Woman's Metamorphosis (Book Review Sample)

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.