...With over 200 written works, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s career as a writer is a force to be reckoned with. Many of her works, such as the ever popular The Yellow Wallpaper, are considered classics and remain relevant in today’s society. Gilman is most popular for her work deciphering women’s roles and treatment in society in the past and during her life. Gilman’s works are relatable to all women who have experienced or are experiencing oppression by society. Gilman’s feminist outlook is clearly seen in her academic works as well as her short stories. Especially in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, feminism was starting to accumulate among women of all ages. Gilman has been compared to other great feminist writers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan and they all share a common theme: their personal life correlates with their writing. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s personal struggles with oppression contribute to her success as a feminist writer, as exemplified in her works Women and Economics, Herland and The Yellow Wallpaper; Gilman’s controversial opinions on male dominated societies and women's rights label her as an icon for implementing social change in the 18th/19th century because she steers away from traditional Victorian gender roles. Born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 3rd, 1860, growing up was difficult for Gilman and her brother as her parents split due to their different views on women’s rights. Her father’s family was very liberal and believed in freedom...
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...Contradictions: Through the scope of formalist criticism, it is apparent that the setting in James Joyce’s Araby and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper affects the main character’s mental and physical state” “Araby” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both remarkable short stories, but the thoughts conceived after reading it are everything but short. Araby, written by, James Joyce is about a young character that lives in a neighborhood that appears to be dark and gloomy based solely on the author’s description of the houses and such. “An uninhabited house of two storeys at the blind end…” suggests that this neighborhood isn’t in paramount condition. On the other hand, the author makes several references to religious faith. For example, the Christian Brothers’ School, where the young character attends, or the Priest who has died prior to this story taking place, evokes this idea of purity. It is quite contrary that in a short story where the author paints a vivid image of gloom and despair, there are religious references that cause readers into a world of contradiction. In the same way Charlotte Gilman Perkins, author of The Yellow Wallpaper seeks to evoke a message of individual expression and successfully does so by recording the progression of the illness, through the state of the “yellow” wallpaper. Apparently, the bulk of the setting of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is in a room that the unnamed narrator has been forced to stay in by her husband, John, so that she may recover...
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...Topic 1: “Young Goodman Brown” Written by: Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, and raised by his widowed mother. Hawthorne’s ancestors were several of the earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Hathorne (original spelling of the family name), was his great-grandfather, who served as a judge at the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Hawthorne felt fascination and shame for his family’s involvement in the witch trials and integrated those feelings into his fiction. Nathaniel Hawthorne believed in the existence of the devil and believed in predestination. “Young Goodman Brown” attests to Hawthorne's symbolic habit of mind and to his interest in the past, myth, and human psychology.” (Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism). This suggests how Hawthorne’s novels, led critics to consider him a pioneer of psychological fiction. Topic 2: “Young Goodman Brown” Goodman Brown is a young faithful Christian whose begins to question his faith after a meeting in the forest with the devil. Goodman has always believed that everyone around him is of one accord not only with them-selves but also with God. When he meets face to face with the devil, Goodman is astonished that the devil appears to him as a resemblance of himself. “…and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features.” (Kennedy and Gioia 343). This suggests that Goodman...
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...When Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published in January of 1892 in the New England Magazine, it was considered a dark chronicle that was protested by a Boston physician (name unknown) in “The Evening Transcript”, a popular newspaper in Boston between 1830 and 1941. This doctor wrote; “such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.” It wasn’t until later that the story was realized for the depiction of societal values in an age when women were making their mark in society, both intellectually and politically. The character Gilman portrays is caught between her own artistic expression and that of expected wifehood and motherhood being regarded as the sole role of women. The time was ripe for such a story with women making their way towards equality and the Suffrage Movement. Here was a woman propelled into a stereotypical role of the time who could not conform to the servile and ancillary qualities of how a marriage was supposed to be. A woman listened to her husband, held her hanky properly and carried a tussie-mussie. The convergence of Gillman’s character as being sequestered by her physician husband as a cure for her illness in a room with yellow wallpaper lays the foundation for what becomes an obsession with the Yellow Wallpaper. It is often said that artists and writers are touched by unusual qualities of the mind, perhaps even a bit of madness. The wallpaper in the story is representative of a...
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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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...countless examples of men who feel obligated to protect women. In fact, it has become such a standard of interaction between men and women that it has often led to a patriarchal society in which men are superior to women. The men, despite their genuine intentions, are often unaware of the negative effects that their dominating influences have on the women they love. Women in these societies often experience alienation, isolation, low self-esteem, and even insanity. The protagonists in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” both portray the subordinate position of women in late nineteenth-century society. “A Rose for Emily” is an unsettling tale of an aging spinster, Miss Emily, who clings to the past and lives in a world of her own making. Miss Emily is a mysterious character who was once a hopeful young woman from an affluent family but is transformed into a reclusive, eccentric old woman through the acts of her controlling father. Her community views her as having “a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 30); and she is a monument to the past in a small, modernizing southern town in the late nineteenth century. Throughout her life, her father routinely dismisses all of her potential suitors until the day of his death. Alone and betrayed, Emily is unable to accept his passing; and it is several days until the body is removed. She lives alone for many years until she meets a man, Homer Barron, who becomes her first...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, highlights the repressed position of most married women during the 19th century. The narrator struggles both at the hands of her family members and internally. Her husband John, a physician, makes an effort to alleviate his wife’s mental state by moving their family into an old style home located in a remote area and isolating her as much as possible. He determines that it is unhealthy for her to entertain, interact with their baby, even to write which she seems to enjoy a great deal. When approaching “The Yellow Wallpaper” one has to keep in mind the importance of the title itself. John decides on their bedroom in the new home and it is covered in yellow wallpaper that the narrator takes great issue with. Using reader response, it is evident that Gilman uses imagery and symbolism to merge the protagonist’s life with that of the “woman” behind the yellow wallpaper. Before an analysis is presented the reader must first understand the marital expectations and male to female dynamic during the time period to which Gilman is writing. Married women faced oppression at the hands of society as well as their husbands. The 1800’s were a time when the wife was to be seen and not heard. It was a general societal expectation that wives if financially secure could have no real issues of their own. This was also because they were not expected to think on their own. They were expected to only reflect the...
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...Charlotte Perkins Gilman story "The Yellow Wallpaper," was published in 1892, two years before Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour." These two stories deal with the position of women in the late 1800’s. This era is especially interesting because women were still treated as second-class citizens. I will try to make their themes apparent by examining a brief summary of their stories, relate them to their authors’ personal life stories, and show their similarities. In Chopin’s "Story of an Hour", we are told that Louise has a bad heart condition. A friend of the family has discovered that there was a bad accident at her husband’s job and he is on the deceased list. Louise’s sister carefully tells her this shocking news; however, instead of falling apart, Louise finds herself feeling as if she has a new lease on life because she will finally be able to live for herself. Suddenly, her husband walks in the door, and shocked, Louise drops dead of a heart attack. The physician says it was from "a joy that kills" (Bedford 11-13). In "The Yellow Wallpaper", the main character is attempting to heal from a nervous disorder. Her husband who is a physician does not allow her to do anything: no housekeeping, no writing, and no visiting with family or friends. Her husband also insists that she has to stay in a room upstairs where everything, including the wallpaper make her eventually go insane. (Wallpaper) Both Chopin and Gilman wrote these stories based on real events in their lives. Kate...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tells the story of a woman's descent into complete madness as a result of the rest and cure treatment. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the author presents a tragic story of a woman that suffers from what we can now have medically diagnosed as postpartum depression after the birth of her child and how she tries to regain her sanity from her husband John who truly had good intentions to make her well but instead it that eventually drives her to suicide. Gilman's personal story is a resemblance to that of the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” with the exception that she did heal herself by not buying into Mr. Mitchell's rest cure treatment, which he later altered his methods only after reading this story. Perhaps the suicide ending in this story would have been an alternate ending for Gilman if she had followed the rest cure treatment. Perhaps in her struggle to free the woman behind the wallpaper, the woman in the story frees herself from her husband's demands and isolated treatment that drove her over the edge. The character in this story suffers from what her husband can only describe as a “temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 70) and has been “forbidden to work” (Gilman 71). In attempt to resolve and cure this “temporary nervous depression,” her husband takes her to a secluded colonial mansion, a hereditary estate that has been empty for year however...
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...The Culture of The Yellow Wallpaper Through her many stories, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, developed the notion of how being a strong independent woman can be inspirational to all. The expression of her personal feelings and opinions behind the guise of a seemingly fictional story brings new life to the story itself. During the nineteenth century, there were many stereotypes of what was expected from women. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman composes the story of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression and finds an infatuation with a wall covered with yellow wallpaper. Seeing that Gilman herself has experienced this form of mental illness, we can analyze the context of the text and see the reflection of her own life through...
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...The suppression of women by patriarchal values often has negative psychological effects on these women due to the inferiority attributed to them, resulting in an inability for them to control their lives and increasing the desire to command their lives. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman displays patriarchal values through a manipulative husband and a mentally ill, submissive wife who recovers power over her life from her husband. Susan Glaspell also exposes these values throughout “A Jury of Her Peers.” Glaspell’s short story illustrates husbands suppressing intelligent women women being suppressed by their husbands resulting in these women who develop an increased desire to regain control over their own lives....
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...misunderstanding, self-absorption, or pride, the reader understands that communication is key. That one needs to listen with their heart and mind to truly comprehend our world. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author uses bold symbolism and imagery to show the protagonists oppression and confusion change to insanity, yet freedom. The symbolism is so blatant the main character remains nameless to show her silenced life. The most vivid usage of imagery is the yellow wallpaper. The main character is essentially confined to a room for rest, what her physician husband believes is a nervous condition. The reader can later assume the room is actually an institution for mental health. The room contains horrid yellow wallpaper. In the beginning of the story, the main character is angered and confused by the wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper almost parallel to her own life and mental health, “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study” (548). She goes on to say, a foreshadowing of what is to come “…when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide” (549). Even the color of the wallpaper becomes a smell to her. It shows even when she is not in sight of the wallpaper, it is always surrounding and consuming her, like her illness and husband’s diagnosis. She becomes obsessed with staring and trying to understand...
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...The unnamed female main character in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is put in an isolated mansion by her husband, a doctor, to help with her “nervousness” or hysteria. She is infantilized by being kept in a nursery and treated like a child by her husband. In addition to being patronized, she is also forbidden to work or even see her baby as it is believed she must solely rest. Her perceived as well-meaning husband gaslights her feelings and experiences, in an attempt to help reduce her “nervousness.” The main character’s disjointed, secretive journaling of her feelings represents her spiral into psychosis due to her isolation and treatment by her husband. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” reflects on the treatment of women’s mental health and how marriage and gender roles reinforce this treatment. At the beginning of the story, she describes how she is staying in a colonial mansion that is being let to them cheaply. She describes her husband’s disdain for all things that are not logical and...
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...late 1800s and early 1900s, women’s roles evolved from mere housewives to passionate activists who were fighting for rights to their share of the American dream. The main goal of the women participating in the fight was the right vote. In an effort to rally more to their cause, women used not only organized protests but employed literature to speak out. Written during this time period, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Trifles” are works that portray women as passive timid beings that should listen to their counterparts. These two pieces were composed to expose the outrageous manner in which women were regarded. On the other hand, “Canceled” is a contemporary piece which depicts the female character as a strong independent individual with her own ideas. Today, women have fought and prevailed to secure rights that rival those of men. Although women have not achieved fully equal rights as men, “Canceled” illustrates the modern social acceptance of a woman dominated relationship. All three pieces are portrayals of women’s identities and social expectations of the time period in which they were written and each reveals how women today have progressed to establish a more equal role between men and women over the last century. In all three pieces, regardless of the time period, the female characters are presented as being trapped in their relationship. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is forced to comply with her husband’s wishes to how she should confront her ailment. As her...
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...“The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The story is set in the late nineteenth century in America. It is a first person point of view of what disconnection and insanity can lead to. Many people believe this is a semi-autobiography of Gilman’s mental illness and treatment approach. In the story, Gilman takes the readers into the psyche of a young wife and mother, Jane, whom is powerless in her insecurities which no one truly understands or makes the attempt to try and understand. Her husband, John, has moved her to the country to recover from her illness. John is a physician who is trying to treat Jane for being “nervous”. Although his intentions are good, he goes about it in the wrong way. Dismissing any wishes she may have and not allowing her to express her feelings and or opinions. For example, Jane wants to be in a different room. The narrator states, “I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted the one downstairs that opened onto the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hanging! But John would not hear of it.” (pg. 346) Making an assumption from what Jane reveals, she is not able to care for her newborn child and has now fallen in to an extremely emotionally unstable state. "It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous." (pg. 346-47. Gilman) Her husband, John, and the other people in her life, don't think she should do anything...
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