Batto 1

Anwar Batto
Brianna Kuhn
English 120
16 April 2017
Madness as a whole
Madness is the state of being mentally ill where one is viewed insane due to unnatural

behaviors one performs in which one loses contact with reality or is distressed. In Gilmans The

Yellow Wallpaper madness is classified as a mental depression and the character who remains

nameless is put on rest cure that disables her from any creative engagement like writing. Her

husband who is also her doctor views her as immature and inferior. While her brain was in

inactivity, normal everyday tasks were forbidden and that lead to insanity with time. The

interpretation of helping the woman results her into her mental sickness. By protecting her from

her own imagination and creativity, John put his wife into her own imaginative universal of

absolute madness. The expectations of the society that the character lives in lead to the narrators

desperation to live in an imaginative fantasy. The authors purpose is to show us that one will

become mad even he/she wasn't in the first place due to the treatment of others, or if treated as

such. Sanity or even normal depression can lead to insanity through the expectations of views of

a society, as in the story.

Throughout as long as many can remember women have been seen as under men in the

chart of respect and abilities, Gilman portrays the different ways women are seen to identify the

truth of the facts. An overview of women shows them as being very weak humans, some may

strive to show their powers but are often shut down for their feminist views, many even have no

control over their lives or the things they can/cant do. Since it is said that men are superior over

women they tend to play being the dominant ones within a crowd. As John forces his wife into

isolation in their vacation home, she felt less and less like herself and began losing control of her
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thoughts. The fact that he isolated her from society and her own mind drove her to true insanity

as she was viewed and treated. It is the fact that we live and breath to the expectations of the

society, and as so whatever the society please is seen as true and the only solution or way to any

problem or as such.

Gilman portrays the inferiority of women in many ways. During the nineteenth century

and even today, women are treated differently or viewed as lower than men. In the characters'

society women are treated as children, they have no control over their lives or the things they do.

They are viewed as immature. Men are superior to women and therefore play the dominate force.

The power struggle in the characters' society forces the women to be less dominate or immature

in that if otherwise she is viewed as unreasonable or disloyal to her husband. Because of

expectations of the society she lives in, the narrator is forced to live in her own fantasy and

imagination as to which she later is seen as illness. she states, John laughs at me, of course, but

one expects that in marriage." A man was the superior sex in the society and that was viewed as

natural. Men's dominance and own feelings lead to such power struggles as Gilman's character

john tries to help his wife but only later is found dominating every aspect of her life.

Every now and then women need to rise to their own superiors and prove that they too

are capable of much more than is believed. A woman in her own way can do anything a man

does and as society progresses in the 21st century and so on in the future, a woman will not be

seen as inferior and instead as an equal. Just as our nameless narrator escapes her husband and is

superior to him at the end of the story as he faints and rips the yellow wallpaper. At that time the
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narrator is free to be whoever she wants to be and triumphs her husband. If women do not stand

up to themselves no one will.

When women are shown that they have no power they usual tend to become weaker not

just on the outside but at times also on the inside. Many women are thought of as having lower

powers/capabilities which at times makes them feel disappointed about themselves as it makes

them feel weak and worthless. Society's expectations and the views of others definitely play a

role in the way we as human beings treat each other. There will always be a time where in

someone's eye a woman is worthless and inferior and it is only by standing up to those with such

thought that we can finally obtain the same power and become equals to men.