Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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What would make you go crazy? For me it would be trapped in a small room, with no one to talk to. How long could one take until he or she goes insane? Would it be and hour, or twenty minutes maybe even a day or two? In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman has four causes for her narrators break down: the wallpaper, isolation and imprisonment, lack or control, and motherhood.
Often when left alone in a place where you’re not allowed to do anything, but sleep and breathe, you might get a bit crazy from time to time. The narrator goes almost completely insane when she’s in her room looking at the ugly, old, striped wallpaper that she dislikes very much: “I’m really getting fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps
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Motherhood is a big part of a women’s life, the narrator was never able to hold or comfort her child in her arms, and Mary the babysitter was always around the baby and taking care of him: “Mary is so good with the baby, and yet I cannot be with him it makes me nervous”(769). She is deprived of the opportunity to be a mother to her child and she feels unworthy of raising him. Other than her not being able to see her child, she is also being treated like one since she is not able to work or do anything for herself she gets everything brought to her even though she feels like going out and working would help, being an adult is no longer her choice in her condition, “He is very careful and caring and hardly lets me stir without special direction” (760) John won’t let her go off on her own, whenever she walks down the stairs of course when she’s allowed he would be right by her side just in case something happens to her. Another reason he doesn’t want her to be alone is because he thinks she would do something she’s not able to do; “Of course I don’t do a thing” (770). She can’t read, write, or visit family member’s which is difficult for her to do because these things, “so stressful” for her to

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