Charlotte Perkins Gilman Essays (Examples)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman Was an

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…… [Read More]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman One of

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…… [Read More]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow

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…… [Read More]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The

.. 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…… [Read More]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper to

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…… [Read More]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow

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…… [Read More]

Hour Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin

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…… [Read More]

Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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…… [Read More]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper

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”…… [Read More]

Gilman and Henrik Ibsen Women

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…… [Read More]

Gilman Was a Social Activist and Herself

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…… [Read More]

Gilman Melville and Houston Short

"e're leaving,' he hissed. "I'm taking you straight to the hospital." hen Susan rose shakily to her feet, uncontrollable diarrhea had stained her dress and dripped from the chair. hite with fury, Charles Hay took her by the arm and led her slowly from the hall." (Melville 134)

The work again intones an incredible journey through what a women sees a man thinking. The disconnectedness of Susan from her husband is so complete that her voice is only marginal in the work, but the message is clear in the literary expression of her secreted activities. The masculine is represented as the feminist idea of greater association with industry than home, to the peril of loving relationships. The writing demonstrates a character who is wholly disconnected from ethics in love and life, and in s sense is a demonized masculine archetype.

Conclusion:

Among these three works are three completely differing context…… [Read More]

Unraveling The Heroine of Charlotte

"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…… [Read More]

postpartum depression and gilman yellow wallpaper

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…… [Read More]

Charlotte Poe

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 conclusion…… [Read More]

Evaluating Narrating and Describing

Charlotte Perkins Gilman entitled "The Yellow Wallpaper." The best way to evaluate this essay is by identifying the various thematic elements prevalent in it. These include the waning sanity of the protagonist, the intransigence of her husband, and the subjection of women to the will of men that typified the lives of women at the time that this story was written. Such an evaluation will most likely end in a conclusion that Gilman was subtly protesting the noxious effect that men have on the lives of women, particularly husbands' own wives, as a salient social issue.

There are several passages in this work of literature in which it is clear that the author is suffering from some sort of mental illness -- or, perhaps more accurately, is recovering from one and is attempting to prevent a relapse. Part of her mental illness, the author alludes to, stems from her prowess…… [Read More]

Domestic Prison Gender Roles and Marriage the

Domestic Prison

Gender oles and Marriage

The Domestic Prison: James Thurber's "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) and "The Story of an Hour" (1894) by Kate Chopin depict marriage as a prison for both men and women from which the main characters fantasize about escaping. Louise Mallard is similar to the unnamed narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is that they are literally imprisoned in a domestic world from which there is no escape but death or insanity. As in all of this early feminist fiction, the women characters are defined as 'sick', either physically or mentally, for even imaging a situation on which they might be free, for they are allowed no lives of their own. Louise Mallard was overjoyed when she heard that her husband was killed in an accident,…… [Read More]

Depression in Literature Minnie Wright

Then after Homer disappeared, she gave china painting lessons until a new generation lost interest, and then "The front door closed...remained closed for good" (Faulkner pp). Emily's depression caused her to become a recluse.

All three female protagonists are so dominated by male authority figures that their loneliness leads to severe depression, which in turn leads to madness, then eventually acts of violence. None of the women have active control of their lives, however, each in their own way makes a desperate attempt to take action, to seek a type of redemption for the misery and humiliation they have endured by the male figures in their lives.

orks Cited

Curry, Renee R. "Gender and authorial limitation in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily.'" The Mississippi Quarterly. June 22, 1994. Retrieved July 28, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library eb site.

Faulkner, illiam. "A Rose for Emily." Retrieved July 28, 2005 at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/wf_rose.html…… [Read More]

Communication Between Men in Women

Her physician husband, John, and those like him do "not believe" that she is "sick" or even, in her view, capable of understanding her sickness, so "what," she asks, "can one do?" (Hume).

How can one view this passage without seeing a total lack of communication in a marriage? The narrator even goes so far as to say, "It is so hard to talk to John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so" (Perkins Gilman). From a purely logical standpoint, John's wisdom and the fact that he loves her so would seem to naturally suggest that he would be the most receptive person to listen to the narrator's discussions, but other things that the narrator says reveal John's patronizing attitude towards her. Instead of caring for her, John absolutely ignores the narrator's suggestions about what she thinks may help heal her. Dismissing her…… [Read More]

Setting the Story

Yellow allpaper and Paul's Case: Emancipation of Mental Captivity

The two texts, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow allpaper and illa 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 on a self-destruction course. The narrator in The Yellow allpaper is the main character, an upper middle class woman confined to domesticity and "women's role. The text reveals her inner struggles and from her eye, the reader is able to see her plight. Similarly in Paul's Case, the main character has personal issues that are products of the society he lives in. He is motherless, thin pale and dreamy adolescent who rebels from his conventional surroundings in Pittsburgh. The major…… [Read More]

Madness in Two Works The Yellow Wall-Paper

madness in two works, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and "A Wilderness Station" by Alice Munro. Specifically, it will discuss how the central characters exhibit some form of madness or refusal to live in reality. It will explore the madness, and look at what role it plays in each story. Madness is at the heart of both these compelling short stories, and why the characters go mad is quite important to the ultimate understanding of both of them. They react to their situations by retreating into madness, which seems to be the only avenue open to their survival.

Both of these women use madness as a vehicle of escape from their real lives, and both of these characters suffer at the hands of others, which helps contribute to their madness. In "The Yellow Wall-Paper," the narrator's husband does not understand her or her illness at all, and he…… [Read More]

Comparison of Style and Purpose

Rose for Emily," which was authored by William Faulkner in 1930 and "The Yellow Wallpaper," that was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, both are intimate stories about women living in their particular times in the United States. In addition, both provide true insights into what it was like as a female living during these historic times. However, the styles of the two authors make the stories very different in their approach and effect on the readers.

"A Rose for Emily," told in five separate sections, is rich with the descriptions, plot structures and mood that made Faulkner such a dynamic and memorable writer. After only a few lines into his artistic work, the reader is transposed into that period and place. For example, when reading the second paragraph, one can easily imagine the look and style of the house: "It was a big, squarish frame house that had…… [Read More]

Madness in Women in Most of the

Madness in Women

In most of the novels and the works in consideration we see the struggle for expression and the quest to overcome masculine oppression (on the part of the author) finds expression as a deteriorating mental state of the character.

Largely guided by their urge to break off from the shackles of the society and the pining for the freedom that has been sadly denied to them, women exhibit a kind of madness in their effort to restore the balance. This is fairly obvious from the many literary works created by women. These works invariably depict the quest for freedom and very often they end up as the lamenting tones of a deranged personality. In most of the novels and the works in consideration we see the struggle for expression and the quest to overcome masculine oppression (on the part of the author) is expressed as a deteriorating…… [Read More]

Women's Role

Setting of Two Turn of the Century Feminist Tales

The use of irony in both tales

Women today

Women's Role in "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "A Story of an Hour"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short tale "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Katherine Anne Porter's short story "A Story of an Hour" both depict the constrained lives of middle-class women. The protagonist of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is driven mad when she is refused her books and the healthy aspects of her daily life as a rest cure, after the woman has given birth to her first child. The rest cure merely kindles the illness within her. In "A Story of an Hour," a woman with a bad heart is denied all of the aspects of life that make life worth living, such as travel and adventure, for fear the excitement will cause her to have a heart attack.

Ironically, the woman at the…… [Read More]

Women's and Gender Studies

omen and Gender Studies

Of all the technologies and cultural phenomena human beings have created, language, and particularly writing, is arguably the most powerful, because it is the means by which all human experience is expressed and ordered. As such, controlling who is allowed to write, and in a modern context, be published, is one of the most effective means of controlling society. This fact was painfully clear to women writers throughout history because women were frequently prohibited from receiving the same education as men, and as the struggle for gender equality began to read a critical mass near the end of the nineteenth century, control over women's access to education and writing became a central theme in a number of authors' works, whether they considered themselves feminists or not. In particular, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 story The Yellow allpaper features this theme prominently, and Virginia oolf's extended essay A…… [Read More]

Yellow Wallpaper Sources of Narrator's Insanity the

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…… [Read More]

Human Ignorance Uncivilized Behavior Due

As a housewife confined mostly at home, the woman yearned to develop herself, to function as an able individual not just in her home but in her society as well. Thus, work became a symbolic manifestation of the woman's yearning for freedom: freedom from the oppressive label of being a housewife, and freedom from being limited and dictated what she needs to do and not do.

Human ignorance is highlighted in the story when, as the woman succumbed to the fixating task of "analyzing" and following the patterns of the yellow wallpaper, her husband thought her nervous breakdown has finally escalated into insanity. As the woman begins to consider the pattern a reflection of her own life, her family, particularly her husband John, began considering her condition as one of insanity: "At night...and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!...I didn't realize for a long time what the thing…… [Read More]

Moral Consciousness in The Yellow

All of this shows how society looked at women at the time. They were "fragile" and emotionally irrational. They had no power or choice in a relationship, and they were seen as weak and unable to deal with the real world. This narrator may have mental problems, but it seems they came from the way she was treated by her husband and society. It was as if women did not exist. They could not work, many did not even care for their own children, and they had little to live for or strive for. Gilman wrote this story to raise the moral consciousness of readers, and to show the plight of women in Victorian times. The reader has to feel sorry for this narrator - not because she goes mad, but because she was driven to madness by the social and moral beliefs at the time. There is little social…… [Read More]

Literary Works referring to the Mental Illness

Mental Illness

In the social environment, mental illness is a serious condition and with an advancement of technology and modern science, the physiological issue surrounding a mental illness is not well understood. The stigma that place on people suffering from mental illness is so much making people pretending that they are not suffering from the problems. Although, many people were not born with a mental problem, however, the societal burden can make people demonstrating signs of mental disorders such as depression and irrational behaviors.

The objective of this paper explores the concept of mental illness illustrated in different literary books.

Literary Issues on Mental Illness

This study investigates the issue of mental illness in the literary books with a focus on "Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar," (Ames 1) and "Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." (Gilman 1) The study develops personal connection and similarities between the two characters and their…… [Read More]

Womens Illness in Psychology

Yellow Wall-Paper

The context of the work for Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wall-paper" was placed in a time that witnessed dramatic changes. During that period of change -- the early to the mid-nineteenth century, American women were identified in the society to be the moral and spiritual leaders of the home according to the domestic ideology. The primary role or duty of a woman was considered to be in her home where she would carry out the prescribed responsibilities of being a mother and a wife within the private domains of her home. On the other hand, men would be engaged with work, politics and economics in the public domain where women were not expected to participate. However, changes began to appear in this system and way of thinking during the middle of the century due to the rise in the concept of women's rights and women liberty.…… [Read More]

Teenagers and Conflict a Review

Teenagers in Conflict ith Their Environment

At the time of the stories

Teenagers are often in conflict with their environment. hat some call the "rebellious" years are at times just periods in a person's life where he or she may feel confused, lost, and alone. Three stories by Oates, Boyle, and Gilman highlight the lives of teenagers and their conflicts within their worlds. Each character will show how teenagers may act; the paths they choose along with the reasons.

HERE ARE YOU GOING, HERE HAVE YOU BEEN by Joyce Carol Oates is a novel that describes the life of a teenage girl named Connie. Connie is one of the main characters and the protagonist of the story. Oates paints her as a beautiful and self-absorbed 15-year-old who argues with her mom. Although her mother was once beautiful like Connie, she has aged. Her sister, older and more homely, provides a…… [Read More]

Confluence of Prose and Poetry

This is why wars are fought with bloodletting, why torture takes place, and why neither violence nor war is limited to the physical carnage of the battlefield.

Nordstrom 59)

The early death of Clifton's mother, as a result of having to powerlessly rely on a liar and a letch who could not provide for his family, is the ultimate example of self-inflicted violence, as is Gillman's character resorting to an expression of madness to resist her powerlessness. It was only slightly more "appropriate" for a women to realize madness as it was for her to throw herself from a three story window.

orks Cited

Clifton, Lucille "forgiving my father" in Schilb, John & Clifford, John. Making Literature Matter 3rd Edition. New York: Bedford, St. Martin's, 2005, 314.

Gelfant, Blanche H., and Lawrence Graver, eds. The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Gillman,…… [Read More]

Oppression Repression and Madness in

John is completely blind to his wife's needs. In fact, he is being completely selfish in this situation because he is placing himself over his wife's needs. This fact, on top of everything else, allows us to see how easily oppression could transform into anger.

Oppression, repression, and rage emerge as important aspects of "The Yellow allpaper." The narrator in this story represents countless women who suffered at the hands of uninterested and uneducated doctors. The story follows the course of madness through stages and reveals the delicate workings of the human psyche. Survival is an instinctive characteristic and the narrator does what she can to preserve herself before going over the edge. Gilman demonstrates the yearning for independence in a rather hopeless situation and, as a result, emphasizes the need for understanding before medication. In addition, she also demonstrates how doctors do not always know best. Perhaps one of…… [Read More]

Trace How the World Changes

In conclusion, these works all illustrate the changing role of women in 19th century society. At the beginning of the century, women's work was inside the home and raising a family. By the end of the century, Victorian women were attempting to add meaning and fulfillment to their lives. Women in this country were attempting to gain the right to vote, they were forming women's groups and societies, and women like Gilman, Chopin, Wollstonecraft Shelley, and others, were attempting to create their own writing careers, allowing them to be at least partially autonomous and independent. They write of women's struggles for equality and understanding with great knowledge, skill, and perception. They also write of the realities of being a woman in the 19th century. For the most part, women's lives were unfulfilled and controlled by the men around them.

eferences

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening, and Other Stories. Ed. Knights, Pamela.…… [Read More]

Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen

You see he does not believe I am sick!" (Gilman).

In fact, there is a question as to whether the narrator drags her husband along with her in her journey into madness. Two feminist writers note, "At the moment when Gilman's narrator completes the identification with her double in the wallpaper, she experiences an epiphany. To John she exclaims, 'I've got out at last... In spite of you and Jane!'" (Delashmit, and Long 33). She has realized her freedom, but at a very heavy cost. Like Nora, she leaves behind a child and a husband in order to live in her private "mad" world. Some critics believe she is the result of a "sick" society that treats women so inhumanely they have few options but to desert their families or go mad (Herndl 114). Obviously, the cost to the women and the family is extremely high, and the obstacles they…… [Read More]

Victorian Women During the Victorian

Meanwhile, Melmotte introduces Marie into the matrimonial arena at an extravagant ball for which, in hope of favors that will come, he gains the patronage of several duchesses and other regal individuals. Marie, believed to be the heiress of millions, has many highly placed but poor young noblemen asking for her hand in marriage. She falls in love with Sir Felix Carbury, who is the most shady of them all. Felix's interest in Marie has nothing to do with love, but only with her wealth. This behavior is expected, since he is just following through on all that he has been told while growing up. He has learned his lessons well. His mother commends him often for winning Marie's heart, even if it is for the wrong reasons.. As Trollope writes:

It was now his business to marry an heiress. He was well aware that it was so, and was…… [Read More]

Social Context of Hysteria in Freud's Time

Psychology of Hysteria During Sigmund Freud's Era

For a man who dedicated his life's work to furthering humanity's understanding of its own psychological processes, the revolutionary pioneer of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud remained woefully misunderstood during his own era, and has so ever since. Although Freud published a voluminous body of innovative research during his professional career as a neuropathic researcher, studying a wide array of cognitive disorders from addiction to aphasia, it is the Austrian's radical reimagining of the human mind's very structure that has made Freud a household name for multiple generations. By conceiving of the mind as being similar to an iceberg floating in the sea -- with only a small portion of the entire entity ever visible -- Freud's conceptualization of the human psyche as a behavioral balancing act between the id, the superego, and the ego, with thought occurring at both the conscious and subconscious levels,…… [Read More]

Gender in Poetry Literature Lesson Duration

Gende in Poety / Liteatue Lesson

Lesson Duation

mins

Rational: This is an intoduction to the gende issues which wee so pevalent in the Victoian ea, and a backdop to show why they still exist today and the ham they can inflict.

Syllabus Outcome: This pat of the lesson helps meet outcome 1, o the ability to intepet meanings and themes within texts. By using abstact thinking pocesses, the students will make connections between the texts pesented and show how they ae, o ae not elated. Accoding to the eseach, "A student esponds to and composes inceasingly sophisticated and sustained texts fo undestanding, intepetation, citical analysis and pleasue" (Boad of Studies fo NSW 2003 p 32).

Syllabus Content: This will help meet outcome 4, whee "a student selects and uses languages foms and featues, and stuctues of texts accoding to diffeent puposes, audiences and contexts, and descibes and explains thei…… [Read More]

Look at Specific Works in American Literature

Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane details the life and experiences of Henry Fleming, who encounters great conflict between overcoming his fear of war and death and becoming a glorious fighter for his country in the battlefield. Published in the 19th century, Crane's novel evokes an idealist picture of nationalism, patriotism, and loyalty in America, especially in its war efforts. Fleming's character can be considered as the epitome of an individual who experiences internal conflict between following his heart or mind. Henry's mind tells him that he should give up fighting in the war because it only results to numerous deaths, wherein soldiers fighting for their country end up getting wounded, or worse, killed. However, eventually, as he was overcome with guilt over his cowardice and fear of death and war, Henry followed his mother's advice, following his heart. By being true to himself, he won and survived the…… [Read More]

Women in Education Educational Opportunities

The disparity in income of male vs. female heads of household is striking. Analysis of census data revealed that, in 1949, approximately thirty percent of households headed by white males were living in poverty, compared to just under thirteen percent a decade later. For women, more than half lived in poverty in 1949; by 1959, that figure declined to thirty-eight percent. The prosperity of the 1950s was not universally enjoyed. Female heads of household at the end of the decade were not better off than their male counterparts had been ten years earlier.

Financing for decent, inexpensive homes was readily available to servicemen returning from World War II. Coontz (1992) argued that this boom in home ownership led to "increasingly pervasive and sophisticated marketing [that] contributed to socially constructed perceptions of "need" and to unprecedented levels of consumer debt (Edwards, 2001). It was new consumer values that helped propel mothers…… [Read More]

Fiction Has the Unique Attribute of Being

Fiction has the unique attribute of being able to be relatable to a person regardless of its implications to real life. No matter how bizarre a plot or character might be, it is the meaning behind everything that is obvious that makes the interpretation of stories unique and applicable to the human experience. This is greatly demonstrated in a collection of quotations from a variety of stories that all share one commonality: survival. No matter how tough things go, and no matter what life's circumstances can be, survival is the ultimate goal, and these stories all bring together that philosophy in a variety of ways, but all coming up with the same equal concept.

Nothing brings on this notion of survival more than Zora Neale Hurston does in her story "Sweat." Life is all about how hard one works in order to be able to excel and in order to…… [Read More]

Societal Expectations Play a Part in The

societal expectations play a part in "The Sorrowful Woman."

The protagonist in Gail Godwin's short story "A Sorrowful Woman" demonstrates not only the ways in which people's lives can become compromised and limited by their attempts to meet the expectations of others but also the ways in which we each internalize those expectations. This is the real harm that limiting attitudes like racism and sexism have, as Godwin shows us: Not that other people try to limit what we can accomplish in our lives but that we ourselves also begin to believe that we are not good enough to be, as Dickens so eloquently summarized it, the heroes of our own lives.

The story tells about a woman who has become so used to following the societally determined and enforced rules of conduct for a wife and a mother that she is no longer capable of living in an atmosphere…… [Read More]

Women's Suffrage the Suffrage Question

They argued that women would not have any reforming effect on the country because they would vote with their husbands (opposite of what they argued earlier). In states where they already had the vote, they had made no difference. Finally, they argued that women didn't really want the vote, anyway. This last charge had some truth to it. Susan . Anthony observed that the apathy of most women about the vote was the biggest obstacle for the movement. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 said that women would get the vote when "women as a whole show any special interest in the matter" (Woloch 242).

Terborg-Penn (113) points out that between 1910 and 1920 middle-class black women became active in the cause. She states that black feminists could never overlook the issue of racism; for them, it wasn't just a matter of being women; their color was a major cause of…… [Read More]

Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

Old Nurse's Story

Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Old Nurse's Story" uses gothic imagery and Victorian themes to elucidate the role and status of women. Online critics claim the story is filled with themes of "male domination, females' sense of powerlessness due to this dominance, and the ambiguous results of women's struggle against males in the Victorian era," ("The Damning Effects of a Patriarchal Society in "The Old Nurse's Story" and "The Yellow allpaper"). Indeed, these three core elements are absolutely evident in this haunting tale about rediscovering personal identity via encounters with the past. The motif of haunting allows the past to return to the present in eerie ways. Relying on ghosts allows the author to present the suggestion that the past haunts the lives of all individuals, and that women have trouble extricating themselves from negative situations because of the constraints of dead social institutions and norms.

However, Hughes and…… [Read More]

Women with Authority in a Patriarchal World

omen ith Authority in a Patriarchal orld

In the contemporary world, the cultural and literary spheres acknowledge female interests and activities. Females have overtly exerted their rights by demanding their due status in society, thereby being accepted as important societal members. But the scenario was vastly different about a hundred years ago. Females belonged at home, with the general society believing that raising children and taking care of domestic affairs sufficed as their emotional fulfillment. Between 1850 and 1900, societies were chiefly patriarchal and dependent women had to fight to enjoy equal social status. They were governed completely by a male-fashioned society, and had to be the image of the era's feminine ideal.[footnoteRef:1] In this paper, female authority within patriarchal societies will be addressed, with particular emphasis on the many restrictions when it came to them exerting power and what effective strategies they applied. [1: Pamela, Balanza. "The Role of…… [Read More]

Interpretation and Analysis

Discrimination and Madness: Examining Motifs in the Short Stories of Faulkner and Gillman

"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gillman and "A ose for Emily," by William Faulkner, though remarkably different in style and voice, feature stories where women are the main characters. Both of these stories take the reader through a raucous trip through time and sanity leaving the reader constantly guessing. In the midst of these vivid journeys through the narrative, both short stories showcase their female protagonists in fictional worlds where various pertinent social issues fester in the background.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" tells a story written in the first person of a vivacious, imaginative woman who explains that she suffers from a temporary nervous depression colored by a bit of hysteria. Her husband, a doctor, who the narrator tells us is extremely practical, believes she is not sick and rents a colonial mansion for the summer so…… [Read More]

Femininity and Freedom Explored in

Perkins gives us the reason one must never go back: sanity. These characters have issues in their lives but they certainly cannot sit still and wait for things to happen around them. The power of femininity did not advance because women remained timid; it gained momentum because women realized they were separate individuals capable of living full lives without the domineering presence of men. At the same time, they understood the importance of relationships and what they bring to life. They know both can exist without one overpowering the other. hile this does not sound like much of a revelation in today's world, it was a remarkable revelation around one hundred years ago when women were expected to be happy being mothers and wives.

orks Cited

Allen, Brooke. "The accomplishment of Edith harton." New Criterion, Sept 2001. Gale

Resource Database. Site Accessed April 13, 2011.

Chopin, Kate. "Regreat." American Literature…… [Read More]

Personae in Literature the Yellow

He is older, because he aches and can still feel the rung of the ladder in his foot, and the author gets all this across with the voice of the narrator in the poem.

Let America be America Again" angry, hopeful, forceful, strong, determined. The structure of this poem leads to the dramatic conclusion, and helps the reader see that this narrator is frustrated and angry over the "freedom" he has not seen in America, and how unfair life in America can be. The author uses different stanzas and varies the sizes of the stanzas to show power in the narrator's words, and how America can hope to be better someday, but it will take work. This is a strong poem with a structure that adds to its strength. The varied stanzas and rhymes make the poem just a little off center, just as the narrator's theme of lack of…… [Read More]

Language Is Used to Portray a Character's Mental State

Language

Madness Rooms

Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" are surprisingly coherent considering that they are meant to represent the thoughts of individuals going insane. Either one could easily have been done in a stream-of-consciousness style that would have quickly moved from linear plot into disjointed expressionism. Instead, both generally preserve an illusion of order and proceed in a linear fashion. Nonetheless, in both stories the narrative begins to decay as the end approaches and madness creeps into the very wordchoice and punctuation of the language.

In Gilman's story, though not so much so in Poe's, the language choices actually clearly point to an exact sort of psychological diagnoses, giving clues to the character's state in a then-common mental illness. "The Yellow Wallpaper" narrator is clearly suffering from nervous hysteria, not only because she says states that this is her diagnoses but also because of the symptoms…… [Read More]

Perspective Used for Short Stories

Yellow Wallpaper

The author of this report has been asked to review and write a reaction to the short story that has come to be known as The Yellow Wallpaper. The work is a short story that is about six thousand words in length. As with many short stories of this nature, the root goal and perspective that one can glean from the story really depends on how one chooses to look at it. One can take it literally word for word while others could see flavors of feminism and the like. The author of this paper will specifically look at the reliability of the narrator. Specifically, it will be assessed how reliable the narrator is. While the short story is ostensibly a first-hand account of the story to be told and thus should be reliable, there are obviously some feelings and perceptions that are colored by emotions and other…… [Read More]

American Social Thought on Women's Rights

American Social hought on Women's Rights

his paper compares and contrasts the arguments in favor of women's rights made by three pioneering American feminists: Judith Sargent Murray, Sarah Grimke, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. his analysis reveals the centrality of religious argumentation to the feminism of all three. Murray and Grimke were both converts to varieties of evangelical Protestantism who drew considerable intellectual and emotional nourishment from strands of Christianity, which encouraged, or at least did not discourage, their personal development. Unlike Murray and Grimke, however, Stanton did not convert to evangelicalism. Instead, she launched upon a secularizing trajectory that took her beyond Christianity to Comtean Positivism and rationalism. Unlike Murray and Grimke, moreover, she acknowledged the problems inherent in any attempt to square Christianity with feminism. However, she never rejected the Bible completely, and she is appropriately viewed with respect today as a pioneer of feminist biblical criticism. he paper…… [Read More]

Brainstorming the Idea That I Am Brainstorming

Brainstorming

The idea that I am brainstorming is the idea of a bully who pushes his weight around and says cruel things at the drop of the hat. This will be the starting point. However, through the feedback from others and the isolation that is encountered as a result of the bullying, including a pivotal point that is the climax of the story, the bully will realize just how caustic and vile they are acting and will try to change for the better. The bully redeeming one's self is obviously not going to be automatic as people will be leery of the bully because of his prior actions and changing one's personality so completely and so quickly can be disorienting and it can take a lot of adjustment. The lesson topics is whether or why people trust others, why people bully others and how hard it can be to change…… [Read More]

Where Are You Going Where

The absence of religious lifestyle in the family is an emphasis to the centrality of religion in the life of adolescents and is brought out as the possible wedge that may be there between evil and good. Here, Arnold Fiend could be seen as the embodiment of the devil in his boots that looked odd giving an evil angle and a hidden identity giving him a satanic look. The continued presence of rock and roll music in the entire story also embodies the rebellion against the societal norms. This is from the fact that such music in the 1960s was used as a sign of liberty and freedom from societal dictates and rules. This was the rebellion that most adolescents like Connie got into hence predisposing themselves to dangers that cost them their lives.

eference

Little M., (2013). Popular Culture After World War II. etrieved April 18, 2012 from http://www.powayusd.com/teachers/lolps/American%20History/Standards/11_8/11.8.8%20Popular%20Culture%20After%20WW%20II.pdf… [Read More]

Updike's A& p Sammy's Muses in Updike's A& p

Updike's A&P

Sammy's Muses in Updike's "A&P"

John Updike's "A&P" tells the story of Sammy whose life is transformed after three girls visit the store where he is working and are humiliated by the store's manager. The A&P where Sammy works offers the readers insight into the quotidian life of middle-class suburbia, while on the other hand, the three girls, whom Sammy nicknames Queenie, Plaid, and Big Tall Goony-Goony, represent rebellion and allow Sammy to recognize and realize the freedom he longs for. In "A&P," Sammy's defense of the three girls is superficially both egalitarian and sexist and serves as an excuse to break free from suburban normalcy.

Queenie, Plaid, and Big Tall Goony serve as the impetus for Sammy's ruminations on suburbia, sexism, and capitalism and corporate culture. Sammy sees the girls as being a rebellion of suburbia. They do not appear to conform to society's expectations of dress…… [Read More]

Setting in The Story of

She is literally locked in the house and it becomes her "protector" of sorts. It is as real as a character because it is has a type of power over Louise. She can never leave it. After hearing the news of Brently, Louise runs up to her room and "would have no one follow her" (635). The room takes on a persona as it becomes the one thing with which Louise shares her secret of freedom. Here, she can relish in the thought of being free without worrying about the disapproval of others. Here, she can express the excitement she feels when she looks outside and considers freedom as something within her grasp. This is the only place that knows her true heart and it is the only place in which she has few minutes to taste the freedom she desires. The room envelops her and allows her to this…… [Read More]

Traditional Woman and the New

1080). Editha wants to turn George into someone just like herself, who shares her same passion, beliefs, and patriotism -- someone who wouldn't hesitate to go off to war. As Bellamy (1979) states, Editha's commitment to marry him is "contingent upon his enlistment" (p. 283). Unless George becomes like her, she intends to cut of her engagement to him, exhibiting power over the relationship and expressing and asserting her own ideals. Once George commits and enlists, he becomes someone Editha can idolize: "I've been thinking, and worshipping you….I've followed you every step from your old theories and opinions'" (p. 1085). In her letters she includes what "she imagined he could have wished, glorifying and supporting him" (p. 1086). What she imagines are the things she would want to hear about herself. George has become someone she would like to be.

After George's death in battle, his mother tells Editha directly…… [Read More]

Women's Roles 1865-1912 Social Class

For instance, Sylvy could have decided to go with the man and leave her rural life. She could have left the life of poverty and gone back to the city. Had she made this choice she knew that she would never have to worry about money again. However, having come from the city originally, she also knew the personal freedom that she would be giving up. She felt that if she went away with the guest, she could learn to serve, follow, and love him, "as a dog loves" (Jewett, a White Heron, Harper Series, p. 1646). This line summarizes the oppression of the urban woman in the late 1880s.

Jewett tells her readers much about her feelings about social class and the political position of women during her time. She portrays women as "followers" of men. She alludes to the position of women as "servants" of man. She compares…… [Read More]

Realistic Elements When Evaluating the

"Tiempos Amargos" (Bitter Times), with its ironic lamentation on the passage of time, criticizes life under the exploitive Mexican president Porfirio Diaz:

These are no longer the times of Porfirio (D'az), when they cried for the master when they'd meet him, they'd shake his hand, and button his pants.

If one day the steward became angry with a worker it was because there was another one closer to the snaps of his pants.

If someone had pretty daughters he'd get a job as a night watchman, or else he'd land a good job, at least as a payroll clerk.

If someone had a pretty wife they didn't let him rest, they'd get them up very early to work just like the oxen.

El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez" tells the tale of a Mexican outlaw who refuses to give up, even when he is cornered at the very end:

And in…… [Read More]

Importance of Humanities in the Professions

Humanities

Importance of the humanities in the professions:

A comparison of "Paul's Case," Muriel's Wedding and Andy Warhol's rendition of Marilyn Monroe

The modern concept of 'celebrity' is that anyone can be famous, provided that he or she embodies an ideal of glamour, using material trappings like clothing and possessions to show his or her 'specialness.' This is a common method of 'selling' a particular product in business.

The idea is paradoxical -- on one hand, celebrities are special, on the other hand the media suggests everyone can be a celebrity and 'famous for 15 minutes' if they buy the right item.

This can be seen in "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather, about a boy who feels as if he is above his classmates.

Paul desires to have a celebrity-like status, based upon his perceptions of himself as having innately refined tastes.

But this costs money, and Paul is unwilling…… [Read More]

Forsaking of Will the Central

Mrs. Mallard's husband could have thought he was doing her a great kind kindness by "bending" her will to his. This quotation demonstrates the fact that even if Brent Mallard was on his best behavior, he still had a negative, oppressive effect upon his wife. With little legal recourse, Chopin is alluding to the fact that for many women, death -- of either the husband or the repressed woman -- is the only way out of such a situation.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Mallard, her weak heart was unable to sustain the shock of seeing her husband alive, after she had finally acclimated herself to the notion that she had finally been freed from his oppressive presence and will. She was strong enough to live with her husband's death, yet was not strong enough to live through the surprise of his continued life at the resumption of her former, oppressed state.…… [Read More]