Preview

Mental Illness In Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
148 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Mental Illness In Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper
According to Merriam-Webster, depression is defined as a serious medical condition in which a person feels sad, hopeless, and unimportant and often is unable to live in a normal way. Oftentimes authors use their creative abilities to incorporate worldwide realities, like depression, in order to connect more closely with readers. An example of this is in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, where the author uses symbolism to explore a deeper meaning into mental illness. A specific section in this story that focuses on this appears on the last page where the unnamed narrator describes all the creeping women outside who escaped from the wallpaper like she did. She wonders how they creep so fast, comparing their impaired brains to hers. “In Charlotte Gilman’s

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, women’s rights have remained a strong and critical topic in many areas of life. Many politicians, opinion writers, and even authors write or discuss about women’s rights in order to gain sympathy for women or to stir action towards equality. However, in the later part of the 19th century, women were treated as no more than mere objects by men, without any empathy or love. One example that explores the rights of women during the time period is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. In her short story, Gilman depicts the hurtful relationship between a powerless wife and a husband who has no regards for his spouse. Although the wife was submissive and obedient towards her husband in the…

    • 1386 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman portrays a story around the narrator who is suffering from mental illness, which is internal. The narrator begins to explain how she knows something is wrong with her even though her high standing physician husband, John, and high standing physician brother don’t see anything except a temporary depression. John takes the narrator to a house over the summer to get her away from people and society, because John believes it makes her think of her condition, which is the worse thing the narrator should do. The narrator then explains the house as “the most beautiful place!” (Gilman, 552), the description is very personified and creates a bright, visible image in the readers’ head. The description…

    • 269 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    At first glance, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper may seem to be a fairly simplistic text, which outlines a woman’s struggles with postpartum depression; however, with greater investigation, it can be determined that a deeper meaning is present. The Yellow Wall-Paper, with further analysis, can be interpreted as having a meaningful message, as the oppression of women is profiled. This message is gradually exposed along with the development of the characters, namely the narrator and her husband John, throughout the text. As the narrator experiences visions of women trapped in her walls, is forced to conform to specific gender roles, and is unable to express or communicate her own feelings, the impact which oppression has on the individual, as well as the idea of patriarchal society, is demonstrated.…

    • 1519 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Often humans are captivated by the thought of how insanity normally takes over the human mentality. *The story, “ The Yellow-Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, presents a story in which people debate whether or not the main character, who is noted to be a woman, is driven to insanity or not. This story shows a great deal of drug usage, an alarming setting, hostage qualities of her husband, and mental state complications such as depression, and postpartum depression. This essay will prove how this woman was driven to insanity and not haunted.…

    • 92 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    By staring at, ‘[the] recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down,”(pg. 649, Stetson) the protagonist, the narrator, from ‘The Yellow Wallpaper becomes insane. However in this case, the narrator’s insanity develops a form of emotional and mental liberation for herself.…

    • 412 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Everyone knows what depression is, or at least they think they do, but, no one really knows what depression is unless they have it or have battled with it. Depression is defined as a serious mood disorder that involves emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physical changes severe enough to disrupt a person’s ordinary functioning. People with depression always believe something bad is going to happen, they go through life with the constant feeling of low grade happiness, they want to be happy but the depression literally will not let them. It’s not imaginary or “all in your head” and it’s more than just feeling “down”, it’s a real and serious illness caused by changes in hormone levels, medical conditions (say suffering from cancer or being…

    • 941 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Feminism. Arguably one of the most misunderstood terms to date. In order to move forward and grow as a society, feminism is vital. Of course, sexism still exists and I doubt, there will ever be a time in history where it does not; much like racism- but generally, we have come a long way. The road for equal rights has been a long and sometimes, dangerous one as can be observed through texts such as Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Robert Browning's My Last Duchess Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette and Charlotte Perkins-Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. This idea of gender inequality can be readily observed through the aforementioned texts and in fact, many others, regardless of the era in which they were first written. Women being treated as possessions,…

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Point of view and narrative mode in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" supports and conveys the theme of sanity versus insanity in a number of ways. In her capturing of the authority of narration, Gilman leaves the reader questioning the narrator's reliability. Her repeated use of self-reflexivity and the stream of conscious mode allow the reader to know in what way we are meant to comprehend the events of the story. Finally, the reader is bombarded by signs of the narrator's descent into psychosis while receiving conflicting information from the narrator herself. How is the reader meant to understand the story? Is the narrator too mentally unstable for her story to be taken seriously or is she just sane enough? More to the point, how does the narrative mode lead to this conclusion?…

    • 1323 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Depression is a mental illness characterised by extreme sadness and usually people suffering with it are full of guilt but cannot always state why they feel that way. Depression has become a fairly common mental illness as Kessler et al (1994b) found that around 17% of people will experience a major episode of depression during their life.…

    • 904 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the Victorian period women were viewed as objects. Upper middle class women were not allowed to be intellectual or work. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an oppressed woman who wrote about the hardships of being a woman in a male dominate world. The symbolism in Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" depicts the feelings of oppression of a Victorian woman.…

    • 755 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Quawas’ article claims that in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator’s descent into madness is actually her descent into becoming what is defined as the New Woman. The New Woman demands an individuality and freedom to pursue her own path in life, rather than submitting to the repression of the Victorian “pure woman”. Quawas points out that in Victorian society, writing was considered an act of independence and rebellion for women. Through the narrator’s writing, the birth of her sense of self becomes clear where the use of “I” increases dramatically towards the end of the narrative. Quawas argues that the narrator’s insanity is not a “breakdown”, but a “breakthrough”. Therefore, Gilman’s narrator has achieved a more advanced state of mind that…

    • 125 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As Thomas More once said, “It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed.” Charlotte Stetson understood this when writing “The Yellow Wallpaper,” but the main question she had probably was: “How do I convey to the reader my character's insanity?” There are many definitions of insanity. However, what makes “The Yellow Wallpaper” appealing to the reader is its ability to create the experience of it. At first glance, the story expresses the protagonist's insanity through the seemingly incoherent plot. Yet when taking a closer look, Stetson uses literary devices, such as setting and metaphors, to evoke emotion in the reader. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Stetson sets an unsettling definition of character for the protagonist through literary devices like setting and metaphors.…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the female protagonist veers from the majority of patriarchal societies because of her distinct feelings of frustration, alienation, and emotional and creative repression within this social formation. Ultimately, in order to escape this early twentieth century state of mind, the female protagonist goes insane. However tragic this may appear on the surface, the suggestion of deliverance from her restricted environment is one of freedom of the dominant culture. Although the narrator escapes the narrow restraints of mentality through insanity, the underlying themes of The Yellow Wallpaper help to shed light on the narrators’ delirium.…

    • 1512 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    When someone uses the word “insanity,” the human mind may potentially go many in many different directions when defining it. One person may claim that the definition is “doing something over and over again and expecting a different result,” however, many other people believe in using the words “crazy” or “mad” to associate with insanity. Insanity is many things, but overall, it is something that affects the human body and mind in horrid, terrifying ways over a period of time. What causes insanity? The main cause among mental instability and other causes, is isolation. Isolation can cause horrifying changes to the human body and mind and can cause a mediocre human being to go dashing into the embrace of insanity.…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    depression

    • 563 Words
    • 6 Pages

    at least at some point in one’s lives have gone through this condition. Many people…

    • 563 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays