Preview

The Yellow Wallpaper Cure Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
646 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Yellow Wallpaper Cure Essay
The Cure
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. The author of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, uses rhetoric throughout her story. However, she really focuses on symbolism. For instance the wallpaper itself is the main symbol throughout the story. The wallpaper starts out so sad and unappealing in the beginning of the story, it was one of those “sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” it had been “stripped off” the walls in “great patches” (Gilman, 781). As the story continues the wallpaper gains more character that makes it less tasteless and more appealing to the main character. She begins to see a woman in the wallpaper and it seems as if the woman is trying to tell her something. She begins to sympathize with the woman trapped in the
…show more content…
She wanted people to see that the resting cure which was highly praised does not work. In fact it drives the ill quite insane being kept from the outside world and not being able to have a purpose other than to lay in bed all day. During this time period women really had no say over anything not even themselves. When the narrator of the story suggests to her husband her ideas of what is happening to her he just laughs at her for it. This is because when a woman would express her observations to a man it was taken as “an indication of her self-conceit” (Thrailkill, 526). Gilman wanted to get people questioning this rest cure and questioning gender roles and why women had no say over themselves and looked at as incompetent

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
  • 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” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the main character is suppressed of her freedom from doing anything, even writing. Because of her depression, her doctor husband, John, isolates her in a bedroom with a very odd, yellow wallpaper that takes over her physical and psychological state. Going into the new home, the woman is depressed, but stable.…

    • 1091 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman skillfully uses a simple wallpaper to display as a symbolic reference to the domestic lifestyle many women live on an everyday basis. The main character Jane is depicted as a sickly housewife who has been ordered to bed rest by her husband John and is slowly loses grips with reality in the fantasy of her “Yellow Wallpaper”. During the story Gilman allows Jane to share with the audience through a journal her everyday life, which consist of her being confined to a nursery painted yellow. Throughout the story Gilman displays the wallpaper through a variety of analytical symbolic ties to the struggle of subordinate domestic housewives.…

    • 853 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good 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

    The "Yellow Wallpaper," is a personal account of the author's, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, struggle with depression. It vividly documents one woman's experience with depression and the toil she endured through the treatment of the "Rest Cure." The story helps readers to get a mental picture of how society and solitary confinement can both drive a person into sheer madness.…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses symbolism to make the story more interesting, There are many examples of symbolism in the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Gilman uses objects in the story that have a meaning to what the reader should understand.…

    • 617 Words
    • 3 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

    When the world is at its worst, we as humans tend to lean on literature. It gives us hope and understanding of our lives. It teaches us that we are not alone. Everything we face another is facing it with us. Works of literature hold the truth of our past, present and future. If we look at the content and theme of similar works such as “A Rose for Emily” by William Faukner, and “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It outlines the ways of our own lives and has us connect to the stories. Despite their obvious differences in content and theme, “A Rose for Emily” and “Yellow Wallpaper” both ultimately show our own lives mirrored to them, and tell the story of the human experience.…

    • 1361 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator must deal with several different conflicts. She is diagnosed with “temporary nervous depression and a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 221). Most of her conflicts, such as, differentiating from creativity and reality, her sense of entrapment by her husband, and not fitting in with the stereotypical role of women in her time, are centered around her mental illness and she has to deal with them.…

    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The main character in Charlotte P.Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, narrates her own life and describes her struggle with depression which by the end of the story evolved into insanity. Narrator’s husband, John, treats her like a small child, forbids her to express herself, and keeps her bound to restricted room. Due to her husbands actions she becomes physically, emotionally and socially isolated, which ultimately made her insane.…

    • 978 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism

    • 1581 Words
    • 7 Pages

    First, let's take a look at the background of Gilman before and after she wrote…

    • 1581 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it. It is stripped off – the paper – in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down I never saw worse paper in my life.” (Gilman 1) I believe the wallpaper represents the narrator’s livelihood and health.…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The chosen passage is an extract from “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Gilman. In this story, the narrator is staying in a house with her husband John, Mary, her baby, and John’s sister. There is yellow wallpaper in the narrator’s room which for some reason seems to annoy her. The yellow wallpaper’s imagery indicates the narrator’s state of mind, her relationship with her husband and her life in general.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After initially reading and studying Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, I concluded that the narrators behaviour was violent and thoughtless, driven by her mental instability and overall insanity. While analysing the opinions of varying critics on the narrator's overall mental state, I discovered a number of contradicting ideas to my original hypothesis arguing against my opinions about the narrator's psychotic and irrational behaviour. The two critics opinions that I studied that showed different views on the narrator's own sanity and mental stability were Beverly A. Hume’s “Managing Madness”and Denise D. Knight’s “I am getting angry enough to do something desperate: The Question of Female Madness”. Denise argued…

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays