Yellow Wallpaper

The short story “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman displays many arguable themes including the evils of the “rest cure.” Silas Weir Mitchell developed the “rest cure” in the late 1800s for women that were depressed not to work, do physical activity, and required to rest their body and mind by having but limited hours of intellectual life and never using self expression through art or literature. Gilman uses several literary devices such as point-of-view, tone, dramatic irony, and symbolism to display her adverse feelings towards the “rest cure” and how it contributes to mental instability of women suffering from depression.
This strict first-person narrative focuses solely on a mentally trouble young woman. The narrator is in a state of anxiety for much of the story, with situations of sarcasm, anger and desperation, a tone that Gilman wants the reader to share. Gilman shows the narrator’s decent into madness by her writings in a personal journal. The reader is limited by the personal accounts of the narrator and feels certain closeness, especially when the narrator’s husband/doctor John or Jennie approach while she is writing. The journal constrains the reader to the feelings of the narrator that contribute to Gilman’s tone throughout the story.
Dramatic irony is displayed in many events in the story. When the narrator first describes the bedroom that John has chosen for them, she attributes the room’s odd features such as: the nailed-down bed, the bars on the windows, “rings and things” in the walls, and the torn wallpaper. She believes the room used to be a nursery, but the reader realizes the room had been for an insane person. The reader interrupts the narrator’s infatuation and detail description of the wallpaper as her life spiraling into insanity. The narrator begins “to see” what the ambiguous wallpaper pattern is, “it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.” The next reference to the wallpaper states “the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern just as if she wanted to get out.” The reader interprets the narrator to be describing herself as the woman in the wallpaper after she states: “I wish John would take me away from here!” The narrator ironically realizes she is the woman in the wallpaper in the end of the story, “I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?” The women behind the pattern was an image of herself—she has been the one “stooping and creeping” around the room in the daytime, creating the “smooch” around the room. Another use of irony in this story is the narrator’s husband and doctor, John, wants to help his wife’s depression but ends up causing her to go insane by prescribing the “rest cure.” Gilman uses irony to show how women went insane when restricted to resting and create their own worlds in their heads when under the “rest cure” treatment.
The wallpaper is symbolic throughout the story. At first, the wallpaper was ripped, soiled, and “unclean yellow.” The narrator thought the worst part was the formless pattern. She then becomes fascinated with figuring out how the wallpaper is organized, “there are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will.” The narrator sees a woman in the sub-pattern with bars trapping her in. This is symbolic of how the narrator feels about her own life, trapped by the “rest cure,” her husband, and tradition. The wallpaper is used as a symbol of the domestic life that trapped many women during Gilman’s life, “sometimes I think there are a great many women behind (the wallpaper).” Gilman shows her disgust of the “rest cure” through the symbolism of the wallpaper and how the cure caused women to feel tapped in their lives.
Gilman accomplishes her point that the “rest cure” does not work and actually causes worst mental instability in depressed women by literary devices such as limited point-of-view through the narrator’s journal, tone, irony, and symbolism of the woman in the wallpaper being the narrator. Gilman sent a copy of “Yellow Wallpaper” to Silas Weir Mitchell, whom never acknowledged Gilman, but did change his “rest cure” treatment realizing that the cure did cause a worst mental state.

Live Performance

A live performance I attended recently was dance-a-lorus on November 14th, 2009. Dance-a-lorus is apart of the Cucalorus film festival held here in Wilmington. The dancers were all from The Dance Cooperative and all did outstanding performances. I really thought it was interesting having films played during the performance. The films really added to the overall power of some of the pieces.
The first dance was “runner’s world”. I wasn’t too impressed with this dance. It felt a little chaotic to me. I wasn’t very interested in observing the dance until I realized who one of the dancers were, my high school dance teacher, Jennifer Springer. Once I realized that was her and checked the program, I was more into the performance and focused on her movements, since that was one of my past dance mentors. There were some neat techniques used in this piece, but I felt like our class could have performed it just as well as the dancers in the actual performance.
The next dance I really enjoyed was “confusion.” I was moved bydace this solo piece. I thought the dancer really encompassed the confusion theme by her restrictive movement and the constant struggle of holding herself back. The video played during this performance was also a great prop. The setting of the film was at Greenfield Lake and had the dancer stuck on a broken bridge. I felt it was a very moving piece and had everyone’s attention in the audience.
The last dance that I really enjoyed was “loose ends.” This dance had many dancers, both male and female, and did what our class likes to do the most, tell a story. This dance also kept the audiences attention, even though it was about young adults. I loved their use of space throughout this performance and use of negative and positive space. The bad group would have negative space when trying to convert the one guy who was the center of the dance. This dance also has many uses of levels with the bad guy on the floor at the end and the good guy’s girl rising in the air.
Overall, I believe this was a great performance. Some dances didn’t catch my attention as well as others, but the use of the film projected behind the dancers helped keep my attention. I especially loved the “off base” performance piece where the projection film interacted with the dancers and then played their dance while they were actually doing their choreography on stage. This was a great show and I am very glad to have been able to attend it. The show made me realize that everyone is capable of creating and performing choreography, because I found myself saying, “Our dance class could have done that dance!” to my mother-in-law who attended it as well.

Group Project

For our group project, my group: Justina, Carolyn, Koto and I, decided to propose a solution to the food waste problem on campus. Food waste is an issue because it takes many years to deteriorate in landfills and causes the release of methane gas during its deterioration. Currently on campus, we have no program for our food waste. The dining areas on campus simply throw away leftovers and expired foods. The campus could create a compost pile, give leftovers to food banks, or donate them to farms that can feed it to livestock. The idea of donating excess food waste to local farmers came from food waste recycling programs at other university campuses around the nation. Campuses such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Kansas State University recycle food waste by composting. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a food scraps recycling program that includes specialized bins that state “FOOD WASTE ONLY” for students and campus employees to put food scraps and paper products. There are also various collection locations in food preparation areas and dish-wash lines in dining facilities around campus where employees can discard scraps. The scraps are placed in larger carts that are picked up by service vehicles, weighed, and delivered to an off campus compost site. In 2001, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recycled 1,174.40 tons of organic material, 33% of their total recycling efforts. Of that 33% of organic material recycled, 256.48 tons was food waste, 22% of total organic material recycled. (Fact Sheet-Food Waste Recycling, n.d.) Another campus that recycles food waste into compost is Kansas State University. Kansas State has an on campus composting program which includes picking up about 1,500 pounds worth of preparatory food waste from two campus dining centers weekly; then dropping it off at the student farm. At the student farm, they cover the waste with a layer of carbon-rich material like hay, and when the food waste breaks down into useable compost, the student will use it on their crops, such as vegetables, fruit trees and mushrooms. They also use other organic waste generated by the campus like leaves, tree limbs, seeds, grains and garden waste. The UNCW can use both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Kansas State University as templates for a food waste-recycling program in efforts to help control the food waste problem in landfills. UNCW may not have the facilities to create their own compost but could easily donate food waste to local farmers who already have compost systems in place. I think that UNCW may have tried to establish a compost pile before but due to county regulations caused us not to be able to build one. But donating to farms would be feasible and effective because it costs almost $70 per ton to bring waste to landfills. Donating it to farms would save money and would benefit the environment and farmer.

Oink Oink

My fiancé and I had our annual pig pickin’ together this past weekend. We had a great turn out and our 100 pound pig we killed was completely devoured. I had some of my family from Winston-Salem come and some people from UNCW came. I did think it was funny that my little sisters again did not eat the pig. We kill our own hogs and the last pig we killed was for my fiancé’s mother’s 50th birthday celebration, and my little sisters refused to eat the pig then and refused to eat it again this go around. Their rationale was that they petted and fed those pigs and they were pets and shouldn’t have been eaten. Well, let me tell you what, those pigs were delicious. We feed them mostly produce and protein pellets. My fiancé’s mother, sister, and brother work at Food Lion and we get a great deal from them by getting the old produce the store throws out. Food Lion usually tosses the old produce, but instead my fiancé’s family sorts through it removing plastic rappers and such and brings it to us to feed the pigs. It’s a sweet deal, well it is actually pretty stinky but you know. I guess his family knows that they are going to participate it eating the pig, so they don’t mind doing it.
We currently have three pigs. We have two females and a male. Our plan is for them to get busy and makes some babies. My fiancé knows a Portuguese guy who would buy a whole litter of suckling pigs. He says that the sucklings are the most tender and delicious. He has a custom built brick oven that just fits these suckling pigs and cooks them for holidays and special occasions. I guess suckling pigs are like a delicacy. Whenever these pigs decide to get busy and make some babies, it will put money in our pockets. Plus I bet the piglets will be so cute. I might keep one for myself to domesticate and make another pet out of it.
I think it’s funny that I went from a beach bum to a farm girl with horses, pigs, chickens, and dogs. I really enjoy it, even though it takes 30 minutes to feed all the animals in the morning and at night, it is worth it when I go riding and work with my horse and when we kill and eat the pigs. We are probably going to kill another pig soon for freezer meat. And when I say kill, I don’t mean that we actually kill it ourselves, we take it to Well’s pork products and they have an extensive method for cleaning and killing and freezing the pig for just $25 bucks. It is a lot of work to kill the pig yourself and can get unsanitary especially during summer months. I also like the fact that we know how our pigs are raised and fed. It adds to the enjoyment we eat it!

Visual Argument

The visual argument I found was a stop smoking cigarette ad that features six images of a cigarette that burning down consecutively throughout the images. The first image of the cigarette is not yet lit and has stick figure people on it. The pictures on the cigarette from right to left are: a person not smoking, a person smoking, a person sitting in a chair coughing, a person laying in a bed and the last being a coffin. The next image is of that same cigarette lit with the non smoker in ashes and the rest of the images still on the cigarette. The cigarette continues to burn, lastly leaving the coffin. The overall achievement of this ad is to get people to stop smoking. I bet if the images of the person with practically good health burning down to coffin were on every cigarette, people would quit smoking sooner. I know when I was a smoker, I would always look down at my cigarette too see how much I had left to smoke and if I kept seeing a coffin at the butt of my cigarette I probably would have quit sooner. I realized that smoking wasn’t healthy and was a terrible habit to have. I think that people are going to quit on their own, but the motivation of these ads is a constant reminder that quitting is necessary to live. You only quit when you are ready or when you die.
The overall theme of this ad is a constant reminder to quit or it will be the death of you. It is an argument that smokers face daily with themselves. Most smokers know that smoking cigarettes is harmful to their bodies but continue to do it anyways. Most smokers would say that they are addictive and that smoking with most likely will be the death of them. This ad tries to demonstrate what will happen to you over the course of smoking cigarettes. I still believe that these ads are just reminders to quit and that smokers have to make the decision on their own on whether or not to quit smoking. It is very easy to sit here and type that quitting is necessary to live, but when you are a smoker it is so hard to quit. I have been there and done it and failed a couple of times too. I think ultimately, I would still be a smoker if I were not pregnant. I first quit last March, smoked two packs in May and June, and then completely stopped in July when I found out I was pregnant. It is a difficult process to quit and some people never do or can until they die. This ad has a great argument to quit or die, and that is just the basic facts, if you don’t quit smoking you will end up in a coffin, bottom line.

Doctor's Appointment

So I went to the doctor today, I am 21 weeks so far. And I am still confused on how 40 weeks equals 9 months. I have gone on the internet and used the calculators to determine how many months I am, and the calculator puts me at 5 and half months. I feel that some people just don’t understand, when I say 21 weeks that is 5 and whatever months that I have been pregnant, caring a baby around in my tummy. I am still confused. But the doctor said everything was going fine all the measurement are normal for the time period, but I have been gaining wait a little faster than the “norm.” This is also confusing to me, how am I supposed to know that gaining 25 pounds in the past five months is bad. Doctors, now-a-days, want pregnant women to only gain between 20 and 25 pounds, which I have already passed. I have talked to numerous people, including my mom and mother-in-law and other friends who have had children and I have heard them say all different numbers, like: 45, 42, 36, and even 75 pounds, now that’s intense. I think everyone is just a little different in what they gain. As long as the baby and I are healthy, I don’t think it makes a different. But because I have gained this much weight, I go in for a gestational diabetes test on December 3rd, to make sure my baby is healthy. I would hate to have gestational diabetes because it generally causes women to have significantly heavier children. I am not for having a 13 pound baby. But I cannot physically tell where these 25 pounds is on my body, other than my tummy. I can still wear all my clothes, except some of my pants wont button and my shirts are like belly shirts. I have got a bunch of prego clothes to ease my comfort, because buttons on pants, even if the pants were big, pinched my stomach while I sit in desks at school. Stretch is better!

Another thing about the OB/GYN I go to is, I can’t find out what the sex of my baby is unless I pay for the additional sonogram test, which is $350. I don’t have that kind of money. And if the baby is a boy, I have to pay an additional fee at the hospital for it to be circumcised after I give birth. So I’m pretty upset with this. I just found out my sister-in-law, who is also pregnant, is having a little boy. I would love to know what I am having so I can further plan and buy things, the things that are gender-based, such as: diapers, clothes, and blankets and save for the circumcision. I sure the baby isn’t going to be upset if it’s wearing pink, but still. When I got my one and only sonogram, the baby did not cooperate with us to show us the sex. I guess I won’t be totally upset if I don’t find out what the sex is. All I want, and think everyone else agrees, is to have a healthy baby.

Words I use...

The words I use depend on my situation, time and place. I use different words around my friends than I would around my parents. The words I like to use the most are not fancy; not what you call SAT vocabulary words. But more like simple sentences with the usual verb “to be” in all of it tenses. I do like to cuss, which I am trying to stop since I have a little one in my tummy. But I would say fuck is one of my favorite words to use. I can add fuck to any fucking sentence and be just as please as if it weren’t there. I find myself cursing to my friends and my fiancé and my mom, but I would never cuss in front of my father or my greater relatives. I find it disrespectful. I like the word fuck though; my friend one year for my birthday got me a refrigerator magnet that says “Everything is funnier with the word FUCK in it,” which at the time was true, but like I said, I am trying to clean up my potty mouth.
I started cussing at the tender age of 8 and learned it in the back of the public school bus. Back then, I guess it was cool to cuss and we would all get a hoot out of all the curse words we could say and all the comments back to one another with creative uses of the words. I guess it made us feel older or more mature since we were taught by our parents not to cuss. I realize now, that I’m not proud of my decisions to cuss at such a young age, because it is a bad habit to kick. The curse words just slip out of my mouth so easily and are a part of my everyday language. If I was able to stop smoking cigarettes, which is said to be more addicting than heroine, than I can quit cursing. I will just have to somehow catch myself doing it and vindicate the word with a more intelligent word or non-curse word. I do find cursing almost ignorant, because it is like when you hear people curse nonstop they cannot think of better words to use, like they have a limited vocabulary. I feel that way about myself though. I know I have a proficient vocabulary, but I do not practice with those spiffy words, instead I settle for those bad habit curse words I learned in elementary school to portray my feelings and thoughts.
Maybe I should put on my Christmas list for someone to get me a “Word-of-the-day” calendar so I can start to replace my negative language with some new vocabulary. I also need to think before I speak, even with friends and family. At school, I try to think of what I am going to say when participating in class or talking to my professors. But outside of school, I just let the words fly out, no matter if they are curse words or not. I just need to practice on being a better orator in general. I am about to graduate and would hate slip out curse word during an interview or presentation.