Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Higher English, The Subordination of Women in Marriage, Creativity vs.…

- - - - "Hot reek"
        
        connotations of hell
        assault on the sense
      - "Immense"
        
        colossal size, large and great
      - "Merging with the darkness"
        
        Size
        Evil supernatural symbolism
      - "Black Mass"
        
        connotations of evil, supernatural
      - "Really scared"
        
        true fear, not immaturity
      - "Trampiling"
        
        violence, destruction, aggravation
      - "Roared his rage"
        
        anger from being trapped, isolated, chained up
      - "Gaped like wounds"
        
        violence, snorting
      - "Anti-Christ"
        
        destructive, chaotic, evil
      - "Oblivious"
        
        ignorance, (of evil)
      - "Anarchy"
        
        lawless, dangerous
- - - - During the Victorian period men and women’s roles became more sharply defined than at any time in history. The two sexes now inhabited what Victorians thought of as ‘separate spheres’, only coming together at breakfast and again at dinner. The ideology of separate spheres rested on a definition of the ‘natural’ characteristics of women and men. Women were considered physically weaker yet morally superior to men, which meant that they were best suited to the domestic sphere. Not only was it their job to counterbalance the moral taint of the public sphere in which their husbands laboured all day, they were also preparing the next generation to carry on this way of life. The fact that women had such great influence at home was used as an argument against giving them the vote.
    - - In Gilman's story, sunlight is associated with John's ordered, dominating schedule and the rational sphere of men. The yellow colour also worked well with other two sub-symbols, sunlight and moonlight, showing the conflicts between men and women. This pattern mirrors the narrator's own daily movements. As the lunar cycle is similar to the 28-day menstrual cycle, the moonlight can represent the narrator's womanhood:
        
        “I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy."
      - During the day, the narrator writes that the woman trapped in the wallpaper is motionless and immobile. The moon's movement also causes the light to shine on the wallpaper in a way that suggests, to the narrator, the figure of a woman trapped behind bars, trying to get out.
    - - The narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is essentially confined to a single room in a large house. Conversely, her husband frequently spends his nights in town as part of his duties as a big-shot doctor. This dichotomy is the overwhelmingly dominant theme of the story, as the narrator’s attempts to cope with isolation wind up being the engine driving the plot forward.
        
        Chew on This:
        
        The narrator has successfully liberated herself by the end of the story OR
        
        The narrator is not liberated at the end of the story. Rather, she has simply fallen deeply into mental illness
    - - Due to the narrator’s confinement, she slowly begins losing her sanity. Throughout "The Yellow Wallpaper," we see the narrator’s descent into madness through her eyes. Readers stay with the narrator as her mind grows more chaotic and as she begins seeing shapes in the wallpaper. This is the ultimate example of showing, not telling. We have to deduce from her frantic writing style that there isn’t actually a woman trapped in the wallpaper; the narrator just thinks there is because she’s losing her grip on reality.
        
        Notes on the ‘resting cure’: https://gilmanswallpaper.wordpress.com/madness/
  - - - Two weeks later, the narrator’s condition has worsened. She feels a constant sense of anxiety and fatigue and can barely muster enough energy to write in her secret journal. Fortunately, their nanny, Mary, takes care of their baby, and John’s sister, Jennie, is a perfect housekeeper. The narrator’s irritation with the wallpaper grows; she discovers a recurring pattern or bulbous eyes and broken eyes and broken necks, as well as the faint image of a skulking figure behind the pattern.
        
        As more days pass, the narrator grows increasingly anxious and depressed. The wallpaper provides her only stimulation, and she spends the majority of her time studying its confusing patterns which, as she asserts, are almost as “good as gymnastics.” The image of the figure stooping down and “creeping” around behind the wallpaper becomes cleared each day. By moonlight, she can see very distinctly that the figure is a woman trapped behind bars. The narrator attempts to convince John to leave the house for a visit with relatives, but he refuses, and the narrator does not feel comfortable confiding in him about her discoveries in the wallpaper. Moreover, she is becoming paranoid that John and Jennie are also interested in the wallpaper and is determined that only she will uncover its secrets.
        
        The narrator’s health improves as her interest in the wallpaper deepens. She suspects that Jennie and John are observing her behaviour, but her only concern is that they become obstacles to her and the wallpaper. She also begins to notice that the distinct “yellow smell” of the wallpaper has spread over the house, following her even when she goes for rides. At night, the woman in the wallpaper shakes the bars in the pattern violently as she tries to break through them, but she cannot break free. The swirling pattern has strangled the heads of many women who have tried to break through the wallpaper. The narrator begins to hallucinate, believing that she has seen the woman creeping surreptitiously outside in the sunlight. The narrator intends to peel off the wallpaper before she leaves the house in two days.
        
        That night, the narrator helps the woman in the wallpaper by peeling off the wallpaper halfway around the room. The next day, Jennie is shocked, but the narrator convinces her that she only stripped the wallpaper out of spite. Jennie is able to understand the desire to peel off the ugly wallpaper and does not tell John that anything is out of the ordinary. The next night, the narrator locks herself in her room and continues stripping the wallpaper. She hears shrieks within the wallpaper as she tears it off. She contemplates jumping out of a window, but the bars prevent that; besides, she is afraid of all of the women that are creeping about outside of the house. When morning comes, the narrator has peeled off all of the wallpaper and began to creep around the perimeter of the room. John eventually breaks into the room, but the narrator does not recognise him. She informs him that she has peeled off most of the wallpaper so that now no one can put her back inside the walls. John faints, and the narrator continues creeping around the room over him.
    - - The unnamed narrator has been isolated on doctor’s (her husband) orders in a rented mansion
    - - The wallpaper- takes a dislike- becomes obsessed with the pattern-becomes convinced a woman is trapped behind the pattern
    - - Locks herself in the room and peels away the wallpaper
  - - - ‘The colour is hideous enough, and unreliable enough and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing’
        ( Narrator)
      - There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, Or ever will.Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day'
        
        'I wish John would take me away from here!'
      - “unclean yellow.” At first it seems merely unpleasant: it is ripped, soiled. The worst part is the ostensibly formless pattern, which fascinates the narrator as she attempts to figure out how it is organized. After staring at the paper for hours, she sees a ghostly sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light. Eventually, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a desperate woman, constantly crawling and stooping, looking for an escape from behind the main pattern, which has come to resemble the bars of a cage.
    - - ‘It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such as dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him. It makes me so nervous’
        (Narrator)
        
        ‘I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition’
        (Narrator)
        
        The narrator reflects on her own behavior and see her thoughts and feelings as unreasonable. She still judges herself rationally and sees that her illness may be affecting her, making her more sensitive than usual. On the other hand, her anger with John may not in fact be unreasonable. Her inner self may be fighting against his prescribed cure.
        
        'I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see. Of course I never mention it to them any more—I am too wise,—but I keep watch of it all the same.'
        
        At first, the narrator simply detested the yellow wallpaper based on its appearance. Now she feels suspicious of the wallpaper. She believes that the wallpaper would harm her baby if given the chance. However, she knows enough not to mention this belief to her caregivers. She recognizes that they will not see the danger in the wallpaper, but at the same time her illness overrides her own rational beliefs
        
        The narrator here refers to the infant in the house generically as the baby, though later she will mention the child is hers, corroborated by John referring to their child. Her detachment and inability to care for the baby provide readers with clues as to her true illness. The narrator may have clinical postpartum depression.
      - 'I don’t feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous. I cry at nothing, and I cry most of the time. Of course I don’t when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.'
        (Narrator)
        
        The narrator shares signs of her worsening depression in her emotional lability and anxiety. However, John does not acknowledge these signs of illness, and thus, to a certain extent, she questions the fact herself. She does not have the medical knowledge to argue against her husband’s diagnosis that her illness is self-inflicted. She understands she feels worse but must hide her true condition, since her worsening symptoms indicate her failure to follow his prescriptions.
      - 'I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?'
        
        This passage is the exact moment of full identification, when the narrator finally makes the connection she has been avoiding, a connection that the reader has made already. The woman behind the pattern was an image of herself—she has been the one “stooping and creeping.” Further, she knows that there are many women just like her, so many that she is afraid to look at them. The question she asks is poignant and complex: did they all have to struggle the way I did? Were they trapped within homes that were really prisons? Did they all have to tear their lives up at the roots in order to be free? The narrator, unable to answer these questions, leaves them for another woman—or the reader—to ponder.
      - John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wall-paper. I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wall-paper—he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away. I don’t want to leave now until I have found it out.
        
        The narrator reveals that she’s faking her improvement because she has a purpose—to solve the mystery of the wallpaper. She understands that her obsession with the wallpaper would be recognized as irrational by others, but nevertheless she believes that she needs to stay in the house because of the wallpaper. Her illness has progressed to psychosis at this point. Instead of wanting to leave the house, which she earlier begged to do, she fears being forced to leave.
      - I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! I don’t want to go outside. I won’t, even if Jennie asks me to. For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.
        
        The narrator now explains how she identifies herself as the woman in the wallpaper. She fully embraces this role and no longer wants any other. The fact that someone previously made a mark around the wall at the height of her shoulder, in addition to other hints—the torn wallpaper and bite marks—suggest that someone else was previously driven insane in the same room
    - - 'I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal—having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.'
        
        The narrator recounts that she violates her doctors’ treatment plan of rest for her illness. Her husband and her brother have told her not to work, which for her means writing. Sometimes she feels convinced that writing makes her tired, but insightfully attributes the truly tiring aspect to having to hide the fact that she’s writing. Holding fast to her beliefs in the face of others’ insistence that she doesn’t know what is best for her takes a tremendous toll on her emotional well-being.
      - 'I take pains to control myself—before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.'
        
        The narrator realizes that her husband increasingly annoys her. He wants her to repress her nervous sensitivity and strengthen her own self-control that he trusts will push back the condition that afflicts her. She tries to do as he asks. The narrator recognizes, however, that the act of behaving as her husband wishes her to do exhausts her—compounding the condition that he attempts to cure with his prescriptions.
    - - The narrator expresses how she feels when she sees John approach and she must put away her writing. Readers understand that she has been writing this text against the direct orders of John, her husband and doctor, who believes writing weakens her health. Despite respecting her husband’s opinion and skill in general, in her own case she feels she knows better—that writing heals her. Or perhaps she does not know for sure that writing helps, but she cannot help herself.
    - - The narrator pinpoints the things she really needs to lessen her depression. Unfortunately, work, excitement, and change represent stimulation that her husband has forbidden as part of his cure plan. The narrator knows herself and knows that these things have always made her happy in the past. Her husband believes these things exacerbate her nervous disposition—she should be happy simply within her roles of wife and mother. The narrator clearly desires an intellectual life, in addition to her domestic roles, to feel like a whole human being.
  - - - womens roles in these times were wifes and mothers
      - women could not vote or own their own property
      - women were ment to be pure, pious, domestic and submassive
      - The Feminist movement had just begun as a radical, fringe ideology, largely dismissed by the mainstream.
      - Women could not live on their own; their husbands or fathers served as their guardians
    - - The narrator mentions that she has been diagnosed with “A slight hysterical tendency,” and was being treated as most women of her time would be: with the Rest Cure.
        
        This cure was advocated strongly by a nationally (in the USA) recognized neurologist of the time, Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell.
        
        His Rest Cure called for complete rest, coerced feeding and isolation.