Preview

The Yellow Wallpaper Thesis

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
328 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Yellow Wallpaper Thesis
Short story paper outline
Introduction (Feminist literature)

Topic Sentence – Gilman’s main purpose for writing the yellow wallpaper is to convey the relationship between a husband/wife in the 19th century.

General Exposition – Throughout the story we shift back and forth through the narrator’s consciousness and real life situations.

Narrow the Focus – My main focus is the wallpaper in “The yellow wallpaper” which basically represent the narrator’s growing repression. I also tend to focus on the Imagery, and characteristics of the story.

Thesis Statement – The narrator in “The yellow wallpaper” portrays an emptiness of life away from society which force her to initiate mental imagery and loses control of her mental state.

Body A. Symbolism

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    "The Yellow Wallpaper (original title: "The Yellow Wall-paper. A Story") is a 6,000-word short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine.[2] It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's health, both physical and mental.…

    • 396 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • 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
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman unveil the expectations of certain characteristics that women should possess by men such as, obedience, submissiveness, beauty, passivity, and purity. The husband, John, portrayed in this short-story treats the narrator, or his wife, as if she is oblivious and as if she is merely a child evident in his diction. He refers to her as a “little girl” and therefore does not take her opinions into serious consideration and simply overlooks her requests. To coerce his own opinions upon the narrator, he sugarcoats his thoughts as an attempt to make them appeal to her: “My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, and that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind!” The narrator is sent to an asylum due to her mental condition while her actions are restricted by John as a part of her treatment. The narrator makes it evident that she is severely repressed by her husband’s authority, as she interrupts her own train of thought with her husband’s instructions for treatment. As she neglects her own thoughts and turns her attention to John’s authority, she enters the process of increasing obsession and madness: “So I will let it alone and talk about the house.” The…

    • 1033 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator in, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” suffers from depression, although her husband, who is a doctor, does not consider it an illness. Therefore, he keeps her on a strict rest cure. She is not allowed to do work of any form, not even care for her baby. All she allowed to do is rest in her room and breath in the air as prescribed by her husband. Because she spends most of her time in her room, she becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in the room and it drives her to insanity. The lack of creative stimulation and relationships with others causes the narrator’s obsession with the yellow wallpaper which leads her to believe she is trapped behind bars in this yellow wallpaper.…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nora Helmer- Seems happy in the beginning of the play. Teasing Torwald, speaking that she is so excited that his job is giving him more money and loves their family and friends. She is just like a doll, pampered, perfect and pretty. Torwald refers to her as a “silly girl”. She understands the business details related to the debt she has accumulated by taking out a loan to preserve Torvald’s health says that she is brave and intelligent and shows how she is courageous by breaking the law for her husband.…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The Yellow Wallpaper” a woman is trapped in a colonial mansion where she cannot do anything on her own. She is forced to sit and do nothing. She is not allowed to interact with the outside world or even write, because it is considered to be too much for her and the cause of her nervousness. As this so called resting treatment continues she slowly begins to lose her mind.…

    • 646 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" to make determined statements about feminism and individuality. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman's neurosis, her entire mental state characterized by her encounters with the wallpaper in her room.…

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The dull yellow wallpaper is linked to the narrator which implies that she is yellow and her sanity is being faded away. Her husband condemns her to the room and because of this she is losing self-control. The diary was one last hope of her gaining some type of authority for herself. She wanted to get well and made numerous suggestions to her husband, but he turned them all down. Once her husband took that privilege away too, her illness has an extreme downward spiral. The figure of the woman trapped inside the wall was a sign of the wife’s sanity being lost forever, but insanity made her gain freedom. Because of this, the wife could finally do as she pleased. Insanity broke the chain of oppression, in spite of everything she went…

    • 1075 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Two short stories that share both similarities and differences are “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. The similarities and differences between these short stories is evident upon close examination of point of view, symbolism and theme. Both of these stories examine the life of women who live under the thumbs of men. These stories were both written during a time when women were seen as inferior to men. The stories tell about protagonists who both live a recluse lifestyle because of the men around them.…

    • 2498 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Yellow Wallpaper Thesis

    • 882 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Often times throughout literary works, authors will use their work to express their passion on important topics or to enlighten the reader more about those topics. Author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman does this within her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Throughout Gilman’s time, she was a leading figure in the women’s movement during the turn of the 20th century. Gilman used her work as a chance to use her voice to challenge the important topics that happened among that era, including conventional gender roles. She also used her own troubles that she faced in her personal life to inspire her short stories. The one short story that relates the most to Gilman’s life is “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Gilman used the troubles in her life to portray the…

    • 882 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" begins with the arrival of narrator, her husband John, their new born baby, and her sister-in-law to summer house which John have rented. The narrator is suffering from post-partum depression, and the summer house will serve, according to her husband, as a place for her to get better.…

    • 978 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a story of a woman in the 1900’s, she gradually loses her sanity due to a “nervous condition.” The woman in the story exemplifies the women in Gilman’s era; she verifies this by writing her story in a mode of horror. The usage of imagery, and plot development exposes the irrational and unjust treatment women are getting by men in her time, which exposes the reality that no one wants see.…

    • 478 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores the oppression of women in the nineteenth century and how this led to the limitation of freedom, leading to confinement of many women during this time. It illustrates the male superiority over the female and the elimination of a voice and a say for these women regarding their own lives. The short story is structured to appear a bit creepy and horrific, but within this method the author created a strong female character who, even though is slowly deteriorating psychologically, is trying to fight the pressure that society in the nineteenth century is placing on her and also the pressure of her own husband. The style that the author was trying to create is clear through her use…

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The yellow wallpaper acts like a mental entrapment for the main character. At the end of the story, the main character rips down the yellow wallpaper to release the woman behind the paper. This was symbolic because even though she saw a woman, this woman was her. When the narrator was angry she put that onto the wallpaper, so that…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Yellow Wallpaper Madness

    • 1736 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Charlotte Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” to examine the suffocating roles that denied women freedom of expression. In the 19th century, women were expected to fulfill their duties as wives and mothers within the household. All for the sake of their families. In this time period females were expected to be content with their lives at hand and nothing more. People saw women to be solely within the domestic part of the world. The ones that dared to do anything but the social norm were deemed low individuals by society. The story describes a new mother who is imprisoned inside a small room within a big house by her husband. The unnamed woman’s husband is also her physician, whom is the…

    • 1736 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays