Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
This story signifies how humans can try to cope with anything. The wallpaper is a release, something to take her mind off all of her problems. The beginning of the story we are introduced to very rich people who are renting a beautiful estate for 3 months. The husband, John a doctor is a very caring man but all by the books. He doesn't want his wife who is suffering from a nervous depression to do anything but rest because of her condition. He doesn't see that not letting her face what is going on is actually hurting her. She wants to write and keep her condition off her mind or to just have a outlet to help her. She soon starts to write which makes her even more nervous because she doesn't want to get caught by anyone. She even feels it would be good for her to go away and see friends or have friends come over. She is also forbidden to think about her condition which then make her feel bad and probably gives her more anxiety. She tries to put concentration on other things like the house, which makes her paranoid and makes her think its haunted. She wants to sleep on other rooms but to her dismay her husband demands the room upstairs that she thinks was a children's room. She is very creative because of the sentiments she makes about the room "one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin" she hates the color. she starts following the sunlight hitting the wallpaper, in the daytime then the night. She starts seeing a woman in the paper at night. Soon after she starts pulling all the paper off to suffice her needs in a psychotic downfall.
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5 comments:
You got me thinking... was the main character being forced to stay in the nursery just a part of the pattern of her being treated as a child? Is there significance in that?
You might explore this "psychotic downfall" more...what do you mean by that? Is there a pattern of such behavior in the text? what might be the psychological significance of some of the actions/details?
Yaroslav asks an interesting question--these very focused kinds of questions can be productive to explore in the blog, since they can lead to a consideration of the symbolic sgnificance of patterns of textual details, which could then be further developed as an analytical focal point in a journal entry. Remember-try to go beyond summarizing in your journal entries.
Yes, her husband's condescending actions, like the choice of nursery, do seem like ways of treating her like a child. Although at a certain point he says he's willing to move downstairs (or even to the cellar) and she chooses not to push for the change any longer.
The narrator tells us her husband "says no one but myself can help me out of it." This is probably the most helpful advice he ever offers. Perhaps it is not just his actions, but her own self-image that maintains this childlike persona.
I completely forgot to mention that he basically keeps her in complete solitude like you had said in your blog. I also think that because she isn’t allowed to write there is so much pressure about sneaking to do it that it almost becomes a game for her. I think that she did find a release in that wallpaper.
Great--Interesting discussion... keep it up!
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