Author: Ganna Sizikova

Welcome To The Week – The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman

1) Role of the woman. What can a woman know about her health or well-being when two well-educated men (doctors) say she is fine?
“John is a physician, and PERHAPS—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see, he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.
But what is one to do?”
The passage of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman is an ideal illustration of the woman’s perception at the time the story was published. The woman did not have to have a personal opinion, even on her health. If the man said she was fine, her ideas on that matter were rejected because of a so-called lack of expertise. The story’s heroine instinctively knows what would be better for her, to have some reading or writing, the trip to her friends or renovation. However, her opinion does not bother her husband, who thinks that he knows better because he is a physician of a high standard, so the narrator/main character devalues her feelings by repeating the same question, “what is one to do?” over and over again, introducing the readers to the situations in which women of that time were, they did not have a say even on their own bodies, even inside their family.

2) The use of forced treatment. How helpful was mental health medicine when The Yellow Wallpaper was published?
“John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.
But I don’t want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!”
A fast Google search can lead us to numerous articles on who Weir Mitchell was and what his treatment of women involved: “Women most often received the Rest Cure, which typically involved six to eight weeks of isolation, bed rest, a high-calorie diet, massage, and electrotherapy.” (the information from nyamcenterforhistory.org). The women who did not act as men wanted, being overly emotional or depressed, could be placed in so-called medical institutions for the forced treatment of their disorders. Whether this treatment had any positive results was questionable since it had little to do with helping patients with their mental diseases, it was more a tool for making women act appropriately.

3) Love or abuse? Is John Action out of love?
Throughout the reading of the story, I was catching myself on the idea that the heroine’s husband was doing that on purpose. He did not seem to be interested in her feeling better. The heroine says that herself.
There was a romanticized perception of men-woman relationships where a man should take responsibility for a woman and ensure they figure out all the problems. Still, from today’s point of view, the situation in which we see the heroine is disastrous. She suffers from postpartum depression, and her husband does everything to make her feel worse: he isolates her in the cottage far away from her family and friends, not allowing her to visit them or even write a letter.
The heroine tells the reader how her husband loves her so much, but the evidence she uses to support that statement shoves the opposite. He loves and cares for her, but he will not let her choose a room where they will live; he does not even want to find a compromise and renovate the room he chose so the narrator would feel comfortable there. “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.
I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more,” she says about him, saying that he controls every aspect of her life, and she feels guilty for not appreciating his care.

Casting Characters in The Jungle

Henry Cavill as Jurgis
Mckenna Grace as Ona

From the very beginning of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, we meet the novel’s main characters, Ona Lukoszaite and Jurgis Rudkus. To introduce us to the characters, the author shows us the contrast between them. Describing Ona, he emphasizes how small she is, saying, “she was so young – not quite sixteen – and small for her age, a mere child.”(chapter 1). To describe Jurgis author uses illustration rather than the actual description, “Jurgis could take up to a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound quarter of beef and carry it into a car without a stagger, or even a thought.” (chapter 1). Yes, we learn that he has “broad shoulders and giant hands” (chapter 1), but this kind of description does not provide enough image of Jurgis and of what he is capable.
Based on the description given to us as readers on the very first pages of the novel, Henry Cavill will fit perfectly for the Role of Jurgis since he is in the perfect physical shape to illustrate the strength and health of the character on the screen. For the role of Ona, I would like to see Mckenna Grace, who is the same age as the character, so that she can demonstrate the character’s youth and innocence on the screen.
I would stick to the close adaptation of the novel since the detailed description of the time and circumstances of the life of the characters is crucial for this novel. It was the author’s main purpose to bring readers’ attention to every single tiniest detail of both the living conditions and work environment of the people so the reader could “see” on the book pages what they will never see in their real life.