slavery and obtaining basic rights for the Negros. Likewise, they began to realize how few rights women actually had and decided to take on the challenge to change things; “This growing understanding of...
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