“The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”: A Comparison Introduction

Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow cover has received wide praise for its accurate depiction of indulgence and the symptoms attributed to sane breakd suffers (Shumaker 1985). mend these symptoms may seem obvious from todays psychological perspective, Gilman was writing at the close of the nineteenth coulomb when the discipline of psychology was still uphill out of a rudimentary psychiatric cash advance to treating the psychologically ill.Though doctors form attempted to write well-nigh the treatment of insanity since ancient Greece, the hi figment of folly has most often been characterized by a series of popular images, images that may have stunted the developing of a medical model of mental illness as a barbarous irrationality, an imaginative and alloy gothic horror, a violent cruelty that must be confined in asylums, and lastly as a mere nervous disorder.The critic Annette Kolodny suggests that contemporary indorsers of Gilmans story most the likes ofly knowing ho w to follow her fictional representation of mental breakdown by reading the earlier stories of Edgar Allen Poe (Shumaker 1985), and indeed we quarter locate these strata of historical representations in both The Yellow paper and Poes The Fall of the Ho handling of Usher. further where Poes depictions seem to confirm negative and thus not therapeutically useful stereotypes of madness, Gilman tempers her representations through the emerging psychological model, which allowed her to articulate a new image anticipating the 20th century hope of curing mental diseases through psychological expression. Background Gilmans story depicts the mental collapse of a late nineteenth century housewife under dismissal the Rest Cure, who grows increasingly obsessed with a disturbing wallpaper pattern.It has been suggested that contemporary readers would have read the story as either a Poe-like study of madness, yet most modern critics charge on a feminist reading in which the wallpaper intention ally represents the oppressive patriarchal genial system (Thrailkill 2002). Jane Thrailkill, in her es rank about the psychological implications of The Yellow wallpaper, argues that this feminist reading may rattling block the work done by the story to shift 19th century medical conventions ring mental illness (Thrailkill 2002).Gilman stated that e genuinelything she wrote was for a purpose beyond mere literary entertainment, and that The Yellow Wallpaper was written in order to highlight the dangers of certain medical practices, particularly to convince Weir Mitchell to change the method acting of his Rest Cure for nervous ailments (which Gilman herself had unsuccessfully undergone) (Shumaker 1985, Thrailkill 2002).In Gilmans words, the story was, intended to save people from going crazy, and it worked (Thrailkill 2002). Like Gilman, Poe may also have suffered from mental illness, but following the mentions of his historical moment, Poe seems to have been much interested in the construction of aesthetic effects instead of how those effects might change loving and scientific perspectives.The unaccompanied mention of a cure in Poes tale is the vague hope that reading a book lead relieve excitement (Poe 2003). Nonetheless, Gilmans methods of representing madness clearly fall from Poe they both use an inspired manic voice, unnamed storytellers, nervous characters with no diagnosable illness, a seditious foregrounding of the imagination, and a haunting mood with rational design that has been considered Poes signature style (Davison 2004).Published cardinal years earlier, Poes The Fall of the House of Usher in particular seems to anticipate The Yellow Wallpaper in its manor setting and mad characterizations, and thus can serve as an opening straits from which to trace the 19th century transitions in cultural and scientific representations of madness that culminate in Gilmans tale. Analysis In The Fall of the House of Usher, an unnamed narrator, visi ting his old friend Roderick Usher, attempts to describe Rodericks madness through both outdoor(a) and internal signs of irrationality.Most immediately, Rodericks hair is described as wild and of Arabesque expression, which the narrator is unable to connect with all simple idea of humanity (Poe 2003). Similarly, Rodericks manner strikes the narrator with an incoherence an inconsistency, and his voice is comp bed to that of the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium (Poe 2003), all of which mark his social fight as not understandable.After the entombment of his sister, Rodericks external madness intensifies he roams with unequal, and objectless step, has a much unforgiving hue of face, a species of mad hilarity in his eyes, a restrained hysteria in his exclusively demeanor, and speaks in a gibbering murmur (Poe 2003). But all of these are, as the narrator puts it, the mere secret vagaries of madness (Poe 2003). When it comes to representing the internal process of mental breakdown, Poe (at least in this story) still notwithstanding describes Rodericks irrationality from an external and stereotypical position.Roderick describes his condition as a deplorable folly that will force him to abandon carriage and reason, he is enchained by certain superstitious impressions, and suffers from melancholy and hypochondria (two landmarks associated with earlier misunderstandings of madness) (Poe 2003). The and time we see the irrational thought process represented is in Rodericks monologue about entombing his sister alive, which uses dashes, italics, and capitalization to indicate a nervous desperation, as in Poes The Tell-Tale Heart.In contrast, Gilman drops nearly all of these external and stereotypical descriptions of madness in her story, focusing instead on a flock rendition of irrational thought processes, in particular the narrators growing obsession with the yellowish wallpaper. Early in the story, the narrator declares that shes fond of h er room, all but that horrid wallpaper, but at heart a a few(prenominal) pages this statement is turned around the narrator becomes fond of the room perhaps because of the wallpaper.It dwells in my mind so (236). The wallpaper gradually takes over the narrators thought process, breaking into separate observations without transition, as when the narrator looks out her window and sees a lovely country, full of great elms and velvet meadows. This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern (235). Eventually she follows that pattern about by the hour until there are few passages in the text that are not about the wallpaper (238).As her obsession grows, the narrator becomes paranoid that her maintain and stepsister are secretly make by it, and shes thus determined that nobody shall lift the pattern out but myself (239). Despite her original loathing of the wallpaper pattern, by the end of the story the narrators obsession is so consuming that she claims, I dont want to leave until I have f ound it out (240). Instead of being directly told that the narrator is enchained by her impressions like Roderick Usher, we are more than realistically shown those irrational impressions at work in themind.Another method for representing irrationality is to dangle it against a more rational perspective, which both these stories do. Poes narrator, for instance, claims to rationally explain away the otherwise inexplicable events of The Fall of the House of Usher while documenting Rodericks breakdown (Gruesser 2004). The houses peculiar atm must have been a dream his nervousness is due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture the push is merely an electrical phenomena (Poe 2003).And yet the uncertainty of events displayed in this narrative unreliability suggests that the narrator might himself be going mad. After describing Rodericks wild appearance, the narrator says, it was no wonder that his condition terrified that it effected me, and begins to feel the wild influe nces of Rodericks own fantastic yet impressive superstitions (Poe 2003). This inability to rely on his own perceptions causes the narrator to flee aghast when the house collapses, where a more rational or unaffected somebody might first summon the servants or police (Gruesser 2004).According to John Gruesser, the challenge in Poes use of unreliability is that he sets reason in opposition to the supernatural, straddling the Gothic/Fantastic genre where supernatural events are more likely than their rational explanations. This supernatural possibility seems to lessen the question of whether madmen are always neurotic or can speak the truth, which becomes central for Gilmans story. The Yellow Wallpaper also uses a rational perspective in the character of her husband and physician John, who is practical in the extreme.He has no patience with faith, an incisive horror of superstition (235). Not only does John explain away the unsettling nature of the house as a draught, but he also att empts to explain away the narrators mental illness, duty it a temporary nervous depression a slight hysterical tendency (234). As we will see, this explanation of madness as merely nerves will become a large concern for 19th century discussions on mental illness, and as such comes murder as far more scientifically realistic than explaining madness through the supernatural.Gilman also has her narrator attempt to rationalize her own madness, number 1 the story with her claim of being ordinary people, and continuing this attempt to rationalize even through her mental deterioration it is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous impuissance I suppose (238). While this use of unreliable explanations is similar to Poes, it reads as more realistic because Gilman frames her story in a way that denies the Gothic discourse of supernatural explanations.Despite its eventual medical ineffectuality, the label of nerves is one of the clearest literary representa tions of madness attempting to explain or deny its mental character. True nervous very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am claims the narrator of Poes The Tell-Tale Heart, but why will you say that I am mad? (Poe 2003). The Usher family madness in The Fall of the House of Usher is in like manner coded Roderick attempts to pass off their constitutional and family evil as a mere nervous affection (Poe 2003).He has an lush nervous agitation and acute bodily illness, and a morbid acuteness of the senses that makes most food, garments, odors, light, and sounds intolerable (Poe 2003). Madeline is diagnosed with a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away, because whatever is actually wrong with her long baffled the acquirement of her physicians (Poe 2003). Whether or not these characters are actually mad, one gets the feeling that the word nerves is used by Poe to explain or make legible the Usher family condition for the mid-19th century reader, indicating that it may be a biol ogical rather than moral or supernatural disorder.The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper also articulates her condition as nervousness, but within the late-19th century occlusion of madness as merely nerves, this term seems to indicate less an explanation as much as an excuse or denial of any deeper mental problem. As the narrator says in what is easily read as a flippant tone, I never used to be so sensitive, I think it is due to this nervous condition, and of course it is only nervousness that causes her actions to require a greater effort (235).Though her husband has told the narrator that her nervous case is not serious, she expresses a new dissatisfaction with this diagnoses these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing (236). This almost ironic but clearly critical representation of nervous disorders marks a break from Poes story, but even more importantly indicates the struggle Gilman went through in her own life against the American medical industrys changing view of menta l illnesses.Though The Yellow Wallpaper was written to specifically address the Rest Cure, as Thrailkill suggests, the story helped shift the medical paradigm from looking at the patients body to listening to their words (Thrailkill 2003). The story is permeated with this desire to talk beyond the traditional psychiatric model not only is the narrator forbidden to write, but her physician husband only sees her physical improvements of flesh and color, paternally dismissing any of her objections (240).To write, however, is the one thing the narrator consistently feels would make her well it is a relief to say what I feel and think. Thrailkill offers a reading that Gilmans narrator at first emulates Mitchells physiologic approach in looking at the wallpaper, which then shifts to the articulation of a narrative surrounding the charr in the paper, essentially equating the narrator to a medical text (Thrailkill 2003).We do not deficiency to stretch so far however, as the story is alre ady framed as a daybook or journal, that is, it claims to be the expression of a persons actual experience. Though the narrator has problem writing, she continues to write, honestly detailing the thoughts, feelings, and visions attending her mental breakdown in a manner that anticipates the 20th century psychological recognition that madness contains a truthful lucidity (Davison 2004).A mentally unstable persons journal thus represents exactly the kind of irrelevant story that can cure, and which any sympathetic reader can understand as a valid psychological experience of someone who is no long-range seen as socially other or mad, bad, and dangerous. Consequently, while Poes The Fall of the House of Usher comes off as simply an entertaining story about some stereotypical madmen, Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper is ultimately a psychologically real portrayal of the subjective experience of someone going mad.