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Essay / Psychoanalytic Analysis of Yellow Wallpaper
Yellow wallpaper presents a unique format that can be interpreted in several ways. Gilman adds meaning to his writings by bringing awareness to neglected topics and issues. The author achieves this in particular through his descriptive writing style. The yellow wallpaper seamlessly represents the concepts of identity, ego and Lacanian psychosis. The narrator's constant focus on the writing and the yellow wallpaper depict the exposure and coming to terms with her identity. It is obvious that there is a disturbance “in the narrator’s unconscious. The id was ruthlessly repressed; yet he tries to get noticed. The narrator experiences “waves in her unconscious that she is afraid to confront openly. For this reason, she wants to write about it and feels good when she does. However, when this source of emotional and intellectual outlet is denied to him, his mental health deteriorates rapidly. Throughout the story, she says, “I sometimes think that if I were well enough to write a little, it would relieve the press of ideas and give me some rest” (Gilman 846). The narrator's desire to write and be able to express her emotions freely shows her desire to satisfy her basic needs. Through John's restrictive control over the narrator, she is forced to fight back internally and hide what she believes will truly help her. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The narrator is bound by repressive gender roles and oppression (superego), but can't do anything about it, she fights back where she can through her feelings/irritation repressed by the psyche. She is fighting an internal battle and repressing her identity,” the superego is what is morally required of her to please her husband and breastfeed her baby, but an aspect of her identity prevents her from doing so. It is because of this fierce struggle between the id, the ego and the superego that it is inert. She is tormented by the endless struggle to maintain balance; becoming unstable, she begins to see a pattern on the wallpaper in her room. Her obsession with these patterns reveals that she is increasingly consumed by her repressed emotions. Finally feeling like she has escaped what had helped keep her captive, the narrator cries, “I'm out at last,” “Despite you and Jane!” And I took out most of the paper, so you can't put me back! (Gilman 855). Using her name in the third person shows her unconscious resentment towards her roles as a wife and mother. The narrator experiences a constant struggle between understanding herself and feeling free in such a controlled environment. As a result, she dissociates herself from her roles as mother, wife, and patient and in a sense loses her identity to escape what she believed was holding her captive. Lacanian theory elucidates the narrator's attempt to constitute himself through the yellow wallpaper and his diary. The fact that she is crawling around the room on all fours “testifies to the fact that she is now a case of psychosis.” The “wallpaper,” according to one critic, Hume, represents his “other or repressed self.” It is the desire that haunts her to assert herself socially. The desire for a strange and forbidden self; the illegible and the anarchic.” Her total disconnection from reality and to whom she showed that the constant constraints and isolation led to her instability. The narrator's inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality in the context of self-constitution describes the effect of the "mirror stage." She returns to her mirror stage by reverting to an infant-like state. She constantly explores the nature of reality – tactile and visual stimulation, hence her :/133/167.