Ghost Story Turned Comedy?
A cloud of debate surrounds a well-known and controversial story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper is most commonly placed in either the mystery or thriller genres. However, what if some events of the story were altered to present a comical overtone? When read the first time, The Yellow Wallpaper has such bizarre qualities it is difficult to not focus on the sheer absurdity of the story’s events, which could easily be transformed into outrageous acts of a comedy story.
It is well known that The Yellow Wallpaper is a critique of the social patterns of the time of publication. Women were being admitted to mental asylums and diagnosed with mental illnesses based on their behavior instead of their physical …show more content…
“The woman behind [the yellow wallpaper],” could also be portrayed in more of a fairy godmother character, which is there to aid the narrator or listen to the narrator’s ponderings. The description of the woman has a scary tone, but if it were changed to be more comforting, instead of just seeing her “creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind” (line 267), the women could become friends and completely change the feel of the story. This would change the story by also taking some of the mystery out of the story, and giving more details and adding more conversation in the story since there would be another character in the yellow wallpaper room. The effect this change would have on the original story would be making it less scary and solidifying the mental state of the narrator, since the reader would have a better sense of what was going on in the …show more content…
The satirical comments would also help immensely in placing the story in the comedy genre. The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, would change from an unsettling ghost story about a possibly mentally ill woman, with a hidden protest, to a comedic critique about the immoral and unjust behavior of the men of Gilman’s time, who were performing the diagnosis of women. The tone and genre of the play would be completely different than the original because of these changes. After reading the story a few times and thinking about the actions of the narrator, that seem completely absurd already, is would be easy to imagine the story in a comical
A cloud of debate surrounds a well-known and controversial story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper is most commonly placed in either the mystery or thriller genres. However, what if some events of the story were altered to present a comical overtone? When read the first time, The Yellow Wallpaper has such bizarre qualities it is difficult to not focus on the sheer absurdity of the story’s events, which could easily be transformed into outrageous acts of a comedy story.
It is well known that The Yellow Wallpaper is a critique of the social patterns of the time of publication. Women were being admitted to mental asylums and diagnosed with mental illnesses based on their behavior instead of their physical …show more content…
“The woman behind [the yellow wallpaper],” could also be portrayed in more of a fairy godmother character, which is there to aid the narrator or listen to the narrator’s ponderings. The description of the woman has a scary tone, but if it were changed to be more comforting, instead of just seeing her “creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind” (line 267), the women could become friends and completely change the feel of the story. This would change the story by also taking some of the mystery out of the story, and giving more details and adding more conversation in the story since there would be another character in the yellow wallpaper room. The effect this change would have on the original story would be making it less scary and solidifying the mental state of the narrator, since the reader would have a better sense of what was going on in the …show more content…
The satirical comments would also help immensely in placing the story in the comedy genre. The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, would change from an unsettling ghost story about a possibly mentally ill woman, with a hidden protest, to a comedic critique about the immoral and unjust behavior of the men of Gilman’s time, who were performing the diagnosis of women. The tone and genre of the play would be completely different than the original because of these changes. After reading the story a few times and thinking about the actions of the narrator, that seem completely absurd already, is would be easy to imagine the story in a comical