Preview

The Yellow Wallpaper

Best Essays
Open Document
Open Document
3193 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Yellow Wallpaper
English 1302
22 November 2011
Main Character’s Outsider Theme
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator, Jane, is struggling to deal with her depression that she is suffering in a confined room that her husband, John put her in. John believes that this will cure Jane and make her better from her depression. Instead, Jane is slowly losing herself within the yellow wallpaper in the room causing her to become insane. Jane is not able to express her feelings with her husband or anyone else, but instead she bottles it up inside of her until she could no longer resist. The outsider theme is forced upon Jane from her husband’s way of treatment. “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner also portrays the outsider theme statues. Emily Grierson, the main protagonist, is a woman whom is isolated and slowly gone insane after her father’s death. The community of the town knows very little of Emily but only watches her from a distance and hear rumors about her. Emily has not been paying her taxes like the rest of the community because she is supposedly a woman of aristocracy, her family held her in high regards even though she is supposed to resume paying her taxes. Miss Emily is from a family with pride but she is isolating herself with the community and eventually kills Homer, the man that she loves. She has put the outsider theme onto herself even before her father’s death occurred. In both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Rose for Emily”, the main character’s has shown their selves to have an outsider status from their psychological isolation, gender, and class.
Jane, in “They Yellow Wallpaper”, exemplifies the outsider theme by her forced psychological isolation from the world. All of Jane’s worries, thoughts, and fears are recorded into her personal journal. With the treatment that she is receiving, her social isolation is causing her to lose herself with reality. Jane said, “I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless



Cited: Curry, Renee R. “Gender and authorial limitation in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” (Special Issue: William Faulkner).” The Mississippi Quarterly 47.3 (1994): 391. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 12 Nov 2011. Edelstein, Sari. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Yellow Wallpaper.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 24.1 (2007): 72. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 11 Nov 2011. Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. 4th Ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2009. 667-674. Print. Getty, Laura J. “Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily.” The Explicator. 63.4 (2005): 230. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 12 Nov 2011. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Ed. John Schilb and John Cliffor. 4th Ed. Boston: Bedfor/St. Martin’s, 2009. 925-237. Print. Golden, Catherine. “The Yellow Wallpaper and Joseph Henry Hatfield’s original magazine illustrations.” ANQ 18.2 (2005): 53. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 11 Nov 2011. Klein, Thomas. “The ghostly voice of gossip in Faulkner’s a Rose for Emily.” The Explicator 65.4 (2007): 229. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 12 Nov 2011. Kriewald, Gary L. “The Widow of Windsor and the spinster of Jefferson: a possible source for Faulkner’s Emily Grierson.” The Faulkner Journal 19.1 (2003): 3. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 12 Nov 2011. Ramos, Peter. “Unbearable realism –freedom, ethics and Identity in the Awakening.” College Literature 37.4 (2010): 145. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 11 Nov 2011.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Cited: Meyer, Michael. "A Rose for Emily." The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. Ninth ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin 's, 2012. 84-90. Print.…

    • 1137 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Elements of a Southern Atmosphere in O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” and Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”…

    • 1868 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    William Faulkner's Southern Gothic short story, “A Rose For Emily” uses a slow cadenced, formal writing style to mirror the old fashioned values of the old south. The tale about holding onto old values mirrors in its own cadence and diction the qualities it attempts to undercut. This conflict between old and new is not unique to the tone of the work. The narrator’s use of the first person plural places the reader in a unique perspective through which we can voyeuristically gaze at the title character. The narrator's diction expresses both reverence and pity for “Emily.”…

    • 150 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    the yellow wallpaper

    • 1987 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Cited: Gilman, Charlotte P. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Yellow Wallpaper (1892). Rpt. in The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. By Richard Bausch and R. V. Cassill. 7th ed. New York: W. W. Norton&, 2006. 597-608. Print.…

    • 1987 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cited: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. C. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2012. 792-803. Print.…

    • 1086 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cited: Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." The Story and Its Writer: an Introduction to Short Fiction. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 391-97. Print.…

    • 975 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a story of a woman in the 1900’s, she gradually loses her sanity due to a “nervous condition.” The woman in the story exemplifies the women in Gilman’s era; she verifies this by writing her story in a mode of horror. The usage of imagery, and plot development exposes the irrational and unjust treatment women are getting by men in her time, which exposes the reality that no one wants see.…

    • 478 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    yellow wallpaper

    • 1181 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” suggests that the woman behind the wallpaper parallels the narrator’s struggle with her expected role in a male dominated society, which is expressed in this passage. The narrator uses the wallpaper to represent the society she lives in. Not only does the wallpaper affect the narrator, but also it has an effect on everyone that comes in contact with it.…

    • 1181 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’?” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th Ed. 5 Vols. Nina Baym, et al. New York: Norton, 2012. 804.…

    • 1964 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature: Craft and Voice. Eds. Nicholas Delbanco andAlan Cheuse. Vol.1 New York: McGraw Hill, 2010. 221-228.…

    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper

    • 488 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The novella The Yellow Wallpaper is a small masterpiece written by, Charlotte P Gilman. She enlightens her readers to the living conditions of a middle class woman during the late 1800s. This is portrayed through use of the narrator, who documents the different factors that impact upon the different stages of her mental breakdown. The readers can see that through the novel, Gilman portrays the life of a young woman who struggles to maintain her integrity as an individual in the everyday society.…

    • 488 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Yellow Wallpaper

    • 1299 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-paper: And Other Stories - Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Google Books." Google Books. Web. 21 Nov. 2012.…

    • 1299 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay: a Rose for Emily

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages

    References: Faulkner, W. (2012). A Rose for Emily. In M. Meyer (Ed.), The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature (9th ed., pp. 84-90). New York: Bedford/ St. Martin’s.…

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Southern Romanticism

    • 1884 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Since the Southern Gothic movement in literature was originated in late 18th and early 19th century, it shares some similarities with Dark Romanticism such as death, decay, and toxic relationships; however, Southern Gothicism is a genre of literature that has a very distinctive style of writing. In other words, while some of the main characteristics of Dark Romanticism have human imperfections along with the horrific symbols and themes, the Southern Gothic style employs the use of macabre and ironic events to examine the values of the American South. Flannery O’Conner and William Faulkner are two of the most iconic writers…

    • 1884 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Better Essays

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman engages the audience into the inner self of a young mother and wife throughout the story. The story has grown from a remedy to depression to a female defiance to a male society. Gilman’s purpose in writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows the courage a woman had to demonstrate a positive change in her self-identity and free her from the social, domestic, and psychological confinement that were placed on women in the 1800’s. By writing the story from a first-person feministic point of view the narrator shows the struggle of women’s independence and individuality in a male dominated society through gender stereotype that exist between the society and the protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper.”…

    • 3424 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Better Essays