A Creepy Story

           If you will excuse my pun, I believe that The Yellow Wallpaper is a creepy story.  In all seriousness, however, the story is a very good insight to the treatment of women and the mentally insane in the nineteenth century. The narrator (who might be named Jane) is kept in isolation by her husband because he believes that it is for her own good: “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus — but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition…” (Gilman 2). In today’s society, a husband keeping his wife in a room that has bars over the window could get him arrested for abuse, but in the nineteenth century, it seems that such treatment was not uncommon. Other novels of the era like Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea depict similar treatments of women. In the gender-equal world of today, a woman is not considered to be the property of her husband, nor do social conventions require her to obey his every command. Also, modern women can write if they wish to, unlike the narrator, whose husband “hates to have [her] write a word” (Gilman 3).

Therefore, due to the vast differences of social conduct between Victorian-era England and modern society, this story can only truly make sense when studying it in the context of nineteenth century. The reader must understand that women in that time period had much less rights than they do today in order to learn more in depth about the social conventions of the era. If the reader does understand some of the story’s context, he or she will gain great insight about the treatment of women and mentally ill in the nineteenth century.

Work Cited

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. N.p., n.d. United States Library of Medicine. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.

Heart of Gothic Novels

            Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness certainly fits within the constraints of gothic literature. The short novel contains many of the elements in traditional gothic literature, such as ghosts and a gloomy and horrid setting. Marlow creates visions of Kurtz’s ghost, and he often depicts Kurtz as a nightmare that haunts him. The ghostly and controlling nature of Kurtz are classic elements of other gothic novels such as Weathering Heights in which ghosts and the controlling Heathcliff are present.

Marlow describes Kurtz in nightmarish and ghostly manners after his death: “I had a vision of him on the stretcher, opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived—a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night…” (Conrad 68). Marlow describes seeing Kurtz as some nightmarish figure that devours the Earth and all of the people on it, a vision that would certainly scare most people. Moreover, Marlow says that Kurtz is ghost because he lives in him as a shadow even after his death. Kurtz may not be a ghost in the traditional sense of a specter that haunts a house, but he does haunt Kurtz for the rest of his life as a dark shadow. The dead Kurtz is a reminder of the darkness of that resides in some places of the world. Marlow has a knowledge that haunts him, unlike the other men on the boat who are ignorant of the horrors that Marlow has experienced, because Kurtz is a dark ghost that haunts Marlow.

 The novel’s setting is frequently illustrated as dark and foggy, which creates an eerie feeling present in most gothic literature. The boat, before the native people attack it, is covered in an immense fog while traveling on the Congo. The fog creates a suspenseful feeling that is common among gothic literature. The exotic setting of Africa is also gothic in that most gothic novels do contain a setting that the protagonist is unfamiliar with.

Heart of Darkness contains many gothic elements such as references to ghosts, nightmares, and eerie settings, which can lead a reader to classify the novel as gothic.

Work Cited

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Dover Publications, 1902. Print.