The Yellow Wallpaper: a Self-Destructive and Self-Expressive Point of View.
JB
Professor M.
ENG 106 Winter Quarter
March 22, 2012
The Yellow Wallpaper: a self-destructive and self-expressive point of view.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman expresses how she feels about women’s oppression in a short story that she indited in the ninetieth century entitled: The Yellow Wallpaper. In the text, the narrator isolates from herself to appreciate her inner self. To succeed in appreciating her inner self, she utilizes a yellow wallpaper with patterns in her room. She tears up the wallpaper and finds herself. The narrator and the protagonist of the story is isolated from society and benefits from her isolation to better understand her inner self. This split makes it arduous to decipher what the protagonist is going through in the text. Her life, her marriage, and even objects in her house are all associated with oppression. This type of demeanor involves virtually no exertion of her own free will. Rather, she is expected to passively accept the fact that her own conceptions are mere fancy, and only the opinions of the men in her life can be trusted. She is expected to take their own uninformed opinions on her mental state over her own. While "Wallpaper" presents a powerful argument in favor of the feminist movement, the true issue behind the conflict is even more fundamental: the resiliency of human will in the face of social negation.
Conspicuously, it is insurmountable to maintain a salubrious mental state in the oppressive environment circumventing the woman. Throughout the story, the author traces the woman 's mental deterioration from a having a normal but debilitated sense of self, to a complete inversion of her ego. She gradually inverts her orientation of her place in society, digressing from society thoroughly in order to create a world where she can act on her own volition. In order to represent the stages of her gradually worsening state of mind, the author represents the woman 's struggles through a parallel with her view of the
Professor M.
ENG 106 Winter Quarter
March 22, 2012
The Yellow Wallpaper: a self-destructive and self-expressive point of view.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman expresses how she feels about women’s oppression in a short story that she indited in the ninetieth century entitled: The Yellow Wallpaper. In the text, the narrator isolates from herself to appreciate her inner self. To succeed in appreciating her inner self, she utilizes a yellow wallpaper with patterns in her room. She tears up the wallpaper and finds herself. The narrator and the protagonist of the story is isolated from society and benefits from her isolation to better understand her inner self. This split makes it arduous to decipher what the protagonist is going through in the text. Her life, her marriage, and even objects in her house are all associated with oppression. This type of demeanor involves virtually no exertion of her own free will. Rather, she is expected to passively accept the fact that her own conceptions are mere fancy, and only the opinions of the men in her life can be trusted. She is expected to take their own uninformed opinions on her mental state over her own. While "Wallpaper" presents a powerful argument in favor of the feminist movement, the true issue behind the conflict is even more fundamental: the resiliency of human will in the face of social negation.
Conspicuously, it is insurmountable to maintain a salubrious mental state in the oppressive environment circumventing the woman. Throughout the story, the author traces the woman 's mental deterioration from a having a normal but debilitated sense of self, to a complete inversion of her ego. She gradually inverts her orientation of her place in society, digressing from society thoroughly in order to create a world where she can act on her own volition. In order to represent the stages of her gradually worsening state of mind, the author represents the woman 's struggles through a parallel with her view of the
Cited: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Ed. Dale M. Bauer. Bedford Cultural Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998. ---. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Great American Short Stories. Pleasantville: Reader’s Digest, 1977. 195-206. Golden, Catherine, ed. The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper." New York: Feminist Press, 1992 Kasmer, Lisa. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's 'The Yellow Wallpaper ': A Symptomatic Reading." Literature and Psychology. 36, (1990): 1-15. Kessler, Carol Parley. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860 -1935." Modem American Women Writers. Ed. Elaine Showalter, et al. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991. 155 -169. Owens, E. Suzanne. “The Ghostly Double behind the Wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Scharnhorst, Gary. "Gilman." Reference Guide to Short Fiction. Ed. Noelle Watson. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. 209-210. Wagner-Martin, Linda. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Reference Guide to Short Fiction. Ed. Noelle Watson. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. 981- 982.