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This only compounded the problem and hence Gilman decided to speak against such medical approaches. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman placed the rest cure in the cultural context of late nineteenth century. The story was a metaphor for the lives of middle-class women trapped in other people's expectations;…" (Patarca-Montero, p. 4)
Gilman readily spoke against isolation and its decaying effect on human mind and in a way that is exactly what Jack London says in his story, "To build a fire." In this story, a man decides to travel alone in sub-zero temperature to meet his friends after ignoring the advice that it was not safe to travel alone. The word "alone" is important here because it somehow seems that the protagonist believed that he could have survived the weather if he had not been alone. The fact that the weather couldn't have worked for anyone is completely ignored by the man as he focuses on his utter loneliness. He knows there is no man to help him out and that survival on one's own is not possible especially when in the face of hostile natural forces. "The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below."
The protagonists in both stories are faced with a herculean task. One has to overcome brutal weather to reach a place of safety, and the other has to fight against the doctors when she herself knows better. The man is rather smug and it is his stupidity that kills him because he had...
"There is a grim poetic justice in the fact that this coldly practical man literally freezes to death because he has committed the fatal blunder not only of spurning companionship but also of scorning the old timer's wisdom."(Labor, p. xxi) the woman on the other hand is wiser and intellectually aware of her condition but she is unfortunately surrounded by unwise people who fail to listen to her.
The two important themes in the story are thus "hostile nature" and "aloneness." In case of the Yellow Wallpaper, the two essential themes are "unwise medical community" and "isolation." When compared and contrasted, these stories are essentially about survival in the face of antagonistic forces. Both protagonists fail to survive but in different ways. While the man dies after struggling for hours to build a fire, the mentally ill woman's condition worsens to the point of complete lunacy.
References
Labor, Earle. The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics) Oxford University Press, USA (1998)
Patarca-Montero, Roberto. Medical Etiology, Assessment, and Treatment of Chronic Fatigue and Malaise: Clinical Differentiation and Intervention. Informa Healthcare; (2004)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper" (1913)
The Forerunner. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html
I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still... It keep me quiet by the hour" (Hunt, 179). With this, it is clear that Gilman sees herself as trapped in a very disruptive and confined world, one which ultimately drives her insane; also, this mysterious woman is a symbol of her physical self caught within a maze of confusion and despair, all because of the "yellow wallpaper"
As the narrator is denied access to the world and the normal expression of her individuality, so she becomes a true prisoner of the room with the yellow wallpaper. Her life and consciousness becomes more restricted until the wallpaper becomes an animated world to her. There is also the implied suggestion in this process of a conflict between the rational and logical world, determined and controlled by male consciousness, and
Yellow Wallpaper Breaking Free: The Ironic Liberation of "Yellow Wallpaper" Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a quintessential feminist story, even though it can be interpreted on many levels within that rubric. The narrator is married and has a child; she is thus engaged in some of the strongest trappings of a patriarchal society. However, she is removed both physically and spiritually from her stereotyped role as wife and mother. The
Yellow Wallpaper" and Mental Illness in Women Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is an important short story that delves into the issue of mental illness. It illustrates how women and their problems are trivialized, with this closely related to the role that women have in society. Through the story, it is seen that women become prisoners of their mental illness because the medical community will not help them. This
As the text by Davison (2004) contributes, "given that the narrator in Gilman's tale is a femme couverte who has no legal power over her own person -- like her flesh-and-blood counterparts at the time the story was published -- and that her husband is a physician whose pronouncements about his wife's illness are condoned by a spectral yet powerful medical establishment, it is no wonder that his wife grows
Yet, in this case, the freedom that the author is talking about is not necessarily the liberation of women from the oppressive male society, but the freedom of each individual with mental problems to having a socially integrated life, with little or no confinement that would also make the mental problems develop. In conclusion, although it may seem that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written with a feminist