Discuss the symbolism of the wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins
Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
I will be doing my paper
on The Yellow Wallpaper. The story was very hard to follow but in the end it
started to all make sense. What bothered me the most was the fact that her
husband was a doctor but I felt that he did nothing to really help her. I
believe that she is suffering from post-partum depression. Her husband thought
it would be a good idea for her to not see her baby while she was still
ill. So instead of seeing the room as a prison in which it is, she sees it in
the eyes of the things she misses so she imagines that the room is a nursery. The
wall paper is torn because of children ripping it, bites on the bed from
children playing, rings on the wall and bars on the windows because it was a
playroom and gym. But in all actuality it is like a prison, where they
were chained to the bed. There were rips because that was as far as the someone
could reach while tied down, and the rings on the wall to be chained, bars on
the windows to keep the person from escaping, and the gated stairs just in case
they got out of the room. It was a prison that she could not see because her imaginative
mind kept her from looking into actuality because she was too interested in writing
and missing her child to see it as anything but a nursery.
I believed the husband down played wifes feelings therefor making her ashamed to express her thoughts. Thus driving her madder.
ReplyDeleteThe thought of her possibly having post-partum depression never even crossed my mind. I think I got so caught up the fact that she was seeing things come out of the wall and move around in the wall that I automatically assumed that she was crazy. I really did not like this story as well as the others because it seemed to be so confusing. "The Yellow Wallpaper" didn't really keep my attention as well as the other stories did.
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