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¶ … Yellow Wallpaper": Sources of Narrator's Insanity
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about the sad descent into insanity of a woman that was first published in 1892. This essay speculates on the sources of the narrator's insanity.
The main source of the narrator's insanity is the restrictions imposed on women in a male-dominated society. This social condition of women was more pronounced in the late nineteenth century when the story was written and first published. In the story the narrator's life is so overwhelmingly dominated by male figures (her brother, and later her husband) that she is unable to make her own choices about her life and is kept imprisoned physically as well as mentally. In The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator's husband is always deciding what is supposedly good for her, and she has reached a stage where she has lost confidence in her own judgment. Such uncertainty is depicted in her remarks such as, "You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?" (Lines # 14, 15) or, "Personally I disagree with their [her husband's and her brother's] ideas... But what is one to do?" (Lines # 22, 25) This leads to a situation in which the narrator loses control and slips into a world of fantasy and ultimately -- insanity.
The mistaken prescription of doctors in the past for conditions of depression and nervous breakdown, i.e., complete bed rest and avoidance of work and normal interaction with others, as suggested by the physician husband for his wife in the story, is another major reason behind the insanity of the narrator. Her husband's restriction on her desire to write ("...am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again."-Line # 21) that may have acted as a catharsis for her condition is another source of insanity for her. In this context too, her observation, "Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good" (line # 23, 24) is futile as the dominant male figures in her life (her husband and her brother) hold the all important 'veto' over her.
The Yellow Wallpaper
Similarities in Theme in the Two Stories Prisoners: Both of these stories place the characters in a kind of prison. On the first page of Yellow Wallpaper the narrator has already explained that the reason she doesn't get well is because of her husband. An irony of huge magnitude, to say that one's husband is a physician and that "perhaps" that is the reason "I do not get well faster" (3).
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
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
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
Loneliness to Insanity In "The Second Sex," originally published in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir explored the historic situation of women and concluded that women have been prevented from taking active control of their lives (Vintges pp). Beauvoir believed that women had always been the "Other" throughout culture, and that man had been the "Self," the subject (Vintges pp). In other words, the female had been subjected to the male, who, partly
Yellow Wallpaper and Paul's Case: Emancipation of Mental Captivity The two texts, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Willa Cather's Paul's Case, portray the main characters with hysteria. Both cases are reactions to the pressures put on them by their families as well as the society. They seem to build mental barriers that cannot be brought down, so called safe heavens, escape from harsh realities and this puts them