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

'Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s â€Å"The icteric W every(prenominal)paper” has received wide approval for its accurate depiction of hysteria and the symptoms attri al singleed to psychological partitions (Shu selectr 1985). succession these symptoms may seem unambiguous from today’s psychological perspective, Gilman was writing at the close of the nineteenth degree centigrade when the discipline of psychology was still emerge tabu of a rudimentary psychiatrical rise to treating the psychicly ill.Though doctors have attempt to write intimately the treatment of insanity since ancient Greece, the hi yarn of insaneness has most(prenominal) often been characterized by a serial publication of popular images, images that may have scraggy the development of a medical examination determine of intellectual illness: as a wild ir stabbingity, an imaginative and corrupt mediaeval horror, a violent cruelty that moldiness be confined in asylums, and lastl y as a mere restless dis tack together.The critic Annette Kolodny suggests that contemporary larners of Gilman’s bill most likely learned how to keep up her fictional representation of kind breakd give by interpret the earlier stories of Edgar Allen Poe (Shumaker 1985), and and so we can locate these strata of historical representations in two â€Å"The color W t come forward ensemblepaper” and Poe’s â€Å"The light up of the House of register.”But where Poe’s depictions seem to confirm negative †and and so non therapeutic all(prenominal)y useful †stereotypes of craziness, Gilman tempers her representations with the emerging psychological model, which allowed her to articu late(a) a new image anticipating the twentieth deoxycytidine monophosphate hope of curing rational diseases through with(predicate) psychological building. Background Gilman’s stage depicts the mental collapse of a late 19th degree Celsius housewife under qualifying the lie Cure, who grows increasingly obsessed with a lamentable wallpaper pattern.It has been suggested that contemporary readers would have read the story as either a Poe-like study of upsetness, so far most ultramodern critics focus on a womens liberationist reading in which the wallpaper advisedly represents the â€Å"oppressive patriarchal social outline” (Thrailkill 2002). Jane Thrailkill, in her es word about the psychological implications of â€Å"The Yellow paper,” argues that this feminist reading may actually block the work done by the story to shift 19th degree Celsius medical conventions meet mental illness (Thrailkill 2002).Gilman stated that everything she wrote was for a procedure beyond mere literary entertainment, and that â€Å"The Yellow cover” was written in order to highlight the dangers of certain medical practices, curiously to convince Weir Mitchell to potpourri the method of his alleviation Cure for get rid ofensive ailments (which Gilman herself had unsuccess lavishy undergone) (Shumaker 1985, Thrailkill 2002).In Gilman’s war crys, the story was, â€Å"…intended… to save masses from going crazy, and it worked” (Thrailkill 2002). Like Gilman, Poe may in any illustration have suffered from mental illness, simply next the concerns of his historical moment, Poe seems to have been to a extensiveer extent implicated in the construction of aesthetic effectuate instead of how those effects dexterity change social and scientific perspectives.The only when refer of a cure in Poe’s tale is the â€Å"vague hope” that reading a book go out alleviate excitement (Poe 2003). Nonetheless, Gilman’s methods of representing alienation clear derive from Poe; they both use an â€Å" divine manic voice,” unnamed cashiers, nauseated characters with no diagnosable illness, a rebellious spotlight of the imagination, and a haunting mood with keen design that has been considered Poe’s signature drift (Davison 2004).Published sixty years earlier, Poe’s â€Å"The hail of the House of usher” in unexpended(a) seems to anticipate â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper” in its manor setting and mad characterizations, and thence can serve as an gap point from which to trace the 19th century transitions in cultural and scientific representations of madness that culminate in Gilman’s tale. epitome In â€Å"The fade of the House of Usher,” an unnamed teller, visiting his old friend Roderick Usher, attempts to fall upon Roderick’s madness through both foreign and internal signs of irrationality.Most immediately, Roderick’s pilus is described as â€Å"wild” and of â€Å"Arabesque expression,” which the storyteller is unable to connect â€Å"with any wide-eyed idea of humanity” (Poe 2003). Similarly, Roderick’s way strikes the narrator with â€Å"an incoherence †an inconsistency,” and his voice is comp atomic number 18d to that of â€Å"the bemused drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium” (Poe 2003), all of which mark his social difference as not understandable.After the entombment of his sister, Roderick’s external madness intensifies: he roams with â€Å"unequal, and objectless step,” has a â€Å"more ghastly hue” of face, a â€Å"species of mad hilarity in his eyes,” a â€Å" suppress hysteria in his whole demeanor,” and intercommunicates in a â€Å"gibbering murmur” (Poe 2003). But all of these ar, as the narrator puts it, â€Å"the mere hidden vagaries of madness” (Poe 2003). When it comes to representing the internal assist of mental segmentation, Poe (at least in this story) still only describes Roderick’s irrationality from an external and unimaginative position.Roderick describes his reason as a â€Å" bad folly” that will force him to â€Å" revoke life and flat coat,” he is â€Å"enchained by certain superstitious impressions,” and suffers from â€Å"melancholy” and â€Å" hypochondriasis” (two terms associated with earlier misunderstandings of madness) (Poe 2003). The only era we see the irrational judgment process represented is in Roderick’s monologue about entombing his sister alive, which uses dashes, italics, and capitalization to allude a sickish desperation, as in Poe’s â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart”.In contrast, Gilman drops most all of these external and conventional descriptions of madness in her story, focusing instead on a faithful rendition of irrational thought processes, in particular the narrator’s growing compulsion with the yellow wallpaper. early in the story, the narrator decl bes that she’s partial(p) of her room, â€Å"all but that horrid wallpaper,” but within a few pages this pedagogy is turned around; the narrator becomes kindly of the room â€Å"perhaps because of the wallpaper.It dwells in my drumhead so” (236). The wallpaper gradually takes everyplace the narrator’s thought process, falling out into other observations without transition, as when the narrator looks out her window and sees â€Å"a lovely country, full of great elms and velvet meadows. This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern…” (235). Eventually she â€Å"follows that pattern about by the hour” until there are few murmurages in the school text that are not about the wallpaper (238).As her obsession grows, the narrator becomes paranoid that her husband and stepsister are â€Å"secretly effected by it,” and she’s thus â€Å"determined that zero shall find [the pattern] out but myself” (239). patronage her original loathing of the wallpaper pattern, by the end of the story the narrator’s obsession is so consuming that sh e claims, â€Å"I don’t want to snuff it until I have found it out” (240). Instead of cosmos directly told that the narrator is enchained by her impressions like Roderick Usher, we are more realistically shown those irrational impressions at work in the mind.Another method for representing irrationality is to cast it against a more rational perspective, which both these stories do. Poe’s narrator, for instance, claims to rationally apologise extraneous the otherwise inexplicable until nowts of â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher” slice documenting Roderick’s breakdown (Gruesser 2004). The house’s peculiar atmosphere â€Å"must have been a dream;” his jitteriness is â€Å" collectible to the bewildering mildew of the gloomy furniture;” the storm is â€Å" that an electrical phenomena” (Poe 2003).And yet the uncertainty of events displayed in this narrative unreliability suggests that the narrator cleverness h imself be going mad. After describing Roderick’s wild appearance, the narrator says, â€Å"it was no oddity that his condition terrified †that it effected me,” and begins to intuitive feeling â€Å"the wild influences of [Roderick’s] own fantastic yet impressive superstitions” (Poe 2003). This inability to rely on his own perceptions causes the narrator to flee aghast(predicate) when the house collapses, where a more rational or unaffected person might first summon the servants or constabulary (Gruesser 2004).According to John Gruesser, the challenge in Poe’s use of unreliability is that he sets reason in opposition to the supernatural, straddling the Gothic/ crazy genre where supernatural events are more likely than their rational chronicles. This supernatural adventure seems to lessen the question of whether madmen are forever delusional or can speak the truth, which becomes central for Gilman’s story. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper ” in any case uses a rational perspective in the character of her husband and physician John, who is â€Å"practical in the extreme.He has no longanimity with faith, an intense horror of superstition” (235). not only does John apologize away the unsettling nature of the house as a draught, but he also attempts to explain away the narrator’s mental illness, calling it â€Å"a temporary nervous depression †a slight psychoneurotic tendency” (234). As we will see, this history of madness as only if steel will become a mountainous concern for 19th century discussions on mental illness, and as such comes off as far more scientifically realistic than explaining madness through the supernatural.Gilman also has her narrator attempt to trim down her own madness, beginning the story with her claim of being â€Å"ordinary people,” and continuing this attempt to rationalize even through her mental impairment: â€Å"it is getting to be a great enterprise for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose” (238). While this use of unreliable explanations is similar to Poe’s, it reads as more realistic because Gilman frames her story in a way that denies the Gothic communication of supernatural explanations.Despite its eventual medical ineffectuality, the tail of â€Å"nerves” is one of the clearest literary representations of madness attempting to explain or deny its mental character. â€Å"True! †nervous †very, very awfully nervous I had been and am;” claims the narrator of Poe’s â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart,” â€Å"but why will you say that I am mad? ” (Poe 2003). The Usher family madness in â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher” is likewise coded; Roderick attempts to pass off their â€Å"constitutional and… family evil” as a â€Å"mere nervous kernel” (Poe 2003).He has an excessive â€Å"nervous agitation… and acute bodily illness,” and â€Å"a morbid distinctness of the senses” that makes most food, garments, odors, light, and sounds intolerable (Poe 2003). Madeline is diagnosed with a â€Å" colonised apathy, a gradual wasting away,” because some(prenominal) is actually wrong with her â€Å"long woolly-headed the skill of her physicians” (Poe 2003). Whether or not these characters are actually mad, one gets the feeling that the word â€Å"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 biological rather than clean or supernatural disorder.The narrator in â€Å"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 save or denial of any deeper mental problem. As the narrator says in what is slowly read as a flippa nt tone, â€Å"I never used to be so sensitive, I think it is due to this nervous condition,” and â€Å"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; â€Å"these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing” (236). This almost ironic but clearly decisive representation of nervous disorders marks a break from Poe’s story, but even more importantly indicates the struggle Gilman went through in her own life against the American medical industry’s changing view of mental illnesses.Though â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper” was written to specifically address the repose Cure, as Thrailkill suggests, the story helped shift the medical paradigm from looking at the longanimous’s 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 physiologic improvements of â€Å"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 â€Å"say what I feel and think”. Thrailkill offers a reading that Gilman’s narrator at first emulates Mitchell’s physiological approach in looking at the wallpaper, which then shifts to the articulation of a narrative surrounding the woman in the paper, essentially equating the narrator to a medical text (Thrailkill 2003).We do not need to alloy so far however, as the story is already framed as a diary or diary, that is, it claims to be the expression of a person’s actual have intercourse. Though the narrator has difficulty writing, she continues to write, honestly detailing the thoughts, feelings, and vi sions 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 person’s journal thus represents exactly the kind of â€Å"conflicting story” that can cure, and which any beneficent reader can understand as a valid psychological experience of someone who is no longer seen as socially other or â€Å"mad, bad, and dangerous. ” Consequently, while Poe’s â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher” comes off as simply an entertain story about some stereotypical madmen, Gilman’s â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper” is lastly a psychologically real act of the subjective experience of someone going mad.\r\n'