...class in town and country were still a disgrace to an age of plenty.” There was also a shift in ‘ideals’ as strict social codes were enforced which laid the foundations of the era’s stress on morality. It was also this era, when the novel rose to prominence as growth, healthy domestic markets and increases in printing and publishing gained mass readership, Many of the era’s social codes and conducts are apparent and highlighted within the literature of the time and with this point of view I intend this essay to explain how Victorian texts reflect the social contexts of their production, with specific attention to how these social codes were particularly harsher and levied towards women, with a detailed discussion of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The yellow wallpaper” (1892) and Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” (1842) which I hope to establish a comparison between the two texts and the accepted believes and values of the period. During the Victorian era the roles of men and women were abruptly defined and gendered ideals were socially constructed. Women were not only considered as the weaker sex but also more prone to emotional breakdown and mental illness’s, this perspective was coined from a combination of a patriarchal society and a lack of understanding in certain fields of knowledge. This combination of social and biological ideas produced a contorted and orthodox idealism towards females. Many women were forced to restrain their sexualities socially, especially around...
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...Charlotte Perkins Gilman is one of America’s most well known feminist writers and social reformers. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman uses exaggerated literary elements such as setting, symbolism, and character to illustrate the dangers of the mistreatment and disregard of female intelligence during the early 19th century. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut. Gilman grew up in Providence, Rhode Island with her mother after having been abandoned by her father. Gilman’s mother refused to show any form of comfort or affection towards her daughter because her mother believed that this made women weak and did not want that for Charlotte. Gilman’s mother however would, on rare occasion, caress her daughter while...
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...As a psychology major, I loved reading Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. I found the story very intriguing and quite disturbing- but that’s what made this story very appealing to me. For me, it was interesting to see the psychological breakdown of a character from a first person point of view- it made it all the more relatable. This story does not remind me of any others I have read or heard, however, I can relate to this story based on my knowledge of psychology and on my personal experience with being mentally ill such as depression as in this story. What makes this story even more haunting to me is the ending. It is somewhat unclear to me as to who Jane is or what eventually happens to the narrator at the end of the story. The significance...
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...Charlotte Gilman spent much of her life struggling with the effects of postpartum depression. A popular treatment for mental illness at the time was known as the rest cure. This treatment instructed patients, primarily women, to drop all responsibilities and to stay confined in their households. Creative thought, including discussion of their disease, was prohibited. Supporters of this cure believed that the best treatment was to ignore the problem (Jago, Shea, Scanlon, and Aufses, 1066). In Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator suffers from a scenario extremely similar to that of the author. Unable to discuss the narrator's illness directly, Gilman comments on depression and criticizes the sexist and ineffective use of the...
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...being trapped in a bland room with nothing but yellow wallpaper and a bed? It would be incredibly lonely and could easily drive someone to insanity. This is what happens to our narrator as she shares her scattered thoughts as she heads into a downward spiral of insanity. When read through this story may seem confusing, especially since the point of view is from someone with a nervous disorder but, the plot structure of “The Yellow Wallpaper” follows that of a typical story. The exposition sets up this story by telling us some general information about who and what the story is about. The narrator has some sort of nervous problem and her husband is a doctor. Her husband, John, decides that it is best if she gets away for...
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...Throughout history we have seen that males have always had a certain amount of control over their female counterparts. Even to this day women are fighting for their equality, freedom and independence through the feminist movement. This expression of control and dominance that males hold over females can be seen on many levels including: social, economic, political and domestic forums. But one of the most notable cases where we see discrepancies in equality between man and woman is the husband and wife relationship. The husband, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is controlling and insensitive. He forbids the narrator from practicing her passion of writing, he refuses to treat her as a legitimately ill person, and abuses his power in regards to her life decisions, making her completely dependent upon him....
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...Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a vocal women’s rights activist and writer, wrote the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892. Gilman wrote the story while in an unhappy marriage with her first husband, pulling some of her own personal experiences of depression and the treatments she was suggested (“Charlotte Perkins Gilman”). The story is filled with symbolism, allegories, and vivid imagery that all relates to a woman experiencing post-partum depression and the patriarchal society she lives in where mental illness is not seen as serious or a concern. Gilman starts the story off with the main woman and her husband arriving to their new house, the unnamed woman immediately suspicious of the place; “Still I will proudly declare that there is something...
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...How many nights have you spent in bed tossing and turning because the woman from your wallpaper keeps creeping around your room? For most people the obvious answer is ‘None of course’ but for some, the question wouldn’t seem that foreign. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” we are immersed into the mind of a mentally ill young woman who is forced into solitude as a supposed cure for postpartum depression. We read her story as if reading her diary; an intimate look into the mind of someone who feels isolated, trapped and confined. After giving birth to her son, our unnamed protagonist begins showing signs of postpartum depression, which was not considered significant in the eighteen hundreds. She struggles understanding...
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...In the two stories, I read about two woman who have a way of thinking. The world does not necessarily accept this way of thinking around us. They went through mind problems, emotion problems, anger problems that their husbands helped worsen. They were basically forced to hide their emotions which wasn’t fair. John which is the narrator’s husband gets upset when she writes about how she’s feeling. Jennie, his sister also their housekeeper doesn’t help with the aggressiveness. They both make the narrator feel bad about the fact that she can’t be a normal wife or mother just because she has certain thoughts. The story is all about her thoughts and how her obsession with the yellow wallpaper grows. She’s an amazing in-depth writer who’s just going...
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...Summary of “Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Foucauldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’” Courtney Katich Baker College Bak beautifully discusses how isolation (aka “rest”) was used as treatment in the nineteenth-century for depression in women. Doctors used rest or isolation as treatment for “nervous prostration”(Bak, 1994). The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) is put on a treatment plan by her husband/doctor that is of isolation. Bak asks a question about the narrator’s sanity; was she already mad in the start of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and just reliving the decline that has already taken place (Bak, 1994) or was the story about the narrator’s slow journey into madness? I believe that both questions are the answer to Bak’s question. Bak goes on to explain just this. Bak depicts Gilman’s description of the narrators isolated living conditions. Gilman’s description of the room leaves Bak to believe that the room would drive anyone into insanity. I know that I would surly go mad in such a place. Bak cites the feminist critic Elanie Hedges who says that the “paper symbolizes her situation as seen by the men who control her and hence her situation as seen by herself” (Bak, 1994). Bak explains how “The Yellow Wallpaper” became a feminist writing explaining that men were guilty of the storyteller's psychical imprisonment and thus the mental failure. Bak (1994) compares the room and house the narrator lives in during her depression...
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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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...provided by SULTAN QABOOS UNIVERSITY (29 Dec 2014 03:14 GMT) The Pedagogical Possibilities of Covering Gilman’s Wallpaper Karla J. Murphy In his introduction to The Pedagogical Wallpaper, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock notes how the pedagogical diversity of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” prompted him to collect essays for this book. He goes on to explain that “given the ubiquity of the text within various academic settings, I was also struck by the absence of attention to the text within pedagogical contexts. Despite the large (and steadily growing) body of criticism to the story, very little of it explicitly addresses its importance as a tool to facilitate learning or various ways in which to make use of the text in the classroom” (3). As a collection, Weinstock’s The Pedagogical Wallpaper contains informed, detailed, and diverse analysis that attempts to shore up the absence of “pedagogical possibilities” concerning Gilman’s transgressive short story (9). Among the contributors are a MOO space specialist, a Gilman scholar, a queer theorist, an existentialist, a formalist, and several reader/student-response theorists. Because each essayist presents a distinct critical perspective on Gilman’s text, each essay is likewise concerned with “how the narrative teaches and how to teach the narrative” (5). Thus, it seems to me that Weinstock’s The Pedagogical Wallpaper resonates with Pedagogy’s conviction that teaching is central to our work as scholars and educators,...
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...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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...The Yellow Wallpaper The attitudes towards women’s mental and physical health in the 19thcentury vary greatly from today’s views on practicing medicine. During that time, there was prevalence for the oppression of women and the general treatment for mental illness was a popular method known as resting cures. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, serves as a critique of this popular treatment as it is an account of an unnamed narrator who descends into madness when receiving this type of treatment for her illness. The author, Charlotte Gilman addresses themes of madness and insanity through the narrator’s collection of journal entries, which comprise the story. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is confined to bed rest in a rented house with her physician husband, John, who believes that total rest is in her best interest for her condition. Gilman’s disapproving views over rest cures and doctor/patient relationships are initially revealed through the narrator’s description of her husband. The narrator describes him as a man who “scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figure”(355) and refuses to see his wife’s illness as a true condition. Through the narrator’s description, Gilman begins to point out the flaws in medicine’s understanding of mental illness and its shortcomings in treatment. The narrator writes in her journal as a way of escape from the monotony and solidarity of her treatment. While she loves and trusts her husband...
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...Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and its contemporary criticism Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in a time when it was customary to consider women as the weaker sex, and in need of constant care and protection. There has been an overwhelming amount of literary criticism throughout the following century, with the purpose of establishing Gilman’s message. Most critics seem to agree that it is a strongly feminist text, targeting the patriarchal society of the late 19th century. Elaine Hedges sums up the most common readings of “The Yellow Wallpaper” in her essay. She herself then argues that the text’s essentially feminist point is emphasized by the fact that the narrator is destroyed by society, where she can never get free. Initially, she debates between two possibilities of what happens to the narrator in the end: she is either liberated in her madness or is defeated by it. Then she proceeds to consider the implications of the wallpaper itself. According to critics referred to by Hedges, the entangled pattern of the wallpaper itself represents a crucial text and it has been argued that this text is not written by the narrator. Instead, it is the text of social conventions and rules presented to her by her husband, and through him by the male-dominated society, where she is not allowed to write her own story. This is one of the reasons why her text then becomes “hopelessly encrypted in fantasy” (Hedges 225). Other interpretations connect the...
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