The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Book Review Sample)

“The yellow wallpaper”
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The yellow wallpaper” Review
The Yellow Wallpaper is considered a significant piece of feminist writing. Gilman wrote it and it was originally published in the late 1800s. Through her depiction of the wallpaper of the nursery where the protagonist is imprisoned, Gilman indirectly represents lunacy as a result of social tyranny. 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a fascinating analysis of the despicable through a woman's metamorphosis from author to a spouse to mother. The trauma of birth and infantilization causes the author's barriers between her and herself to disintegrate. As a result, she begins to lose her mind.
'The Yellow Wallpaper is a first-person narrative about a young woman who is trying to reconcile her cognitive self with her duty as a spouse and mother. Gilman conjures another traditional Gothic concept of women by pitting the speaker against the female behind the wallpaper, who is allowed to wander (Davison, 2004). The narrator's repressed hatred and dread are then projected onto the wallpaper outside of him. Gilman uses the Female Gothic convention of the dualism inside the single self of the speaker to demonstrate the alienation of self (Davison, 2004). This division of self and other satisfies the dehumanization scheme: it is something repudiated from which one cannot separate, from whom one cannot defend oneself.
The narrator recognizes and characterizes her mind as other, as the woman in the wallpaper, and thus recognizes and describes herself as apart from it. Because the author integrated her assigned parental position, this intellectual self becomes unfamiliar, alien, and alien. Since the woman behind the wallpaper is a hallucination, a sign of her impending lunacy, Gilman devalues the protagonist to the point of complete disintegration of the self. The narrator's fixation with wallpaper and the lady she sees behind it runs against her traditional parental and feminine roles as a mother and housewife (Rich, 2010). The splitting-of-selves fails in Gilman's narrative, and the foreigner - the lady behind the wallpaper - is revealed within the protagonist.
Because her sister faults her sickness on her brain's work, the protagonist is obliged to build a covert existence as a writer, concealed from everyone else. Her other self is as valuable to her as the work that keeps her cognitively fulfilled. The narrator's mental illness is caused by a split of self. Gilman shows this inner duality as the development of another woman, the other, by using the narrator's dissatisfaction and perplexity with the compelled production of alterity within herself. The terror is in the abstraction of a portion of the self, in pulling it out of the physical and transforming it into the other.
Anne Gilman employs negative metaphors in this text to evoke aversion, repulsion, and terror in thoughts on alienation. The paper makes a polluted area in what should be a secure and hallowed space for children; it is self-destructive and filthy. In other words, by requiring the reader to use their imagery to make the wallpaper, Gilman forces her audience to take the first step toward self-abjection (Rich, 2010). The viewer unites with the author, resulting in a fictitious relationship between the storyteller and the audience based on their shared fear awareness.
In the past, mental illnesses were routinely disregarded by doctors and left unchecked. In literature, females are mute advocates fighting for justice. Charlotte Perkins Gilman publishes a memoir about her postpartum depression in 1892 (Rich, 2010). The plot revolves around a woman who appears to have it all but is plagued by depression. She developed a following to assist mental diseases, anticipating that she would face criticism. John, the author's character, overlooks crucial information about how she feels but keeps playing the authoritarian approach in her lunacy by advising her to get some rest. This is an instance of how doctors soothed their patients by telling them that doing the reverse of what makes them joyful will solve their health problems.
The subjugation of women in the 1800s and 1900s is depicted in this short fiction. Women were expected to live in the background of their husbands and not have their thoughts. Women were oppressed and regarded as objects rather than persons and equal partners. Ladies lived under their partners' regulations and commands in the early 1900s. Females were not allowed to vote or make any domestic decisions. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written by Gilman to encourage women of the time to come out and have their own minds (Rich, 2010). Gillman employs metaphor to convey how the female protagonist in the novel was unnamed, implying that she lacked an identity and was unworthy of a name. Due to the torture, she was subjected to by her husband John, the heroine begins to become mad.
Later in the novel, premonition comes when John tries to be a "helping" husband and a great physiologist, believing he is providing his wife with all she requires. 'The hue is repulsive, almost sickening; a smoldering, dirty yellow,' says the character. To convey her message on women's oppression in the early 1900s, author Charlotte used many forms of allegory, foreshadowing, and sarcasm. Her tales are now seen as examples of how far women have progressed from a harsh paradigm in which the only thing they were competent at was bearing children and taking care of the housework (Davison, 2004). I can see how people may blame John for her illness's progression and eventual demise. A female didn't have much of a say in anything during the time frame depicted in this book. Women were viewed as second-class citizens in the culture at the time this story was written.
Though her spouse was undoubtedly the primary cause of her inability to improve, it was the wallpaper that drove her insane; this, in fact, can be traced back to the partner's unwillingness to act towards the wallpaper or to relocate his wife to another part of the house. His wife decided to avoid the wallpaper at first, but then she grew strangely fascinated by the patterns it created. She became persuaded that there was a small woman trapped inside trying to escape, so she attempted to assist her with the purpose of capturing her. This carried on for a while until the lady became so enthralled by the wallpaper designs that she destroyed the wallpaper and, in the process of catching the wallpaper, became the wallpaper herself. She became so engrossed in the paper's fictitious events that she lost all sense of herself.
Despite the fact that you must be in command of your own ideas and feelings, with a mental disease that is difficult to manage, her partner might have assisted and made her well but instead made the issue worse. I don't believe he was attempting to injure anyone intentionally. He was simply doing what he assumed was best for her, but it may not have been the greatest course of action for her recovery. If you're suffering a psychotic break, don't worry; we'll put you in a place where you can rest. The plot revolves around a man who tried to treat his mentally sick spouse but didn't know better than to put her in a psychiatric institution. Characters, symbolism, and place can all be used to study "The Yellow Wallpaper" (Davison, 2004). Jane was being led by Gilman through her life observations. Since he is a male, he will not attend to the storyteller because she is a woman and he is in control.
"I can see a strange provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design." (Gilman 13, 1998). This phrase refers to the wallpaper, but it is also a metaphor for how she gets continually slapped in the face when John switches his tone of voice with Jane. The author starts writing in her journal to get rid of her anxious despair, and she laments that her husband criticizes both her condition and her views in general. She opposes his abrasive demeanor with her own delicate demeanor. Because there was not mu