OPPapers.com Essay Index >> English >> The Yellow Wallpaper: A Stifling Relationship
We have many free term papers and essays on The Yellow Wallpaper: A Stifling Relationship. We also have a wide variety of research papers and book reports available to you for free. You can browse our collection of term papers or use our search engine.
The Yellow Wallpaper: A Stifling Relationship Husband-Doctor: A Stifling Relationship In Gilman's "the Yellow Wallpaper" At the beginning of "The Yellow Wallpaper",
Submitted by evildavy on March 9, 2005
Category: English
Words: 1544 | Pages: 7
Views: 259
Popularity Rank: 54,952
Average Member Grade: N/A (Add a Comment / Grade this Paper)
Husband-Doctor: A Stifling Relationship In Gilman's "the Yellow Wallpaper"
At the beginning of "The Yellow Wallpaper", the protagonist, Jane, has just given birth to a baby boy. Although for most mothers a newborn infant is a joyous time, for others, like Jane, it becomes a trying emotional period that is now popularly understood to be the common disorder, postpartum depression. For example, Jane describes herself as feeling a "lack of strength" (Colm, 3) and as becoming "dreadfully fretful and querulous" (Jeannette and Morris, 25). In addition, she writes, "I cry at nothing and cry most of the time" (Jeannette and Morris, 23).
However, as the term postpartum depression was not in the vocabulary of this time period, John, Jane's husband and doctor, has diagnosed Jane as suffering from "temporary nervous depression [with] a slight hysterical tendency" (30).(Colm) It may be more accurate to view the symptoms she develops later in the storyvisual hallucinations, delusions, paranoiaas stemming from a psychotic condition that, prior to the birth of her son, was subdued or in control. The birth of her son precipitated a confrontation with John and became a catalyst of her psychosis.
Jane's child may be considered a catalyst because, although he is not named for us by the narrator, he will be the recipient of his father's last name. Walsh points out "the stress laid in the clinic on the father as word and figure, so that what is finally important might be called the perception of paternity or the relation to paternity" (78). When applied to a reading of "The Yellow Wallpaper," this translates into the following: The birth event is one of the times, perhaps the first, that Jane actually confronts her relation to the father of her son, John.
In relation to the above, until the very last few lines of the story, Jane herself, is unnamed.(Hume, 477) This absence correlates with the void she has in the place at which a...
You must Login to view the entire paper.
If you are not a member yet, Sign Up for free!