November 11, 2022
Our in-class discussion of different feminist short stories was very interesting, and led me to dig deeper into one of the stories we discussed. The story I liked the most was "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I enjoyed this story so much that I will be writing about it for my essay that in this course.
So I don't spoil anything that is in my essay by analyzing the story, I am going to discuss why this story reminds me of the movie The Shining.
I am a horror movie geek and The Shining is obviously a classic. I didn't really draw this comparison the first time I read "The Yellow Wallpaper" in high school, but upon researching online, I found out that others think the same as I do.
The emphasis on insanity and mental health is present in both stories. In The Shining, Jack becomes one with the hotel and goes insane because of it. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator becomes one with the wallpaper and goes insane. Both characters are also isolated from society, as the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is locked in a room by her husband due to postpartum depression and Jack in The Shining is isolated in a hotel far away from civilization.
The difference in the two relies on their sexes. I can confidently make the claim that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" has an epiphany rather than a mental breakdown. Her epiphany, however, takes the form of a complete mental breakdown and causes her to act as an insane person would. Jack in The Shining was a seemingly normal (to an extent) person who went insane and had no epiphany moment. Even if someone made an argument that he did have an epiphany, the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" had a more positive reason for mental breakdown whereas Jack just started murdering people.
I attached one of the most famous clips from The Shining below that perfectly depicts Jack's mental breakdown.