For example, she edited feminist publications in San Francisco in 1894 and helped with the planning of the Women's Congresses of 1894-95. At the congress she met Jane Adams, the social reformer. Charlotte also toured the United States, lecturing on women's rights.
Throughout the subsequent lectures and written works she was adamant about the need to reform the status of women in society. "Women are human beings as much as men, by nature; and as women, are even more sympathetic with human processes. To develop human life in its true powers we need fully equal citizenship for women."

One of the central aspects on her perception of the role of women was her emphasis on social standards and norms and particularly the importance of the role of the mother in society. "Motherhood is not a remote contingency, but the common duty and the common glory of womanhood" (Gilman1898). www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000421267" She also….

Her mother gave her little affection, believing she would never know the pain of rejection if she never experienced love. (Vosberg para. 13)
The clear need her character has for a family and for overt family support, as well as the suspicions that develop in her mind about the others in the house, reflect this sort of youth in many ways.

The enclosed world of the protagonist is a representation of the closed world of the writer, a world carried out largely in the mind of the writer. The protagonist speaks through her journal, her means of artistic expression, and from the beginning it is clear that she is treated as someone who needs to be cared for and protected to the point where she has little choice in her own destiny. Her husband and sister-in-law do not want her to write in her journal at all, believing that it tires….

eir Mitchell, is an allegedly 'wise' man of medicine" (Hume pp).
The woman considers her child lucky because he does not have to occupy the room with the horrible wallpaper and stresses that it is impossible for her to be with him because it makes her very nervous (Hume pp). She believes that the room was once a nursery because of the bars on the windows and the condition of the wallpaper (Hume pp). Hume states that the woman is expressing her belief that children should be kept behind bars in order to control them, yet are capable of showing their hatred and perseverance by destroying the wallpaper (Hume pp).

At first blaming the yellow wallpaper for her illness, and in the end, embracing it, "now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell"….

.. With these materials and with the aid of the trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche." In "The Cask," both insanity and murder operates to create a feeling of the grotesque all throughout the story. Moreover, these themes were symbolically "concealed" by Montresor's cultured personality (to hide his insanity) and the cask of Amontillado (to hide his murder of Fortunato).
While Poe uses both themes of insanity and murder in his story, Gilman's "The Yellow Paper" effectively uses the protagonist's downfall to insanity to portray the grotesqueness of not only of psychological instability, but also of emotional repression the woman character had experienced in the story.

As the woman's insanity progresses further, the significance of the yellow paper comes into focus as the story's symbolic object that illustrates women suppression in Gilman's society. The house that they rented for the summer for rest and relaxation had….

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow allpaper" to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "inter Dreams" writing styles; James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" compare to my own life.
Modernism vs. postmodernism

Over the course of the late 19th and early 20th century, American literature began to turn inward. Instead of looking to outer manifestations of the human character, American authors began to use interior monologues as a way of creating a narrative arc. Stories such as "The Yellow allpaper," "inter Dreams," and "Sonny's Blues" manifest the characteristics of both realism and modernism in the ways that they address relatively mundane subject matter, such as failed familial and romantic relationships. They also begin to show signs of the fragmented, postmodern narrative style which is more fully realized in Baldwin's "inter Dreams." But their main, characteristic feature is the degree to which they use mundane details in the style of realism and the psychological state of the character….

Kate suffers from an "indescribable oppression" (Chopin 8) that fills "her whole being with anguish" (8) that can be traced back to her family and husband. Edna, too, had difficulty bonding with her children. hile they were much older than the narrator's child in "The Yellow allpaper," Edna's children to not make her more maternal. She struggles with this and we can see that she does not cope with it very well.
For example, she does not feel much angst for leaving her children after moving to the pigeon house.

hile she happy to see her children after being separated from them for a week, we do not gather a sense of longing or yearning to back in the home again. In fact, when Edna stands on the verge of suicide, her children do not appear as angels of hope but rather "antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered and….

Hour
Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin wrote their two separate short stories, "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Story of an Hour," within two years of each other in the 1890s. Because both of them were dealing with a similar theme, the control of women, there are a number of similarities in their plot, symbolism, characters, and other similar aspects of literature.

In the late 1800s, women had few choices in life. If they decided not to marry or could not find a husband, they had to live at home with their parents, teach, become a nanny or, in at worst, become a prostitute. In both the "Yellow Wallpaper" and "Story of an Hour," the women wanted to change their lives and the control their husbands had over them. At the end of each story, they do break away from society's restraints -- ironically, one through a mental breakdown and the….

Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Specifically it will discuss the effect that point-of-view has on the story. The narrator in this story slowly descends into madness as the story continues, and the first-person point-of-view helps the reader truly feel how the woman feels, and why she goes slowly mad in her own home.
The author chose first-person for this story to graphically illustrate how women's lives were ruled over by others in the 19th century. This narrator has no say in her own life -- her husband makes all the choices for her, including who she sees, what she does, and how she recovers from her "illness," which was really a bout with madness. She has no purpose in life, and no way to escape except through losing her mind. This first-person view graphically affects the story, because it is as if the reader is right there with the….

Medical Misunderstandings and Gender:
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a brief psychological study of a woman slowly going mad over the course of an imposed rest cure, prescribed by her physician-husband. The story illustrates the extent to which limited knowledge of the female psyche and a refusal to treat women as intelligent, independent beings ironically produces the types of behaviors the psychological treatment of the era was supposed to prevent. Both women and men are guilty of limiting women’s voices when women attempt to escape the conventional confines of motherhood and domesticity. Although the main character’s love of reading and writing is a constant and sustaining force in her life, she is denied it when it is assumed her illness is due to her refusal to conform to conventional roles.

As noted by history professor Hilary Marland, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is very much….

Q. Visit the three databases listed as great places for background information. Give two interesting pieces of information for themes about the stories you are comparing (so a total of four).Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin Interpreted by some authors as a feminist tale; by others as a story of the dangers of modern technology Chopin is also the author of The Awakening, about a married woman leaving her husband for her loverThe Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Based on the authors breakdown after a similar type of rest cure Also the author Herland, a feminist utopian storyQ2. In one sentence, explain what are you interested in exploring about the stories. (What is your thesis statement?)The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman depict how oppression causes emotional stress and psychic disintegration for women in society, which is interpreted as….

Finding no recourse or way to express her true feelings and thoughts, the Narrator began reflecting on her oppression through the yellow wallpaper patterns on the walls of her room: "The front pattern does move -- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast...and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard" (Roberts and Jacobs, 1998:550). This passage can be interpreted in two ways: seeing the woman within the wallpaper patterns may signify her dissociation from herself psychologically by succumbing to insanity. However, this process may also be construed as her way of breaking out of the prison that is her marriage, the oppression she felt being dominated by John and the limits that marriage had put on her as a woman. Though….

Gilman was a social activist and herself experienced mental illness. These elements infuse her story "The Yellow Wallpaper" with greater meaning and urgency for Feminism and for plight of females then and now.
Gilman as social activist

Gilman advocates for woman. The woman owned by males and disallowed by husband, male physician, and brother from leaving the room becomes mad.

The woman is imprisoned -- locked in. Males stunt and kill her life. In the end she steps over them; Gilman is telling females to do so too.

Gilman's experience with mental illness and its treatment

Description of Gilman's experience

Elaboration of the haunting description of the wallpaper. Gilman's familiarity with the psychosis

E. Typical 19th century views/treatments of mental illness.

Description of contemporary treatment

b. Treatment of the character. It matched social beliefs and was created by males

Conclusion

How this knowledge enhances our understanding of the story and its purpose.

Gilman lived and experienced the facts that underlay the writings….

"I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time… I lie here on this great immovable bed -- it is nailed down, I believe -- and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion." She does not think of her child, and only occasionally of her husband. The wallpaper and the imaginary woman command her focus. Forced into a pointless existence, and denied the mobility and the intellectual excitement that make life meaningful, the woman's mind turns to other intellectual and imaginary pursuits, Gilman suggests.
Eventually, rather than describing herself as looking at the pattern of the wallpaper, Gilman's heroine disassociates and….

Long before the term postpartum depression became part of the vernacular, Charlotte Perkins Gilman deftly and sensitively describes the complex condition in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The story describes the prevailing attitudes towards women and their narrowly defined roles in society. White, upper middle class women like the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” could not easily express discontent with their position as wife and mother. The narrator’s husband—a physician—believes there is “nothing the matter” with his wife except “temporary nervous depression” and “a slight hysterical tendency,” (Gilman 648). Noting her brother is also a physician, the narrator exclaims, “But what is one to do,” when one is just a woman, and therefore a subordinate whose total financial and social dependency on their male counterparts precludes their self-determination (Gilman 649). To address her “hysteria,” the narrator’s husband and brother confine her to a pleasant enough country home, but restrict….

monologue in Gilman's "The Yellow allpaper" and Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Both Charlotte Perkins Filman's "The Yellow allpaper" and Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Amontilado" involve copious amounts of monologue. Each of these tales is narrated by a single person whose viewpoints and opinions are issued directly to the reader, coloring the events of the plot accordingly. However, there are critical distinctions between both of these tales and in both of the monologues the narrator's employ. Gilman's story is narrated by a woman whose mental health slowly, inexorably unravels -- to her detriment, and that of those who purport to care for her. Poe's story is narrated by a man who is bent on exacting revenge upon another. Thus, despite the fact that there are monologues utilized in each short story, the principle difference between them is that the monologue of Gilman's narrator spirals at its….

1. The symbolism of the caged bird in Maya Angelou's autobiographical work, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."
2. The theme of captivity and freedom in Harper Lee's novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird."
3. Analyzing the oppression and confinement of women in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper."
4. The symbolism of the birdcage in Henrik Ibsen's play, "A Doll's House," in relation to gender roles and societal expectations.
5. Comparing the experiences of the caged birds in Richard Wright's novel, "Native Son," and Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, "The Handmaid's Tale."
6. Exploring the theme of captivity and liberation in Jean Rhys's....

1. "The yellow wallpaper symbolizes the protagonist's deteriorating mental health and her struggle against societal expectations in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'"

2. "Through the use of symbolism and imagery, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' explores the effects of patriarchal oppression on women's mental health."

3. "Analysis of the protagonist's descent into madness reveals the damaging consequences of Victorian gender roles in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'"

Your thesis statement effectively conveys the main ideas you will be exploring in your essay. It clearly highlights the role of the yellow wallpaper as a symbol of the protagonist's mental health struggles and societal constraints. To strengthen your thesis, consider providing....

1. Thesis Statement from the User:

"Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is a profound exploration of the oppressive societal expectations and mental health struggles faced by women in the late 19th century."

Feedback on User's Thesis Statement:

- Strength: The thesis clearly establishes the central focus of the analysis on societal expectations and mental health struggles.
- Weakness: The thesis could benefit from further refinement to incorporate more specific examples or key points from the story.

2. Expanded Thesis Statement:

"Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is a poignant critique of the restrictive societal expectations imposed on women in the late 19th century, exploring the....