This is displaying the beginning of her negative thoughts which is the contribution to her spiralling into insanity since her disease confuses her mind and contradicts her logic, the paper parallels her mental state at this point. The isolation of Jane causes her to attempt to fulfill her social desire by desperately attempting to unravel the mystery that she imagines in the wallpaper. From this attempt she becomes
Wallpaper Symbolizing Jane’s Insanity In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman, the wallpaper causes and symbolizes Jane’s imprisonment which eventually causes her decent into insanity. Gilman shows this through the patterns and colors in the wallpaper itself, through the woman that she believes is stuck in the wallpaper, and when then wallpaper is finally taken down. As Jane continues to study the wallpaper, the different aspects that she discovers contribute to her eventual madness. The physical appearance of the wallpaper is directly symbolic of Jane’s situation. The yellowish color is affiliated with the weakness, and the powerlessness that she is feeling.
As the story develops the woman’s descent into madness can start to be seen more clearly as she reveals her obsessive and protective nature over the wallpaper. “I don’t want to leave until I have it out…I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.” This is due to the woman spending increased amounts of time on her own in the confinement of her bedroom. Whilst nearing the verges of madness, her only mental stimulation is her focus on the wallpaper. “But I find I get pretty tired when I try.” The short and blunt structure of this
Ken Figgins Eng 112-041M M/W 6:30-10:10 The Evils of the “Resting Cure” Through the story, The Yellow Wallpaper, we see how women are subordinate to men to a childlike state. We see it cleary in the way John, her husband and physician treats her as a child by not allowing her to make any choices on her own. His treatment is the cause of her worsening condition. He is constantly questioning her and saying to only listen to him because he knows what he is talking about, he is a doctor, and knows exactly what she needs to get better, even though he is never taking into account what she says, If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with
He does love her, but because of the hierarchy in their household, and because he is a physician, he firmly believes that he is right in everything he is doing. Whether he is right or wrong doesn’t make a difference, because no matter what she does or say, his wife’s voice is never heard. It gets very noticeable that her entrapment is only making her case worse. When she tried to explain to him the effects that the wallpaper was having on her, “he [says] that [she] was letting it get the better of [her]” (2). He wasn’t supportive, and did not make any effort to try and let her express her feelings, which made her isolated even more.
She states that her imperfections are what she’s made up of and to let the reader think about who they are as a person. Her journey to find her identity “tormented” (Line 82) and worried her. She was afraid of what others may think of her from both cultures. The more she thought about her life, the more she felt drawn “back into the darkness of the Tiruvella house” which in her view point was the “shelter of memory” (Line 86-88). She uses details like that to connect to the reader by bringing up her past “filled with ghosts” (Line 47).
The wallpaper like John is a confine in which neither woman can escape from. The many heads in the wallpaper are the activities that the narrator wants to do such as writing, seeing her Cousin Henry and Julia, and sleeping downstairs. “I don’t like to look out the window even- there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast”(434). The women creeping outside are women like the narrator who are oppressed and have to do things in secret just like the narrator secretly tried to
Metaphorical Meaning of the Yellow Wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Short Story “The Yellow Wallpaper” The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman portrays the central theme of women being restricted, more specifically women who are married and/or undergoing a mental illness. In the short story, there is a reoccurring symbol of wallpaper that commits “every artistic sin” and that the narrator seems to be focused on yet disgusted by. This wallpaper metaphorically represents the narrator’s state of mind through the detailed description of the pattern, color, and lines reflecting her constant confusion and her role as a wife and mother. The narrator’s vivid description of the patterns mirrors the thoughts flowing in her mind. The wallpaper’s tendency to go into knots and “pointless patterns” of lines with no ending imitates her mind; the wallpaper just like her thoughts is a loop that always moves in never-ending circles.
Furthermore, Leonce “thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which concerned him, and valued so little his conversation” (Chopin 6). The contrast between Edna and the other women in the novel stood out in this quote because the women at the time adored their husbands and paid their utmost attention to them. As for Edna, she would have rather been sleeping and did not care much as to what Leonce had to say or to the outcome of his events at night. The tone of this quote gives off a melancholy and disappointed feeling due to Edna’s lack and interest in her husband’s stories. Chopin employs the literary techniques of diction and tone in order to allow Edna to appear different from other women during the late 1800s time
What kind of doctor doesn’t know illness when he sees it? What kind of husband does not believe his own wife? Is she really sick? If so, what illness burdens her? Puzzle pieces begin to fit together, or so it seems, when the narrator states “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency…” (425).