Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Rest Cure Analysis
Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Rest Cure.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" and Its Autobiographical Background.
Contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Biographical Background 4 2.1 General Information 4 2.2 Gilman and the Rest Cure 5 3. The Rest Cure 5 4. Parallels between Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Experiences and Her Short Story "The Yellow Wallpaper" 6 4.1 Comparison of Fictional Characters with Authentic Persons 6 4.1.1 The Narrator Compared with Charlotte Perkins Gilman 6 4.2.2 John Compared with S. Weir Mitchell 7 4.2 Images and Stylistic Means Used to Emphasize the Author 's Intention 8 4.2.1 The Function of Madness 9 4.2.2 The Wallpaper 9 4.3.3 The Final Scene 11 5. Conclusion 12 6. Bibliography 14 1. Introduction Literature, an art of expressing …show more content…
feelings and emotions with the help of words, has been and is primarily used by writers as an instrument to convey a certain message to the reader. In many stories one can discover analogies to the autobiographical background of the author, who intended to express, more or less covert, an essential incident and its effect on the mind. A valid example is the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1890. The female main character becomes mad by undergoing a special rest cure, supervised by her husband, which should cure her from a nervous depression. Even this brief summary makes perceptible that there are certain parallels to the life of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who also suffered from the Rest Cure of a famous neurologist. The more thoroughly one studies the central character, the male antagonist and the environmental circumstances in "The Yellow Wallpaper" the more similarities can be found to the biography of the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She describes here a crucial experience made by herself and what it produced in her, for passing its meaning to the reader.
It will be the aim of this paper to elucidate and explain these parallels between "The Yellow Wallpaper" and the life of the author. At the beginning, the reader shall be given general information about the biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and about the Rest Cure she underwent. In the main part fictional characters and real persons out of Gilman 's life are compared to each other, and thereupon important images and stylistic devices are presented and investigated that are used by the author to confirm her message.
2. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Biographical Background Before analysing the text, it is necessary to get an impression of the person Charlotte Perkins Gilman by having a look at her life and her condition during the Rest Cure. The knowledge about her life in general and especially about the time she spent with S. Weir Mitchell, build a fundamental basis for a productive and comprehensible comparison with the story and it 's interpretation.
2.1 General Information Charlotte Anna Perkins was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut and grew up in a middle-class family without a father.
After school she studied at the Rhode Island School of Design but she did not graduate. At the age of 24 she married Charles Walter Stetson and one year later her daughter Katharine Beecher Stetson was born. Subsequently she fell into a depressive constitution and therefore decided to undergo a Rest Cure of the nerve specialist Silas Weir Mitchell. After this dubious experience, whose course and impact will be presented in the following two paragraphs, and the separation from her husband she picked up her career as an author with the satiric poem "Similar Cases" and her masterpiece "The Yellow Wallpaper". She wrote several books and was very active in social and feminist congresses as well as in economic issues ("Women and Economics", 1897). In 1900, one year after her father died of a nervous collapse, she got married with Houghton Gilman. She wrote a few utopian works serialized in the magazine Forerunner whose editor she was for seven years. In 1932, breast cancer was diagnosed to her and three years later Charlotte Perkins Gilman committed suicide
.
2.2 Gilman and the Rest Cure In 1887, two years after the birth of her daughter, Charlotte Perkins Gilman decided to try the Rest Cure of Silas Weir Mitchell, a neurologist and nerve specialist for women that should free her from her depressions. He made her believe to suffer from "neurasthenia", a breakdown of the nervous system, which is caused by weakness and depression women often develop after having given birth . During the Cure she was kept in isolation, absolutely forbidden to write or to do anything else except lying down and relax. She was not able to bear this treatment and soon chose to stop it . A short time later, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper".
3. The Rest Cure For comprehending the situation in Gilman 's work best, it is important to gain detailed knowledge about the concept of the Rest Cure created by Silas Weir Mitchell.
"["¦] I do not permit the patient to sit up or to sew or write or read [and] I insist on the patient being fed by the nurse ["¦]" , Mitchell wrote in Fat and Blood (1877). He believed women to be negatively influenced by contact with society to a great extend, by being overcharged with domestic work or by too much brain work. Still in this time, mental diseases were considered to be linked with diseases of the body. Through his Rest Cure, aimed at revitalizing the body with the help of complete bed rest and a particular, very rich diet, the women should be healed from their nervous diseases to get used back to their real duties of attending children and home. Apart from the absolute bed rest and the heavy diet, the patient was kept totally isolated from family members during the cure period.
Simply the fact that Charlotte Perkins Gilman broke off this treatment she voluntarily decided to undergo, may present an indication for its falseness and incorrectness. Contact with family members or distraction through simple habitual tasks, everything that ill or nervous people mostly require for feeling better, was not allowed during the cure. This kind of healing action has not had a healing effect on Gilman at all. With her short story she intended to alert other women not to believe blindly in S. Weir Mitchell 's therapeutic methods, and furthermore it is proved that she also wanted to present the alarming extend of the damage to Mitchell himself .
4. Parallels between Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Experiences and Her Short Story "The Yellow Wallpaper" 4.1 Comparison of Fictional Characters and Authentic Persons The best way to show the connection between Gilman 's experiences and the subject in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is by comparing the characters in the short story with authentic persons. It shall become obvious that the two main characters, the female narrator and the male antagonist, depict genuine correspondents.
4.1.1 The Narrator compared with Charlotte Perkins Gilman The narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" shows lots of similarities with Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She decided for a highly immediate point of view, the first-person narrator, which is in that special case the experiencing I, acting as a kind of medium between the author and the reader. She decided for the probably most convenient narrative perspective to articulate a personal occurrence in a short story. The narrator 's name is not said, which leaves it open to the reader to decide about the identity of this character or what it stands for. This might mean nothing but as well it could be a implicit hint by the author. Like Gilman herself, the narrator is a writer that writes in her diary passionately and does not intend to stop it even when her husband John urges her to.
Apart from the narrator as a character, the situation she is in corresponds to the one Gilman came across. After the delivery of a daughter, the narrator/ author underwent a Rest Cure for becoming healed from a nervous depression. Gilman made up her mind to get supervised by S. Weir Mitchell and the narrator is attended and controlled by her husband. Like the narrator, Gilman has been forbidden to write and she soon broke off whereas the narrator that also refuses to stop writing operates another, more remarkable kind of rebellion, the one of the mind. The Rest Cure, the narrator suffers from, corresponds in the main points to the one described in paragraph 3, the one Gilman submitted herself to. Isolated on the attic of an old colonial manor, she is kept under complete bed rest and not allowed to see other people or to amuse herself in any way. The equality between the author and the main character should be obvious.
4.1.2 John compared with S. Weir Mitchell Through John, Charlotte Perkins Gilman portrayed her former physician S. Weir Mitchell. She "defied [him] and transformed him into a minor but memorable character in her fiction" , the narrators physician and husband John. He believes his wife having a nervous depression and prescribes her the Rest Cure. Diagnosis and advice are identical to those, Mitchell once gave to Charlotte Perkins Gilman. John is a very rational person and is greatly convinced about his treatment. He does not realize his wife 's real dilemma and when she complains he poses her as being ignorant and childlike: "I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me ["¦] and called me a blessed little goose" . Like Mitchell, he misinterprets his patients trouble and like him he forbids his patient to have anybody around, even family members, although she personally requires society for getting well again: "I sometimes fancy that ["¦] I had less opposition and more society and stimulus"(4). At a certain point, John refers directly to Mitchell and says "if I don 't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall"(8). By saying this, he agrees indirectly with his colleague 's method of treatment, what illustrates their equality of thinking and the author 's aim to depict S. Weir Mitchell through the character John. This truth becomes more perceptible when the narrator, who supposes these words being a threat, says: "But I don 't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John ["¦] only more so"(8). Here one can notice clearly that Gilman, the friend, hints at a previous incident she went through by herself. She declines a treatment like this Rest Cure and indicts its inventor, what becomes evident in these two quotations. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" John represents S. Weir Mitchell and like him "he fails to understand [his patients] nature" .
4.2 Images and stylistic means used to emphasize the authors intention In the previous paragraph, the comparison between John and S. Weir Mitchell leads us to the message the Charlotte Perkins Gilman wants to give to the reader who should have been primarily Dr. Mitchell and secondly women that suffer from male domination and repression. With this short story, she intended "to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him from the error of his ways" . For to reinforce this aim she made use of significant images and stylistic means, which are presented and analysed in the following.
4.2.1 The function of madness When Charlotte Perkins Gilman realized that Dr. Mitchell 's Rest Cure is not curative but harmful to her, she decided to break off. Here the question comes up why the story 's heroine does not correspondingly protest against the treatment or try to get out. The answer is that she wanted to show the harmful effect on the mind of a person that is treated like her and repressed by male tyranny. The narrator is going mad under the therapy what displays the importance of this matter most insistently. So "the narrator, through mad, defies the doctor 's prescription for healthy eating, moderate exercise, and extended bed rest" and "gains a forceful sense of self as she acts out of madness" . Moreover Gilman intended to call other women 's attention for demonstrating them the serious effects of a repressive society by letting her heroine act out of madness. This becomes most comprehensible in the final scene that is examined in part 5.1.3.
4.2.2 The wallpaper The wallpaper has a key position in Gilman 's short story. She used this image for illustrating the narrators hopeless condition and for documenting the development of her madness. For the reason of the wallpaper being a part of the story 's setting, we should first have a look on the setting at the whole.
The patient is kept in a old English colonial manor that "is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village [and] there are hedges and walls and gates that lock"(4). The author used this gothic style , which is operated in literature of the 18th/ 19th century and describes romantic adventures in mysterious or frightening settings, for showing that the narrator is in a way locked up and hold behind bars. Moreover, when describing the garden, the narrator mentions "box-bordered paths" and "greenhouses [that are] all broken now"(4). By means of their form, box-bordered paths are a symbol for imprisonment as well. The greenhouses that are representatives for growing life and healthful development are broken, that refers to the desperate state of repression of the main character. She is staying on the attic of the house, a spacious and light room that only hosts a bed. She believes the room having been a nursery and a gymnasium for children in the past because "the windows are barred ["¦], there are things and rings in the walls" and the wallpaper is "stripped off ["¦] in great patches"(5). This description could also be the one of a room, which has been used for treating insane and lunatics that may shall direct the reader to the approaching madness of the heroine.
The room 's paper is described by the narrator as a "smouldering unclean yellow [with] patterns committing every artistic sin"(5). She does not like it already at the beginning, and during her stay she hates it more and more. While she is turning out mad the wallpaper becomes increasingly the object of her attention. She believes to perceive a women that is imprisoned behind the paper and shakes it for getting out. Through the image of the women behind the wallpaper the author illustrates the rebellious part of the heroines mind that wants to get out of his husbands control. "Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind it and sometimes only one. ["¦] But nobody could climb through that pattern " it strangles so"(15). This quotation draws attention to the fact that the rebellious women/ the rebellious self of the narrator symbolizes all woman, who suffer from the mistreatment of a dominant male society and who are not able to escape even when they use all their power. The prison of repression is represented through the wallpaper that is stripped off excessively by the main character when the story reaches its climax. She wants to free her suppressed mind "by destroy[ing] the wallpaper and express[ing] her desperate rage" , which illustrates an act of liberating all subdued women. The image of the wallpaper stands for oppression of the female heroine by her husband, of Charlotte Perkins Gilman by S. Weir Mitchell, and of all women that are mistreated by the male society and by therapeutic actions.
4.2.3 The final scene The story 's final scene supports as well Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's message through "The Yellow Wallpaper". The narrator is creeping over her fainted husband. This scene might be the real climax too, or a second one. While crawling over John, who combines human and therapeutic misunderstanding and domination she achieves a victory over him and his treatment. The author mobilizes her heroine to "a furious and uncompromising rebellion that she could never acknowledge fully as her own" . The success of the story 's heroine might seem dubious because she ends up mad anyway. However, Gilman did not intend to create a happy ending but an ending that serves the purpose of attracting the attention of S. Weir Mitchell, suppressed women and anybody else that feels concerned of this matter of fact. Especially through the impact of the final scene she did right to achieve this aim.
5. Conclusion In the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" Charlotte Perkins Gilman expresses a personal experience and its significance at that time, to a wide audience. She intended to enlighten S. Weir Mitchell on the error of his treatment, and she wants to give a message to the female public by presenting the existence, the growing and the effect of repression by male authority. To prove this should have been the task of this paper.
Gilman portrays her own person through the character of the nameless heroine that went through the mistreatment of a physician, like herself did once before, and she substitutes Dr. Mitchell for the character of John, who acts out the same mistakes like his authentic colleague. These comparisons have been confirmed with biographical details of the author and with a description of the Rest Cure invented by S. Weir Mitchell. The authors serious message has been demonstrated by analysing images and stylistic devices like the function of the protagonist 's madness, the meaning of the wallpaper representing imprisonment, and the final scene that conclusively strengthens the idea of revolting against male tyranny. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" Charlotte Perkins Gilman used the art of literature for articulating a personal matter of relevance and for transmitting its meaningful impact to the public.
6. Bibliography 6.1 Primary literature Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories. Ed. Robert Shulman. Oxford, New York: OUP, 1998. 3-19.
6.2 Secondary literature Golden, Catherine. ""Overwriting ' the Rest Cure. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Literary Escape from S. Weir Mitchell 's Fictionalization of Women." Critical Essays on Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Ed. Joanne B. Karpinski. New York: Hall, 1992. 144-155.
Hedges, Elaine R. ""Out at Last? ' "The Yellow Wallpaper ' after Two Decades of Feminist Criticism." Critical Essays on Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Ed. Joanne B. Karpinski. New York: Hall, 1992. 222-231.
Hume, Beverly A. "Gilman 's "Interminable Grotesque '. The Narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper '." Studies in Short Fiction. Volume 28. Ed. Newberry College. New York: Johnson, 1991. 477-482.
Johnson, Greg. "Gilman 's Gothic Allegory. Rage and Redemption in "The Yellow Wallpaper '." Studies in Short Fiction. Volume 28. Ed. Newberry College. New York: Johnson, 1991. 521-530.
Kessler, Karol Farley. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Her Progress Toward Utopia with Selected Writings. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995. http://www-unix.oit.unmass.edu/~clit121/weirmit.html (20.04.2001).
"The Yellow Wallpaper" and Its Autobiographical Background.
Contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Biographical Background 4 2.1 General Information 4 2.2 Gilman and the Rest Cure 5 3. The Rest Cure 5 4. Parallels between Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Experiences and Her Short Story "The Yellow Wallpaper" 6 4.1 Comparison of Fictional Characters with Authentic Persons 6 4.1.1 The Narrator Compared with Charlotte Perkins Gilman 6 4.2.2 John Compared with S. Weir Mitchell 7 4.2 Images and Stylistic Means Used to Emphasize the Author 's Intention 8 4.2.1 The Function of Madness 9 4.2.2 The Wallpaper 9 4.3.3 The Final Scene 11 5. Conclusion 12 6. Bibliography 14 1. Introduction Literature, an art of expressing …show more content…
feelings and emotions with the help of words, has been and is primarily used by writers as an instrument to convey a certain message to the reader. In many stories one can discover analogies to the autobiographical background of the author, who intended to express, more or less covert, an essential incident and its effect on the mind. A valid example is the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1890. The female main character becomes mad by undergoing a special rest cure, supervised by her husband, which should cure her from a nervous depression. Even this brief summary makes perceptible that there are certain parallels to the life of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who also suffered from the Rest Cure of a famous neurologist. The more thoroughly one studies the central character, the male antagonist and the environmental circumstances in "The Yellow Wallpaper" the more similarities can be found to the biography of the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She describes here a crucial experience made by herself and what it produced in her, for passing its meaning to the reader.
It will be the aim of this paper to elucidate and explain these parallels between "The Yellow Wallpaper" and the life of the author. At the beginning, the reader shall be given general information about the biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and about the Rest Cure she underwent. In the main part fictional characters and real persons out of Gilman 's life are compared to each other, and thereupon important images and stylistic devices are presented and investigated that are used by the author to confirm her message.
2. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Biographical Background Before analysing the text, it is necessary to get an impression of the person Charlotte Perkins Gilman by having a look at her life and her condition during the Rest Cure. The knowledge about her life in general and especially about the time she spent with S. Weir Mitchell, build a fundamental basis for a productive and comprehensible comparison with the story and it 's interpretation.
2.1 General Information Charlotte Anna Perkins was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut and grew up in a middle-class family without a father.
After school she studied at the Rhode Island School of Design but she did not graduate. At the age of 24 she married Charles Walter Stetson and one year later her daughter Katharine Beecher Stetson was born. Subsequently she fell into a depressive constitution and therefore decided to undergo a Rest Cure of the nerve specialist Silas Weir Mitchell. After this dubious experience, whose course and impact will be presented in the following two paragraphs, and the separation from her husband she picked up her career as an author with the satiric poem "Similar Cases" and her masterpiece "The Yellow Wallpaper". She wrote several books and was very active in social and feminist congresses as well as in economic issues ("Women and Economics", 1897). In 1900, one year after her father died of a nervous collapse, she got married with Houghton Gilman. She wrote a few utopian works serialized in the magazine Forerunner whose editor she was for seven years. In 1932, breast cancer was diagnosed to her and three years later Charlotte Perkins Gilman committed suicide
.
2.2 Gilman and the Rest Cure In 1887, two years after the birth of her daughter, Charlotte Perkins Gilman decided to try the Rest Cure of Silas Weir Mitchell, a neurologist and nerve specialist for women that should free her from her depressions. He made her believe to suffer from "neurasthenia", a breakdown of the nervous system, which is caused by weakness and depression women often develop after having given birth . During the Cure she was kept in isolation, absolutely forbidden to write or to do anything else except lying down and relax. She was not able to bear this treatment and soon chose to stop it . A short time later, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper".
3. The Rest Cure For comprehending the situation in Gilman 's work best, it is important to gain detailed knowledge about the concept of the Rest Cure created by Silas Weir Mitchell.
"["¦] I do not permit the patient to sit up or to sew or write or read [and] I insist on the patient being fed by the nurse ["¦]" , Mitchell wrote in Fat and Blood (1877). He believed women to be negatively influenced by contact with society to a great extend, by being overcharged with domestic work or by too much brain work. Still in this time, mental diseases were considered to be linked with diseases of the body. Through his Rest Cure, aimed at revitalizing the body with the help of complete bed rest and a particular, very rich diet, the women should be healed from their nervous diseases to get used back to their real duties of attending children and home. Apart from the absolute bed rest and the heavy diet, the patient was kept totally isolated from family members during the cure period.
Simply the fact that Charlotte Perkins Gilman broke off this treatment she voluntarily decided to undergo, may present an indication for its falseness and incorrectness. Contact with family members or distraction through simple habitual tasks, everything that ill or nervous people mostly require for feeling better, was not allowed during the cure. This kind of healing action has not had a healing effect on Gilman at all. With her short story she intended to alert other women not to believe blindly in S. Weir Mitchell 's therapeutic methods, and furthermore it is proved that she also wanted to present the alarming extend of the damage to Mitchell himself .
4. Parallels between Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Experiences and Her Short Story "The Yellow Wallpaper" 4.1 Comparison of Fictional Characters and Authentic Persons The best way to show the connection between Gilman 's experiences and the subject in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is by comparing the characters in the short story with authentic persons. It shall become obvious that the two main characters, the female narrator and the male antagonist, depict genuine correspondents.
4.1.1 The Narrator compared with Charlotte Perkins Gilman The narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" shows lots of similarities with Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She decided for a highly immediate point of view, the first-person narrator, which is in that special case the experiencing I, acting as a kind of medium between the author and the reader. She decided for the probably most convenient narrative perspective to articulate a personal occurrence in a short story. The narrator 's name is not said, which leaves it open to the reader to decide about the identity of this character or what it stands for. This might mean nothing but as well it could be a implicit hint by the author. Like Gilman herself, the narrator is a writer that writes in her diary passionately and does not intend to stop it even when her husband John urges her to.
Apart from the narrator as a character, the situation she is in corresponds to the one Gilman came across. After the delivery of a daughter, the narrator/ author underwent a Rest Cure for becoming healed from a nervous depression. Gilman made up her mind to get supervised by S. Weir Mitchell and the narrator is attended and controlled by her husband. Like the narrator, Gilman has been forbidden to write and she soon broke off whereas the narrator that also refuses to stop writing operates another, more remarkable kind of rebellion, the one of the mind. The Rest Cure, the narrator suffers from, corresponds in the main points to the one described in paragraph 3, the one Gilman submitted herself to. Isolated on the attic of an old colonial manor, she is kept under complete bed rest and not allowed to see other people or to amuse herself in any way. The equality between the author and the main character should be obvious.
4.1.2 John compared with S. Weir Mitchell Through John, Charlotte Perkins Gilman portrayed her former physician S. Weir Mitchell. She "defied [him] and transformed him into a minor but memorable character in her fiction" , the narrators physician and husband John. He believes his wife having a nervous depression and prescribes her the Rest Cure. Diagnosis and advice are identical to those, Mitchell once gave to Charlotte Perkins Gilman. John is a very rational person and is greatly convinced about his treatment. He does not realize his wife 's real dilemma and when she complains he poses her as being ignorant and childlike: "I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me ["¦] and called me a blessed little goose" . Like Mitchell, he misinterprets his patients trouble and like him he forbids his patient to have anybody around, even family members, although she personally requires society for getting well again: "I sometimes fancy that ["¦] I had less opposition and more society and stimulus"(4). At a certain point, John refers directly to Mitchell and says "if I don 't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall"(8). By saying this, he agrees indirectly with his colleague 's method of treatment, what illustrates their equality of thinking and the author 's aim to depict S. Weir Mitchell through the character John. This truth becomes more perceptible when the narrator, who supposes these words being a threat, says: "But I don 't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John ["¦] only more so"(8). Here one can notice clearly that Gilman, the friend, hints at a previous incident she went through by herself. She declines a treatment like this Rest Cure and indicts its inventor, what becomes evident in these two quotations. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" John represents S. Weir Mitchell and like him "he fails to understand [his patients] nature" .
4.2 Images and stylistic means used to emphasize the authors intention In the previous paragraph, the comparison between John and S. Weir Mitchell leads us to the message the Charlotte Perkins Gilman wants to give to the reader who should have been primarily Dr. Mitchell and secondly women that suffer from male domination and repression. With this short story, she intended "to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him from the error of his ways" . For to reinforce this aim she made use of significant images and stylistic means, which are presented and analysed in the following.
4.2.1 The function of madness When Charlotte Perkins Gilman realized that Dr. Mitchell 's Rest Cure is not curative but harmful to her, she decided to break off. Here the question comes up why the story 's heroine does not correspondingly protest against the treatment or try to get out. The answer is that she wanted to show the harmful effect on the mind of a person that is treated like her and repressed by male tyranny. The narrator is going mad under the therapy what displays the importance of this matter most insistently. So "the narrator, through mad, defies the doctor 's prescription for healthy eating, moderate exercise, and extended bed rest" and "gains a forceful sense of self as she acts out of madness" . Moreover Gilman intended to call other women 's attention for demonstrating them the serious effects of a repressive society by letting her heroine act out of madness. This becomes most comprehensible in the final scene that is examined in part 5.1.3.
4.2.2 The wallpaper The wallpaper has a key position in Gilman 's short story. She used this image for illustrating the narrators hopeless condition and for documenting the development of her madness. For the reason of the wallpaper being a part of the story 's setting, we should first have a look on the setting at the whole.
The patient is kept in a old English colonial manor that "is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village [and] there are hedges and walls and gates that lock"(4). The author used this gothic style , which is operated in literature of the 18th/ 19th century and describes romantic adventures in mysterious or frightening settings, for showing that the narrator is in a way locked up and hold behind bars. Moreover, when describing the garden, the narrator mentions "box-bordered paths" and "greenhouses [that are] all broken now"(4). By means of their form, box-bordered paths are a symbol for imprisonment as well. The greenhouses that are representatives for growing life and healthful development are broken, that refers to the desperate state of repression of the main character. She is staying on the attic of the house, a spacious and light room that only hosts a bed. She believes the room having been a nursery and a gymnasium for children in the past because "the windows are barred ["¦], there are things and rings in the walls" and the wallpaper is "stripped off ["¦] in great patches"(5). This description could also be the one of a room, which has been used for treating insane and lunatics that may shall direct the reader to the approaching madness of the heroine.
The room 's paper is described by the narrator as a "smouldering unclean yellow [with] patterns committing every artistic sin"(5). She does not like it already at the beginning, and during her stay she hates it more and more. While she is turning out mad the wallpaper becomes increasingly the object of her attention. She believes to perceive a women that is imprisoned behind the paper and shakes it for getting out. Through the image of the women behind the wallpaper the author illustrates the rebellious part of the heroines mind that wants to get out of his husbands control. "Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind it and sometimes only one. ["¦] But nobody could climb through that pattern " it strangles so"(15). This quotation draws attention to the fact that the rebellious women/ the rebellious self of the narrator symbolizes all woman, who suffer from the mistreatment of a dominant male society and who are not able to escape even when they use all their power. The prison of repression is represented through the wallpaper that is stripped off excessively by the main character when the story reaches its climax. She wants to free her suppressed mind "by destroy[ing] the wallpaper and express[ing] her desperate rage" , which illustrates an act of liberating all subdued women. The image of the wallpaper stands for oppression of the female heroine by her husband, of Charlotte Perkins Gilman by S. Weir Mitchell, and of all women that are mistreated by the male society and by therapeutic actions.
4.2.3 The final scene The story 's final scene supports as well Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's message through "The Yellow Wallpaper". The narrator is creeping over her fainted husband. This scene might be the real climax too, or a second one. While crawling over John, who combines human and therapeutic misunderstanding and domination she achieves a victory over him and his treatment. The author mobilizes her heroine to "a furious and uncompromising rebellion that she could never acknowledge fully as her own" . The success of the story 's heroine might seem dubious because she ends up mad anyway. However, Gilman did not intend to create a happy ending but an ending that serves the purpose of attracting the attention of S. Weir Mitchell, suppressed women and anybody else that feels concerned of this matter of fact. Especially through the impact of the final scene she did right to achieve this aim.
5. Conclusion In the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" Charlotte Perkins Gilman expresses a personal experience and its significance at that time, to a wide audience. She intended to enlighten S. Weir Mitchell on the error of his treatment, and she wants to give a message to the female public by presenting the existence, the growing and the effect of repression by male authority. To prove this should have been the task of this paper.
Gilman portrays her own person through the character of the nameless heroine that went through the mistreatment of a physician, like herself did once before, and she substitutes Dr. Mitchell for the character of John, who acts out the same mistakes like his authentic colleague. These comparisons have been confirmed with biographical details of the author and with a description of the Rest Cure invented by S. Weir Mitchell. The authors serious message has been demonstrated by analysing images and stylistic devices like the function of the protagonist 's madness, the meaning of the wallpaper representing imprisonment, and the final scene that conclusively strengthens the idea of revolting against male tyranny. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" Charlotte Perkins Gilman used the art of literature for articulating a personal matter of relevance and for transmitting its meaningful impact to the public.
6. Bibliography 6.1 Primary literature Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories. Ed. Robert Shulman. Oxford, New York: OUP, 1998. 3-19.
6.2 Secondary literature Golden, Catherine. ""Overwriting ' the Rest Cure. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Literary Escape from S. Weir Mitchell 's Fictionalization of Women." Critical Essays on Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Ed. Joanne B. Karpinski. New York: Hall, 1992. 144-155.
Hedges, Elaine R. ""Out at Last? ' "The Yellow Wallpaper ' after Two Decades of Feminist Criticism." Critical Essays on Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Ed. Joanne B. Karpinski. New York: Hall, 1992. 222-231.
Hume, Beverly A. "Gilman 's "Interminable Grotesque '. The Narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper '." Studies in Short Fiction. Volume 28. Ed. Newberry College. New York: Johnson, 1991. 477-482.
Johnson, Greg. "Gilman 's Gothic Allegory. Rage and Redemption in "The Yellow Wallpaper '." Studies in Short Fiction. Volume 28. Ed. Newberry College. New York: Johnson, 1991. 521-530.
Kessler, Karol Farley. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Her Progress Toward Utopia with Selected Writings. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995. http://www-unix.oit.unmass.edu/~clit121/weirmit.html (20.04.2001).