As I sat down trying to decide what to write this analysis paper on, I couldn’t fight the urge to write it about Bertha Mason Rochester and the narrator from “The Yellow Wallpaper”. There are so many similarities. A misunderstanding husband traps each of them, they themselves are trapped, they are stuck in their own minds which drive them mad, and so much more. These similarities include the use of a gothic tone, a sense of male superiority, mistreatment of space, and the mental instability of women. In this paper I will analyze Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and how two women battle their psychological behavior.
First I would like to talk about Bertha from Jane Eyre. Bertha, who I would …show more content…
She too, has a husband who believes that she is very sick. Unlike Rochester, her husband, John, is a little more sympathetic towards her. Even though he has locked her in a room with horrid wallpaper and a bed that is nailed to the floor, he still comes to see her and even sleeps in the same room as her when he is home from work. At the beginning of the story she doesn’t seem that crazy. But as the story moves on her mind is filled with thoughts and hallucinations that start to scare her and others are afraid for her mental health. After being locked in the room for so long, only to be able to occasionally walk the gardens, she starts to see things in the wallpaper. She says, “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (1395). She does not see this figure from the start, but only after she has been locked in the room alone with her mind and thoughts as her only company for weeks. “I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (1399). After more and more weeks go by she starts to see a woman in the gardens and states it is the woman from the wallpaper and that she is trapped in at night but during the day she is freely walking around. “I don't like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping …show more content…
An irresistible will to free herself from the control of others in which she had to live, since the most important rule of the treatment was to rest and make no mental effort. The woman from “The Yellow Wallpaper” enacts the hidden desires of the narrator. The woman entrapped in the paper, the same as Bertha in Jane Eyre, reflect the narrator’s anger, rage, and desire to tear into pieces and destroy the things which are linked in the stories with the yellow wallpaper or the wedding
First I would like to talk about Bertha from Jane Eyre. Bertha, who I would …show more content…
She too, has a husband who believes that she is very sick. Unlike Rochester, her husband, John, is a little more sympathetic towards her. Even though he has locked her in a room with horrid wallpaper and a bed that is nailed to the floor, he still comes to see her and even sleeps in the same room as her when he is home from work. At the beginning of the story she doesn’t seem that crazy. But as the story moves on her mind is filled with thoughts and hallucinations that start to scare her and others are afraid for her mental health. After being locked in the room for so long, only to be able to occasionally walk the gardens, she starts to see things in the wallpaper. She says, “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (1395). She does not see this figure from the start, but only after she has been locked in the room alone with her mind and thoughts as her only company for weeks. “I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (1399). After more and more weeks go by she starts to see a woman in the gardens and states it is the woman from the wallpaper and that she is trapped in at night but during the day she is freely walking around. “I don't like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping …show more content…
An irresistible will to free herself from the control of others in which she had to live, since the most important rule of the treatment was to rest and make no mental effort. The woman from “The Yellow Wallpaper” enacts the hidden desires of the narrator. The woman entrapped in the paper, the same as Bertha in Jane Eyre, reflect the narrator’s anger, rage, and desire to tear into pieces and destroy the things which are linked in the stories with the yellow wallpaper or the wedding