Preview

“the Yellow Wallpaper: ” Psychoanalytical and Feminist Perspectives

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1322 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
“the Yellow Wallpaper: ” Psychoanalytical and Feminist Perspectives
“The Yellow Wallpaper:” Psychoanalytical and Feminist Perspectives A short feminist story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman portrays a woman who seems to be experiencing a psychological breakdown and inferiority. As the main character longs for self-expression and freedom, she commits actions of displacement and denial, which parallels with the overall theme of the subordination of women and portrays psychoanalytical aspects. Gilman introduces a married couple who will be living in a rental home for three months during the summer. The main character and narrator is a woman who remains anonymous throughout the novel that supposedly has nervous depression according to her physician husband, John. Because of her husband’s diagnosis, she has been confined to a room that she considers to have a dreadful appearance because of the yellow wallpaper. Also, John is very overbearing with his wife, and does not support her writing at all. “I did write in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition” (Gilman, 238). Having to hide her journal entries and keeping them a secret creates this ordeal of stress placed upon her shoulders because she feels like her husband has oppressing her from living her life. John becomes a major symbol of oppression and the constant reminder of dominance within a marriage. John subjects her to do as he says, no matter the situation. It’s almost as if he controls her, especially when he never wishes to hear her opinions on any matter: “And John would not hear of it” (Gilman 239). John believes that he knows what is best for his wife and that she does not know what is best for her. The wallpaper is shown to be yellow and worn out. “The color is repellent and almost revolting...” (Gilman, 240). The main character is displacing her feelings and constant anger onto the yellow wallpaper of the room. It is “repellant,” similar to how she repels from John, and


Cited: Gilman, P. Charlotte. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 4th ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 2012. 237-251. Print.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story telling about a young woman who is eventually driven mad by the society. The narrator is apparently confused with the norm defining “true” and “good” woman constructed by society dominated by man. “The Awakening” addressed the social, scientific, and cultural landscape of the country and the undergoing of radical changes. Each of these stories addresses the issue of women’s rights and how they were treated in the late 19th century. “The Awakening” explores one woman's desire to find and live fully within her true self. Her devotion to that purpose caused friction between her friends and family, and also conflicts with the dominant values of her time.…

    • 1481 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Throughout the world, every culture has expected gender roles for women to adhere to. These gender roles are also present in literature including A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. However, the lead female characters in both of these works, Nora and the unnamed narrator, challenge the gender roles of their cultures in their respective stories. In A Doll’s House, Nora forges a signature to help save her dying husband’s life, while the unnamed narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” rips down wallpaper that symbolizes her emotional confinement.…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman portrays the ill effects of marital gender roles through the characterization of the narrator and her husband, John. The narrator suffers from mental illness and is trying to recuperate with the guidance of her physician husband. John’s roles as her husband and her physician create an unbalanced distribution of power in their relationship, allowing him to assert a tremendous amount of dominance over her as two strong authority figures. This is apparent when the narrator complains about…

    • 905 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    By staring at, ‘[the] recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down,”(pg. 649, Stetson) the protagonist, the narrator, from ‘The Yellow Wallpaper becomes insane. However in this case, the narrator’s insanity develops a form of emotional and mental liberation for herself.…

    • 412 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Feminism present in “The Yellow Wall Paper” by Charlotte Gillman & “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid Gender equality has been a prevalent theme writer’s use to deliver their own personal views on the female role in society. This is the case in both “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman. Kincaid and Gillman use their works to present a feminist approach on women’s roles and societal standings in their respective eras. Feminism can be defined as a diverse collection of social theories, moral philosophies and political movements, fundamentally motivated by/ concerning the experiences of women. These experiences have a tendency to revolve around women’s social, political and economic standings. As a social movement, feminism mainly focuses on limiting or eliminating gender inequality and promoting women’s rights, interests’ and issue in society.…

    • 1633 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Yellow Wallpaper Conflict

    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Throughout the story a lot of events occurred, the main conflict in the story is the struggle that the narrator and her husband, who is additionally her doctor, over the course and treatment of her illness leads to conflict with in the narrators mind between her growing understanding of her own powerlessness and her desire to repress this awareness. The narrator chooses to keep a secret journal, in which she describes her forced passivity and expresses her displeasure for her bedroom wallpaper, a dislike that gradually develops into an obsession.…

    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a feminist critique and analysis of gender roles in a conservative society and their inevitable effects on the female psyche. The short story portrays a woman, who is the narrator and remains unnamed, and her descent into madness by the hands of her husband after he misdiagnoses her with a “nervous disorder.” She is bound by the patriarchy and the oppression against women. The woman is stripped of her intellectual, emotional, and physical freedom, and eventually succumbs to insanity. Although both characters follow traditional gender roles, the depiction and characterization of John, the thoughts of Jane, and the environment she is forced into describe the patriarchal society…

    • 270 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the short story “The Yellow Wall Paper,” C. Stetson reveals her psychological struggles and how she is denial about her mental state. Stetson backs up her claim with a description of her current metal state and how the nursery she lives in plays a key role in her mental state. With the use of Stetson is able to portray the discrimination women with psychological issues are facing and how they feel trapped.…

    • 301 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women in the 19th century didn’t have the amount of privileges as women today. During the 19th century, women couldn’t own property, have a career, or create their own choices, for the men of the household overruled any women. Women were characterized as weak, domestic creatures that lived dependent on their male counterparts for all necessities. Women lived most of their adult lives as trapped prisoners going through their day cooking and cleaning without a choice. The character in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a perfect analogy of how women lived in the 19th century. Trapped behind closed doors with no right of say on how to live her life, the author showed how women in those times were treated, especially if they had a mental illness.…

    • 593 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is not your typical upper class young woman, who has just given birth to her first child. She is an inquisitive dynamic young woman, whose nervous condition has gradually gotten worse as she adapts to the restrictions placed upon her. We see how the restrictions transform her through a series of journal entries, and learn that she has a tough time expressing her feelings to others. As we see her vivid thoughts through the journal entries we see the deterioration of her mental state.…

    • 1242 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Feminism is no longer a term that’s used to enable or empower women” by Hill Clinton. The story is told by the narrator’s perspective, who is a woman of sensitive temper, and she is also a writer. She has been ill, and her illness has placed her in a weak position in relation to dominant John. As her husband and as her physician, John makes all of the narrator’s decisions for her, which really aggravates her, since she wants to be an individual. In the beginning, the narrator dreadfully wanted to please her husband and undertake her role as an ideal mother and wife, but she is unable to balance her husband’s need with her desire to express her creativity. However as the story progresses, the narrators desire changes after seeing the wallpaper. She forgets about becoming an ideal mother and a wife. When she lost her outer reality, she gained her inner reality, where she kept on trying to figure out the pattern that was hidden in the wallpaper.…

    • 258 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Othello Analysis

    • 790 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In William Shakespeares “Othello, The Moor of Venice” play, there are several motifs of power, jealousy, contempt, and even well-disguised hatred. There are also underlying innuendoes in the story that suggest or prompt the reader to feel the same as the character that they are reading about and who they are speaking of.…

    • 790 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout "The Yellow Wall-Paper," Charlotte Gilman uses various symbols to show the oppression of women by men, and the continuing struggle to escape that oppression. Even the tile is symbolic itself. The yellow wall-paper is an indication of the mental restrictions that were placed upon women by men during the 1800s. As yellow is oft considered the color of sickness or weakness, the sickness that the writer suffers from is the continuing oppression and struggle that continues to this very day by women. The yellow wallpaper acts like a mental and physical entrapment for the main character. At the end of the story, the main character rips down the yellow wallpaper to release the woman behind the paper. This was symbolic because even though she saw a woman, this woman was her. When the narrator was angry she put that onto the wallpaper, so that is why she ripped the wallpaper down. She was trapped behind the pattern and she couldn’t move from it. This is the point where her sickness has gotten to the worst extent. The wallpaper led her to create her own madness. The main character says in the story, “There are things in the wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will.” Not even John knew what was really going on because he was always working and never took his wife’s thoughts too seriously. The wallpaper blocks her into that small room. She feels like she cannot get better in that room. In a sense she can’t get better because of the things preventing her from resting. Her eyes are constantly on the yellow wallpaper. Her mind also feels she…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Just before the turn of the 19th century, two works were published in 1899, regarding similar topics associated with feminism such as the subordination of women and the importance of their self-expressions in the midst of the subordination. The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening are narrated from the point of view of a female protagonist, revealing the difficulties she and other women face due to commonly held views of female inferiority during this time period. With these similarities aside, the two seemingly similar texts differ in how the female protagonists handle their situation of confinement within strict social conventions.…

    • 1033 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The yellow wallpaper acts like a mental entrapment for the main character. At the end of the story, the main character rips down the yellow wallpaper to release the woman behind the paper. This was symbolic because even though she saw a woman, this woman was her. When the narrator was angry she put that onto the wallpaper, so that…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays