Help with Proseminar paper

[Daniel Meir]

Hello there.
So I need to write a Proseminar paper about "The Yellow Wallpaper" (first draft due on friday), and so far I've had several ideas that went nowhere. My latest idea is maybe writing something about the differences between the deaths of male and female protagonists, what story purpose they serve, etc. (granted, the protagonist in TYW doesn't actually die, only goes insane, but I think I can argue that there's little difference). For the male side of the argument, the only thing that comes to mind is Quentin from The Sound and the Fury. Not sure how well that would work though.

So can anyone help me, maybe with another good example of a male protagonist dying or going crazy (preferably in a short, well-researched canonical type of text)?

Of course any other suggestions or thoughts would also be most welcome.

Thanks.

[Whosis]

Comparing men and women sounds like an idea considering how feminist "The Yellow Wallpaper" is. I don't think it has to be constricted to going insane; you should be able to include mental ailments. This would put Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck in the picture. You could easily watch the movie, and the novel form should also be a short read. Basically, one of the characters is retarded, and it affects him socially. He also tends to be reclusive like the woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper." And there is death if you really want that. I think it's the best idea I have without banging my head against a wall :). I remember reading "The Yellow Wallpaper." It sounds like you'll be doing a lot more for the text than I did.

And like in "The Yellow Wallpaper," the mental state of the man in Of Mice and Men leads to his undoing. Its hard to argue that he's gone insane; it's more like madness gone deeper into madness. What could be tolerated can no longer be tolerated from him. I hope my suggestions helps.

[R.F. Schiller]

Hey I studied "The Yellow Wallpaper" in my undergraduate 19th-century American literature class just last semester, so I am pretty fresh with the text. There is a tendency for more female suicides around that period than men, like Anna Karenina in Anna Karenina, Edna Pontellier in The Awakening and Lily Bart in The House of Mirth. Male protagonists that go crazy include Darl Bundren from Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Male suicides include Dorian Gray from The Picture of Dorian Gray and Septimus Smith (this one is probably my favourite example) from Mrs. Dalloway. I actually wrote a paper on "The Yellow Wallpaper" showing its narrative techniques that served as a transition from late Realism to early Modernism. I find that Gilman's writing style is quite similar to Virginia Woolf, which is why I find the Mrs. Dalloway comparison interesting. However, I'm not sure if it is a good idea to liken the insanity of the woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" to suicide. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gilman intended her to be an alter-ego of herself, and the woman eventually overcomes (or at least takes a step in the right direction) her insanity near the end (just like Gilman in real life) as she stands on top of her husband's fallen body, showing the power of the female. This is in contrast to something like The Awakening, where Edna drowns herself instead of overcoming her problems like Gilman's protagonist.

[qimissung]

As far as a direct counterpart, there's always The Telltale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. He goes insane for different reasons, obviously, and they are different periods, but I think there might be a fair amount there to discuss in terms of viewpoint, male and female, and style.

[Iain Sparrow]

So can anyone help me, maybe with another good example of a male protagonist dying or going crazy (preferably in a short, well-researched canonical type of text)?

Of course any other suggestions or thoughts would also be most welcome.

Thanks.

I've got the perfect short story for you, though I'm racking my brains right now and cannot recall the title!.. it's written by Richard Matheson, that much I'm certain of, and was used in an old Twilight Zone episode.

It's about a guy whose life is just sort of disappearing in bits and pieces. Elements of his day to day life are just... gone. He knows it, thinks he'll awake from it, perhaps it's madness overtaking him... a fate worse than death, of not existing and having never existed. As I remember the last scene; he's seated at a diner drinking a cup of coffee, and writing down these events just so he knows he isn't going insane... and the story stops mid-sentence. He's gone.

Perhaps someone knows the title of the story?



edit... I found it!.. it's called Disappearing Act. I think it has the qualities and themes you're after.

[Whosis]

That's a good story idea, qimissung. It must have been so long since I read Edgar Allen Poe, I counted that one out.

[AuntShecky]

I'm familiar with "Disappearing Act," and I can see the similarities in Gilman's earlier story, especially in terms of one's personality, ego, identity. It's a smart comparison, Iain Sparrow.

In my opinion the point of "The Yellow Wallpaper" isn't merely the fact that she goes crazy, but WHY her mental state deteriorates so quickly. In a way, the female protagonist is 'driven crazy' by her husband, just as in the movie "Gaslight."

Here is where the feminist angle comes in, and that's the theme to analyze. There is a definite reason for that specific title, and it's obvious what the yellow wallpaper ultimately symbolizes.

[Iain Sparrow]

I'm familiar with "Disappearing Act," and I can see the similarities in Gilman's earlier story, especially in terms of one's personality, ego, identity. It's a smart comparison, Iain Sparrow.


Thanks!
I've read better short stories than Matheson's "Disappearing Act", more insightful, more adventurous, darker... but none with a cooler ending.:) The writer just *blinks* out of existence.

[Daniel Meir]

So here's what I have so far. I ended up going somewhere completely different with it, and I'm still not sure it's such a great idea, but whatever. Obviously there's still a ways to go, but I guess it's a start. What do you guys think?
Also, can you figure out where I stole the name of the paper from (without googling it)?


The Exodus Inward

By Daniel Meir

Jane, the narrator and heroine of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's celebrated short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, is shut off from society by her doctor husband, and forbidden any activity and writing in particular. Gradually, she retreats further and further into the recesses of her own mind, as signified by the strangely patterned yellow wallpaper hanging in her room, until finally she appears to lose all touch with reality, and repeatedly crawls around in a circle. One can certainly view this chain of events in terms of cause and effect: Jane is alone in the house with no outside contact, she cannot write to express herself, and is thus drawn to the wallpaper, which only further deteriorates her mental state, finally leading to her collapse inward at the story's end. However, what if we were to look at it in reverse? Or rather, let us consider a person in the same predicament as Jane, but coming at it from the opposite direction. Which is to say, a person who is so withdrawn, so preoccupied with the inner workings of her mind, that she cannot write, cannot speak to anyone, cannot in fact, express herself in any way other than the rote repetition of some meaningless action or another, such as walking around in circles.
These symptoms sound a great deal like those associated with the condition known as Autism, or ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). In recent years this condition has gained some public attention, due to popular works such as Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project, and the television series The Bridge. Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who coined the term in 1910, described it as "…withdrawal of the patient to his fantasies, against which any influence from outside becomes an intolerable disturbance." (Kuhn and Cahn 364) This seems to fit rather well with Jane's behavior in the ending, but what if anything, does it mean, this reading of Jane's condition as a kind of reverse-ASD? On the surface, not much. For one thing, ASD is a developmental disorder, meaning it manifests during childhood, and from what we know of Jane, she was perfectly normal before falling into her current depression. For another, as mentioned above, the term "Autism" and the diagnosis it describes did not exist at the time The Yellow Wallpaper was written. However, Gilman was clearly very much concerned with issues of mental health when she wrote the story, as she herself said of it, "It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy…" (Gilman). Thus, I think it might not be completely useless to further explore this connection. After all, when we consider the plight of both Gilman's protagonist and of the person suffering from ASD, we see that they have much in common: Both wish to be understood; to connect with people; to be seen as more than just the sum of their "problems". The only difference is one was brought to this situation by society, and the other by genetics.
Over the almost four decades since the "rediscovery" of The Yellow Wallpaper by feminist scholars, much progress has been made by various writers towards solving Jane's problem. Jane is of course a representation of women being oppressed by the patriarchy, and by solving I mean gaining a greater awareness of their situation, and empathy to their plight. Might we not be able to use at least some of that progress to do the same for those who are oppressed by themselves?

Works Cited

Kuhn, Roland and Charles H. Cahn. "Eugen Bleuler's Concepts of Psychopathology." History of Psychiatry 15 (2004): 361-366. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'?" Forerunner (Oct. 1913): 19-20.