Silas Marner

The “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a fictional autobiography that illustrates the isolation and oppression women faced during the late nineteenth century. The woman in the story who we later find out is named Jane, is portrayed as somebody who is approaching insanity while searching for some peace in her male dictated world. The author depicts the confinement and oppression of women by explaining the emotional imprisonment of Jane as well as her social and mental state as she…

Feminist struggles One heroine is fighting for her physical independence and another one is fighting for her mental independence. According to critics, women were considered to be “weak bodies and impressible minds” which make them “predisposed to any physical and/ or mental disease that could affect their fragile emotional state” (Treichler, 61). This is the same thing of which Jane became the victim when she tells “if a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and…

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman utilizes characterization to demonstrate how men abuse their power to ensure women are perceived as incapable beings, and how this abuse becomes internalized within women, resulting in complicity of oppression and deteriorated mental states. John employs his patriarchal and doctoral standings to diagnosis his wife as mentally ill, thus restricting her in misogynistic gender roles. Through John’s actions, his sister Jennie becomes complicit in…

Alix Kates Shulman once said, “Sexism goes so deep that at first it’s hard to see; you think it’s just reality.” Sexism is something that, at one time, was taught, but now is an accepted part of society. The Great Depression brought out the worst aspects of sexism by complicating the roles of women and discrimination and hardships in the workplace and in society. These issues are all depicted through the character of Curley’s wife in the novel, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. Mother,…

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Gilman, is a short story that shocked society when it was first published in 1892. This work was inspired by her own life struggles. Having suffering through postpartum depression, Gilman became an advocate of the pitfalls of rest cure. Yellow, a color commonly associated with the joy eliciting sunshine, is also known as an anxiety inducing color. The color yellow that stains the wallpaper of the room the main character is confined to sets the uneasy…

be staying in (Gilman). These strange findings allude the fact that this room is a “rest cure” room of her era and not simply a tattered room because the rest of the house and garden are beautiful. The rest cure method was popularized the physician Silas Weir Mitchell, who primarily used it to treat “nervous women, who as a rule are thin, and lack blood” (9) through “rest, systematic feeding, and passive exercise” (10). This prescription not only makes her stay in this terrifying room but it…

In the short story of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gillman writes an intriguing story that brings to light how women were identified through domestic roles in the Victorian era. She shows through a haunting experience and progression of the “resting-cure.” Through dark symbolism, descriptive and repetitive diction, and setting of events taken place, readers are able to understand how those roles denied women their freedom and independence. Throughout the story, Gillman shows…

The first person narration in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” allows the reader to gain an understanding of the main character through her dialogue, actions, and thoughts. Throughout the story, the narrator thoroughly describes the setting, which changes in her mind, over the course of her stay in the rental house. This change in the narrator's perception of the house and the world outside of her bedroom can allow readers to understand her feelings of isolation, depression,…

Imagine slowly realizing as you see your child and husband more you stomach and mind grows progressively sicker until you can no longer be near them, later leading to the point of such strong repulsion you cannot be on the same plane of existence. Gail Goodwin has an astonishingly amazing talent in writing her setting, characterization, and point of view along with their psychological appeals. These aspects create a dismal emotion and a dark plot as the point of view makes the actions of each…

In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens the female characters of Miss Havisham and Mrs. Joe embodied rebellious female figures that deny women’s prescribed behavior at home in the society of Victorian era. The two female characters depict vivid and determining roles that refuse motherhood, marriage and self-sacrifice in different ways, but the outcome of their denial is quiet equal: both of them are punished for the refusal of their expected maternal roles in drastic, violent ways. In the…