February 22,2016
Compare and Contrast 

            In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Gilman is delivering her story through a mentally ill woman, in similarity to Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Tell Tale Heart." They are both using this technique to create insecurity to the readers which is a good twist in a short story. This type of twist makes the readers perplexed since they can't really trust the narrator completely. One difference between those two stories is that in "Tell Tale Heart" it is clear from the beginning that the protagonist has some mental problems, which it is a almost impossible to tell that the main character, suffer from mental diseases in "The Yellow Wallpaper." This has a greatly effect on both of the story since Perkins Gilman's story is harder to interpret in the beginning, which of course makes the whole story interesting. Especially to experience the protagonists turn from being an ordinary woman who appear to be normal, to be a total freak, as you can see in the end of the story when she she is crawling on the floor. The fact that we already from the beginning knows that the man in "Tell Tale Heart" suffer from a mental disease tells us that something cruel is to be expected. One other interesting thing in Poe's story is that he uses an excellent way of telling the story through a madman's perspective. It is almost as if the man is having a conversation with the reader, and as he is telling the story right then directly to the reader. That makes the readers feel involved in the story. In the very first sentence, the madman is actually asking a question to the readers, "...But why WILL you say that I am mad?" Charlotte, on the other hand, has written the story as in a diary, which means that we just know what the protagonist wants us to know. She can therefore easily leave out important facts and happening that happens somewhere between her diary entries. As a result of the diary structure of the story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" encloses more detailed descriptions than "Tell Tale Heart" does, which is more focusing on the mans obsession.

Thursday February 11,2016
Societal and Historical Connections

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written during a time of great change. In the early to mid nineteenth century, "domestic ideology" positioned American middle class women as the spiritual and moral leaders of their home. Such "separate spheres" ideals suggested that a women's place was in the private domain of the home, where she should carry out her prescribed roles of wife and mother. Men, on the other hand, would rule the public domain through work, politics, and economics. By the middle of the century, this way of thinking began to change as the seeds of early women's rights were planted. By the end of the 1800's, feminists were gaining momentum in favor of change. The concept of "The New Women," for example, began to circulate in the 1890's - 1910's as women pushed for broader roles outside their home roles outside their home roles that could draw on women's intelligence and non domestic skills and talents. 

      Gilman advocated revised roles for women, whom, Gilman believed, should be on much more equal economic, social, and political footing with men. In her famous work of nonfiction "Women and Economics" (1898) Gilman argued "women should strive and be able to work outside the home ." Gilman also believed "women should be financially independent from men and women even should share domestic work." 

       First appearing in the New England Magazine in January 1892, "The Yellow Wallpaper," according to many literary critics, is a narrative study of Gilman's own depression and nervousness. Gilman, like the narrator of her story, sought medical help from the famous neurologist S. Weir Mitchell. Mitchell prescribed his famous "Rest Cure," which restricted women from anything that labored and taxed their minds and bodies. More than just a psychological study of postpartum depression, Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" offers a compelling study of Gilman's own feminism and roles for women in the 1890's and 1910's. 

       

 

Monday February 1, 2016
Theme 

     "The Yellow Wallpaper" offers a critique of traditional gender roles as they were defined during the late nineteenth century, the time is which the story is set and was written. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent feminist, who rejected the trappings of traditional domestic life and published extensively about the role of women in society, and saw the gender roles of the time as horribly stifling. 

       The story's family unit falls along traditional lines. John, the husband, is rational, practically minded, protective, and the ultimate decision maker in the couple. He infantilizes his wife, referring to her as his "little girl" and brushing off her complaints. However, John is not purely the irredeemable villain of the story. Rather, we see how his ability to communicate effectively with his wife is constrained by the structure of their gender roles. This is an important point: John's happiness is also ruined by the strictures of traditional domestic life.  

       The narrator, his wife, is confined to the home, not allowed to work , or write, and considered by her husband to be fragile, emotional, and self-indulgent. Differing readings of the text's sarcasm lead to different interpretations of her voluntary submission to this role, but it is clear that her forced inactivity was abhorrent to her. The diary becomes a symbol of her rebellion against John's commands. The willingness of John's sister, Jennie, to submit to her domestic role in the home only increases the narrator's guilt at her own dissatisfaction. 

    The mysterious figure of a women trapped behind the yellow wallpaper becomes a symbol for the ways in which the narrator herself feels trapped by her role in the family. the narrator's urgent desire to free this woman, and to hide her existences from John and Jennie, leads to her raving final breakdown as she tears the paper, "creeping" around the room and over her husband who, in reversal of their traditional roles as strong protector and fragile child, has fainted in shock at the sight of his wife. 

Monday February 8, 2016
Symbolism

      "The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte P. Gilman, is a symbol for whom the narrator actually is and how she truly feels. When the wallpaper starts to reveal bars, it shows that she truly feels trapped and secluded. Also as the wallpaper becomes more intricate, she starts to see a women behind it which shows that she has become more mentally unstable. "Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast and her crawling shakes it all over (Gilman 9)." The women crawling behind the wallpaper also show how she feels confined to the walls of her room. The narrator tears up the wallpaper at the end, which shows that she does not want to accept how crazy she has become. The wallpaper represents her struggle to retain or regain her sanity. The wallpaper has been part of her confinement and by her tearing it down, she is feeling herself from that confinement. 

         Another symbol is the narrator's writings in her notebook and the notebook itself. Both represent the narrator's attempt to have normalcy and sanity during this horrible ordeal of being locked in her room. Despite being told by her husband that he wants to limit the amount of time she uses to write, she continues to write more behind his back and this is her tie to her own sanity and sense of reality.