Question:
The Yellow Wallpaper Summary
This is supposed to be a group project but I really haven't had much help in that are. The assignment had three parts. I have already completed the first two but I am having problems pulling the last part together: here is what it asks to do.
1. Examine your group's first set of responses and look for ways in which your interpretations agreed with and/or disagreed with the sample student essays.
2 As a group, create one essay that summarizes your group's responses to all of the questions above.
The essay should be a report about the conclusions that group came to, both about the story and about the sample student explications of the story. Since participation isn't what it was supposed to be I'm having a hard time here.
Part 1
Based on Gillman's own experience with past-partum depression, "The Yellow Wallpaper is a first person narrative of a woman's decent into mental illness. Confined, she becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper decorating the room. By the end of the story, she has descended into total insanity.
1. The narrator, and main character of the story, is the wife of a doctor. Suffering from depression, she is ordered "rest cure" of quiet and solitude, with an emphasis on avoiding any form of mental stimulation. She is confined to a room that used to be a nursery, and not allowed to write, however she does so secretly. Locked in a room, isolated and away from contact, she falls deeper into epression, woman trapped in the wallpaper. The main character is round and individual She perceives herself as weak as and of lesser value than her husband. She does not ponsibility for most aspects of her life. She allows her husband to dictate her days, and her activities. Even the writing she loves is done in secret. She writes, "There comes John, and I must put this away, --he hates to have me write a word".
2. The setting and the people in the beginning of the story appear to be an "ordinary" couple going on holiday. The narrator seems to find discomfort, with the house. She feels that the house is "a hunted house", and that there is "something queer about it." She wonders why they would be able to rent it at such a price. John on the other hand does not share her discomfort. In fact, he laughs at
opinions on the house. To him it is a place of healing for his wife.
3. The first hint of something extraordinary taking place appears when the narrator talks of the wallpaper beginning to change. First it is a "revolting" color and pattern. Then the pattern starts to reveal something to the narrator..." I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about..." And the pattern "dwells" on the mind of the narrator. She feels that, "there are
things in the paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will." This is a sure indicating that her mental condition.
4. An antagonist may be another person, an aspect of the physical or social environment, or a destructive element in the protagonist's own nature. In other words, any force that is in conflict with the protagonist (Best). In my opinion, the antagonist here is the wallpaper. The wallpaper consumes the thoughts and actions of the narrator. At first she is repulsed by the wallpaper and she feels that "the color is repellent, almost revolting", but, eventually, it changes to something she grows fond of. "I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper.
5. An antagonist may be another person, an aspect of the physical or social environment, or a destructive element in the protagonist's own nature. In other words, any force that is in conflict with the protagonist. In the story, the antagonist is John, the narrator's husband. He is portrayed as controlling and inconsiderate. When he finds that nothing is physically wrong with his wife, he attributes it to exhaustion and refuse to admit her mental illness. In essence, he stands in the way of her recovery.
6. The wallpaper becomes an obsessive preoccupation for the narrator because the husband in his attempt to get her over her "temporary nervous depression" has removed every outlet or stimulus around her. At first she feels the wallpaper is ugly, but the longer she stares at the paper, she begins to see grotesque images in the patterns. Over time she perceives there is a woman stuck behind the wallpaper that appears to be attempting to get out from behind bars.
The meaning of the wallpaper evolves and becomes the central symbol of the story because it begins to define her stages of progressive insanity. It builds to a point where she truly associates her current reality with the woman she sees within the wallpaper. A few major stages witnessed in this story are points when she begins to recognize, associate and ultimately becomes the woman trapped behind the bars. At first she recognizes there is a woman trapped in the wallpaper, symbolizing her confinement in her own life. She then begins to see the woman creeping and hiding within the paper, reflecting her current mannerisms in life; locking herself in to "creep by daylight" or withdrawing from everyone around her. The final stage is revealed when she ultimately attempts to free the woman from behind the paper by peeling it from the wall; she is truly peeling away her last threads of sanity.
7. Symbolically a garden represents innocence, happiness, freedom and harmony with your surroundings. On the other hand the enclosed, confined room symbolizes the narrorator being alone, without support and trapped in her own mind. She eventually throws away the key to her room because she has finally lost her mind yet gained control of her life "locking out everyone who attempted to confine her"
8. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story filled with heavy symbolism. The symbolic ending is because the author does not mention the main characters name, nor does she mention the name of the symbolic relationship of the women's image in the wallpaper. The meaning in this readers opinion is that the women finally meets with the women in the wallpaper and they both get what they are reaching for, which is release to another place and time.
The liberation found in this story is apparent when one looks at the women and the wallpaper to find that both were trying to get out. One is trying to get liberation from her everyday life of tormented insanity to the inanimate life of the imaginary women held captive in the imagination of her mind and the confines of her own mind. Liberation is evident when both find relief through body, spirit, and mind imaginary or perceived. The reason liberation is complete and proven is that both as one find released from the boundaries of manmade wallpaper and of a hand designed rope. These symbolic tools help release both characters from the realm of man and the insanity associated with ordinary lives.
Part 2
1. There is a symbolic contrast in the story between the garden and the room the narrator is confined in...it is the color. To her, the outside world is a place where "everything is green instead of yellow". As the narrator progresses in her illness, she begins to identify her own feelings about herself with the color of the wallpaper. "It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw-not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things." It is this yellow world that the narrator feels that she belongs...with the old foul, bad yellow things, not in the green world outside.
The story ends with the narrator finally released to her insanity. As she pulls the wallpaper off the wall, freeing the woman she sees trapped behind the pattern, she is also tearing down the last vestiges of her sanity. She is freeing her trapped mind...finally giving in to her illness..."I've got out at last...I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"
2. Both students did not agree on the yellow color symbol. However they do agree on the green. Green symbolized a lively world, that the narrator during this time could not go out and enjoy it. The first student said "the yellow wallpapers" symbolizing her husband. He's a loving husband; however, he did not know that without let her go to work. Letting her stay inside by herself would make her condition worst. She goes from postpartum depression to insanity. When she has nothing to do, she sees many things in the wallpapers such as l a woman was locked behind the bar. She tear away the wallpapers a symbolize she is free from insanity. The second student said "the yellow wallpapers," symbolize the women that do not take advantage of their freedom. During the 1800s and early 1900 women still listen to her husband and listen to what they tell them to do. In this story the lady cannot do what she likes. Her husband thinks he knows what is best for her. However, with his careless he turns her insane without knowing it. The bar in the nursery room symbolize the room is like prison lock her in there. The wallpapers need to be peeling off by both men and woman. This will help women in today society.
3. Both student states that the husband is in control of everything. The narrator said that she would like the room down stairs. However, her husband thinks he knows what is best for her, choosing a nursery room for her. She told him that she does not like that room, but he did not change his mind. She is so afraid of him that whatever he says, she does it without questioning. In today society women and men are equal. Even though men did not listen, and do what their wife told them to do, they still respected them and listen to their point of view. If she doesn't like it he will consider it again. He cannot be the boss of her because they both are equal