Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Term Paper

.. With these materials and with the aid of the trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche." In "The Cask," both insanity and murder operates to create a feeling of the grotesque all throughout the story. Moreover, these themes were symbolically "concealed" by Montresor's cultured personality (to hide his insanity) and the cask of Amontillado (to hide his murder of Fortunato).

While Poe uses both themes of insanity and murder in his story, Gilman's "The Yellow Paper" effectively uses the protagonist's downfall to insanity to portray the grotesqueness of not only of psychological instability, but also of emotional repression the woman character had experienced in the story.

As the woman's insanity progresses further, the significance of the yellow paper comes into focus as the story's symbolic object that illustrates women suppression in Gilman's society. The house that they rented for the summer for rest and relaxation had yellow wallpaper pasted on a wall in one of the bedrooms wherein the woman sleeps in. The constant suppression of her husband to let her roam around the house, and his insistence to rest and sleep all day, became the catalyst for her to have delusions about the intricate patterns on the yellow wallpaper. Her daily 'imprisonment' inside the bedroom, and constant deliberation of where the pattern leads to and what the pattern is revealed to the woman an important discovery: the pattern in the yellow wallpaper, as the woman discovered, "... is like a woman stooping down and creeping about... At night in any kind of light... And worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!... [b]y daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still." This, perhaps best summarizes and shows the woman's own feelings about her constant 'imprisonment' by her husband, and in general, by the society.The woman becomes aware that the pattern is a 'woman' like her.

In fact, the wallpaper serves as the woman's reflection of everything that is happening to her, what she is feeling and thinking. The latter part of the story shows how the woman developed to become a stronger woman after several days of observing and discerning the pattern on the yellow wallpaper: "I really have discovered something at last. The front pattern does move -- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!... Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bar and shakes them hard." This statement shows how the woman is gradually increasing her strength to assert herself, which is actually equivalent to the story as her gradual descent to insanity.

The woman's insanity may be interpreted as her own way of protesting against the emotional suppression that she feels people, particularly her husband, are giving her. Finally succumbing to psychological insanity, the woman finally gains power over her 'oppressors' -- that is, by escaping her reality and entering the world of insanity. Grotesque as the ending of the story may seem, "The Yellow Wallpaper" depicts the life of a repressed woman driven to insanity as a result of social tension and pressure, in the same way Montresor succumbed to insanity and commitment of murder when insulted by Fortunato in "The Cask of Amontillado."

Bibliography

Gilman, C.P.E-text of "The Yellow Wallpaper." University of Texas: An American Reader Web site. 23 October 2004 http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/amlit/wallpaper/wallpapertext.html.

Poe, E.A.E-text of "The Cask of Amontillado." 23 October 2004 http://www.literature.org/authors/poe-edgar-allan/amontillado.html......