Yellow Wall Paper
Cultural Situation
Charlotte Perkins Gilman discusses how The Yellow Wall-Paper dramatizes the effects of patriarchal medical opinions, which were popular in the late nineteenth century. He also discussed how they affected Gilman's protagonist, who slowly slips into insanity while being treated for her presumed nerves in a battling conflict of a dominant relationship between her oppressive husband and submission pushing her from depression into insanity.
From the beginning of the story, the narrator falls deep into insanity. She rambles on about how her husband diagnosed her with "a slight hysterical tendency," (551). Flawed human nature seems to play a great role in her breakdown. Her husband, a noted physician, is unwilling to admit that there might really be something wrong with his wife. While this attitude, and the actions taken because of it, certainly contributed to her breakdown; it seems there is a rebellious spirit in her. The central idea, unconsciously, seems that she is determined to prove him wrong. Later within the story, with her first step to recovery, she admits to her own condition, "I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes
I think it is due to this nervous condition."(552). John, the narrator's husband, forces her to rest in bed throughout the story, which contributes to her gradual slide to complete insanity. She begins to show signs of schizophrenia when she is found sitting in her room, starring at the walls, and envisioning people caught behind the wallpaper. She speaks to them hoping to help release them from their imprisoned state. "The front pattern does moveand no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!"(560).
The whole time the wallpaper moves because she is creeping around the room in a frantic circle that she cannot stop. "They get through, and the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!"(560). The character is evidently conflicted with herself as...
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