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Essay, 6 pages (1600 words)

Across a person’s life, but take the

Acrossthe world, people have different ideologies and lifestyles in many differentplaces.  These types of people dictatehow people should think, react, and how to regard to things in people’s everydaylives. Because of these people, certain things in society wouldn’t be in existenceand would cause the world to go crazy.  However, when people would take these ideas too far, they would abuse them and becomedangerously influenced by them. Oppression is a huge theme in many of thesetypes of ideas, as when something new comes into society, the old is thrownout.  The idea of “ throwing out the old, in with the new” can’t sit in some people’s stomachs, while others would becomfortable with this.

People who are very oppressive see what they do as doingwhat’s right, but others want salvation for those who are oppressed.  To some, salvation is seen as very rebelliousand a dangerous influence, while others see it as a noble deed and veryinspiring to people, even if its dangerous. Pursuing salvation can cost a person’slife, but take the risk for what they fight for to become reality. When a demonstratorfights for salvation, they would take it too far, and treat it is as their ownform of self-inflicted oppression. Charlette Perkins Gilman’s “ The YellowWallpaper” is an example of this type of situation. The story helps the readerunderstand the madness that Gilman is suffering from, and draws a picture onhow we should fight against oppression.

In the story, the similarities anddifferences between salvation and oppression given through the mind of the maincharacter shown to the reader by describing its imagery and symbolism. At the beginning of the story, the narrator Jane showsthe readers how salvation and oppression is shown in the beginning of thestory. The main character is at the mercy of her husband, who believes that hecan dictate what she can and can’t do. In the story, she states “ Personally, Idisagree with their ideas” (Gilman 473), meaning that she has a huge problemwith John controlling her like a puppet. However, she decides that she’ll justdo what he wants her to do, while also holding back her true feelings of beingvery oppressed and controlled by him.

As the story progresses, every passingday, she is slowly losing her own patience with the entire situation around her, and she desperately wants to have the freedom to do what she truly needs forherself.   In other words, she wants salvation from allthe hard rules and constraints put on her by her husband. But sadly, shebecomes forced to become her own slave, subjected to holding back all her truefeelings and motives, but she feels like she is doing what’s right for her andher husband. This idea of just holding back her true self is just eating her upinside. In the story, she is constantly bothered by the ugly, old, crumbling yellow wallpaper that covers the whole room she sleeps in. Butshe also feels like people are trapped within the wallpaper, and keeps thisidea throughout the story, and concludes that there are women trapped withinthe wallpaper, and sees figures of women walking inside the papers.

This is an example of how wanting salvationcan make a person see and believe in things that don’t exist, holding back herfeelings about what’s happening to her, and having someone who can understandher, all while transforming into a psychopath while doing it In Barbara Seuss’sarticle, “ The Writing’s on the Wall”, “…the wallpaper gains more and moreauthority over her, it becomes the recourse to which Jane turns.” (Seuss 92), showing the readers that the wallpaper represents a prison-like setting forher, where she is trapped in her own mind prison and has nowhere to go and noone to go to, destroying what little humane thoughts she originally had.   The woman in the wallpaper and all the things that shedoes shows us readers the main character’s descent into total madness.

Becausethe main character has already been oppressed by her husband, the thought ofthe whole situation opens her up a new door towards removing all of the hardconstraints and rules put on her, thus freeing her into her own world where shecan be herself. In John Bak’s article, “ Escaping the jaundiced eye: Foucauldianpanopcitism in Charlette Perkins Gilman “ The Yellow Wallpaper”, “…she hasessentially released herself from the external bars and rings that John uses toconstrain her” (Bak 6), emphasizing that because of the woman trapping her in ahallucination-like dream, she is able to realize her true self and releases allof the rules that John has placed on her.             Becausethe woman in the wallpaper is the narrator of the story, she is telling usreaders about all of the things happening in the house. Because of this, we getan idea about what certain things in the story represent.  The woman in the wallpaper can represent theharsh oppression put on the main character by her husband, stuck within her ownmind, trying to find a way to escape it.

She is depicting the main characterand everything that is happening throughout the story, and slowly becomes more supportivetowards her. With all the other scenes that she is describing, she uses imageryto paint a picture on how self-salvation for any person who suffers from beingoppressed can look and seem like it’s a true reality. As she continues to thinkthat a woman is trapped within the yellow wallpaper, freeing her becomes hernumber one priority.   In other words, this represents Gilman beingvery concerned with getting her own independence.  According to Paula Teichler’s “ The Wall Behindthe Yellow Wallpaper: Response to Carol Neely and Karen Ford”, “ The Wallpaperis a disruptive center, that chaotically fragments any attempt to fix on it asingle meaning” (Teichler 327).    This is a major reason why she keeps a diary, being one of the only places that she can be herself, and feel relief forherself because of her current life.

To Gilman, anyone who has a veryimaginative mind should not keep it a secret and away from others; if they do, they would feel destroyed inside, feel completely alone, unrelatable to others, and ignored by everyone.             “ Theresting cure” is supposed to be able to cure a person’s insanity, by takingaway everything that the person has, telling the patient what they can andcan’t do, and isolating them from everything stressful around them in order forthem to just relax. The creator of the resting cure, Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, originally made this idea because he was intrigued with intellectual, activewomen, and how they live their lives. John takes this issue seriously for hiswife, and takes it a step further by constantly keeping tabs on her to makesure that she is not stressing herself And she clearly doesn’t support thisidea, but as stated previously before, John believes he’s the genius and thathe is doing right.

Because Gilman’s mind was nearly destroyed by this “ cure”, the way she writes the story, she is disagreeing with the cure beingineffective and very wrong for everyone who endures this. “ The YellowWallpaper” is painting a picture of an intellectual mind that is completelycontaminated with a lot of anxiety and stress. And when this happens, this typeof mind can be destroyed, and it will cause the person to be a completelydifferent person; they would act different, present themselves differently, andoverall just not be the person that people recognize and just stay away from. Gilman in the story is clearly attacking the resting cure, as she does notsupport it and wants no one to have it done to them.  According to Jeffrey Berman’s “ The UnrestfulCure: Charlette Perkins Gilman and “ The Yellow Wallpaper”, “ After three months, she rejected Mitchell’s advice and began writing, immediately making gainstowards a recovery (Berman 64)”, showing readers that the resting cure wasn’teven effective for her, and a good cure for this type of condition is writing.

Because this was a very popular story, all thecriticism that Mitchell was attracting because of his cure ended up in himabandoning it. Gilman doesn’t just not support the resting cure being somethingwrong, but also doesn’t support the idea of any form of medical care thatthrows aside what the patient wants and expects, and the higher-ups justconsiders them like a test subject. The relationship between the woman’smindset in her home and the mindset of a patient/doctor is crystal clear in thestory, and since John is both Gilman’s personal doctor and her husband, thisalso applies to both her and John’s relationship. According to Susan Lasner’sarticle “ The Yellow Wallpaper and the Politics of Color In America”, “ The factthat these works which feminists now found exciting and powerful had beendenounced, ignored, or suppressed seemed virtual proof of the claim thatliterature, criticism, and history” (Lasner 417).

Gilman shows us that both thepowers could be used the wrong way, even if the doctors feel like they aredoing the right thing for others. And since women are the primary targets forthis type of thing, they are forced to do this because they believe that thedoctors know what they are doing.            Eventhough “ The Yellow Wallpaper” was very controversial to some, it was one of thegateways for people to realize that they shouldn’t keep their true feelings andtrue mindsets inside of them, even if they are shunned for it, and are treatedlike they are outcasts. People today who suffer from a mental illness like Gilmanshould be very fortunate that she brought us the idea of new modern-daymedicines, that involve expressing their minds and being welcomed in by others. While writing is a good medicine for having a stressful and insane lifestyle, just being yourself overall is a great natural medicine. The story gave us theidea that freedom to do what you love is what’s best for a person, but also thefact that freedom can be an illusion to other unfortunate people.

This raises abig question: What would happen to all human life if no person on the planet hadany freedom?

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