Desolation In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins

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Have you ever felt trapped, isolated, or even like you’re going crazy? If so, then you know what Charlotte Perkins Stetson felt like. Charlotte wrote a story called the yellow wallpaper and this piece of literature or tackles many subjects that would not become civil rights issues until many years later. Charlotte wrote the story based on the experiences that happen in her real life, which adds an eerie feeling while reading this story. It really makes you stop and think about how things used to be when dealing with mental health and the family unit. Charlotte choosing to write in this style allows the reader to be immersed in the story and identify with the protagonist. Charlotte Perkins was a very talented writer and in her story “The Yellow …show more content…
You really felt for her when her whole world started to crumble and she was being put in that room all alone and was being discouraged to not write, the one thing that brought her joy. “There comes John, and I must put this away, - he hates to have me write a word” (Perkins 649) . We really felt the anguish with her husband walked in on her and thought she had gone bonkers. “she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. “ (Perkins 654). The woman in the wallpaper is another interesting character; it is like a mirror being held up against the protagonist she is saying her situation with her detached. She can see that the woman behind the wallpaper wants to escape, but she herself does not have the courage to get up and walk out of the room. Her husband is an interesting character, he wants the best for his wife, but yet he will not allow her to leave her room and constantly insist that she is ill. It is as if he wants her to get better, but will not give her the treatment that she needs, or in this case, the treatment she doesn’t need. He locks his wife in a room for so long that she eventually begin to unravel and go crazy. Hey even allows a woman to come in and do the duty of a wife and a mother while his real wife is locked up in a room “Of course I didn 't do a thing. …show more content…
One of which is the wallpaper, it is a bright yellow and it is supposed to promote healing to the protagonist yet it is ultimately one of the things that break her down. “I don 't like our room a bit. “ (Perkins 648). It eventually drives her crazy and she is not able to paint her happiness or healing. “Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere.“ (Perkins 650). The windows represent freedom and the life she can have if she can only get out of the oppression of her husband, but alas, there are bars on the window, which prevent her from escaping. It shows the role of her husband how though he is trying to help her he is ultimately hurting her. “I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. “ (Perkins 650). Her journal entries are ways of showing how she’s trying to fight back and keep our creativity and individualism alive. She is told that she should not write, she continues anyway because she still wants to have her career. The child was a symbol of her motherhood. Just that the husband had taken away many other things with him trying to help, when he took the baby away, he took away one of the key pillars of her life which were being a mother and that broke her down. “Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.” (Perkins

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