Theme Of Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the female protagonist veers from the majority of patriarchal societies because of her distinct feelings of frustration, alienation, and emotional and creative repression within this social formation. Ultimately, in order to escape this early twentieth century state of mind, the female protagonist goes insane. However tragic this may appear on the surface, the suggestion of deliverance from her restricted environment is one of freedom of the dominant culture. Although the narrator escapes the narrow restraints of mentality through insanity, the underlying themes of The Yellow Wallpaper help to shed light on the narrators’ delirium. The Yellow Wallpaper was written in 1892 and is from the vantage point of a woman. This story was written in a time when women were not supposed to have individual thoughts or personalities. At this point in history, the social roles of women were very well defined: mothers and
…show more content…
Of course, the narrator’s eventual insanity is a product of the repression of her imaginative power, not the expression of it. The narrator does not have a say in anything and when she finally mentions something to John, he always come up with an excuse. For example, “At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterward he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (Gilman 165). After he makes that excuse he continues on to mention “You know the place is doing you good and really, dear, I don’t care to renovate the house just for a three months’ rental” (Gilman 166). What John doesn’t realize is that by not giving way to these “fancies,” he is making his wife’s condition worse instead of
Of course, the narrator’s eventual insanity is a product of the repression of her imaginative power, not the expression of it. The narrator does not have a say in anything and when she finally mentions something to John, he always come up with an excuse. For example, “At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterward he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (Gilman 165). After he makes that excuse he continues on to mention “You know the place is doing you good and really, dear, I don’t care to renovate the house just for a three months’ rental” (Gilman 166). What John doesn’t realize is that by not giving way to these “fancies,” he is making his wife’s condition worse instead of