Weighing mental illness and treatments in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is what I chose as a topic for my proposed paper. Perkins expresses her plea of how misled the medical field is when faced with the dilemma on how to treat women who have done nothing out of the ordinary that isn’t natural human emotion. In Gilman’s novel, her message wasn’t bringing to light the importance of mental illness, but rather what qualified as mental illness to begin with and the irrational thought process behind the treatments given to powerless women for said illness in comparison with men.

In the article Gynecologists, Power and Sexuality in Modernist Texts, author Elizabeth Dolan Kautz spoke about how The Yellow Wallpaper “begins the progression with a personal story of bad medicine based on historical facts and then contextualizes the historical facts within the larger framework of the dominant male discourse”(Kautz). This “bad medicine” is a reference to the infamous Rest Cure that came about in the 1800s by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell was an American neurologist who believed that within a little over a month of complete solitude; anxiety, depression and other mental disorders would be treated. Dr. Mitchell was the same doctor who diagnosed Gilman during her bout of depression which made a turn for the worst and created inspiration for The Yellow Wallpaper. Kautz even brings up the narrator’s husband’s involvement, stating that, “His (John’s) diagnosis represents the “powerful and public” language of male scientists, backed up by socialization process that privileges “the rational, the practical and the observable” (Kautz). Because of the invincible power men had in the 19^th Century and lack of proper knowledge of women’s neurological state, many women suffered from accurate diagnosis and became worse off than they were before treatment began.

I picked this article because I appreciated how Kautz singled out the masculine ignorance in the medical field in their mission to “treat” women’s mental health. How men were able to lean on their powerful title of husband or doctor and not hear their wives or their patients when they were told and could clearly see that the Rest Cure method was not working. I plan on delving deeper into what analogies and symbolism I saw throughout The Yellow Wallpaper as well as what was defined as mental illnesses for women in the 1800s and other faulty methods of treatment that was given to them.

Works Cited

Kautz, Elizabeth D. “Gynecologists, Power and Sexuality in Modernist Texts.” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 28, no. 4, 1995, pp. 81. ProQuest, https://login.proxy055.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/195359684?accountid=10616.

I greatly admire Countee Cullen. He was a phenomenal writer, highly intelligent, and an openly gay black man in a time where that was almost unheard of. The reason I chose Cullen for this week’s post was because I loved the quote I heard in class and I found it in Countee Cullen: A Renaissance Poet by Jasmin Williams, an article that celebrates his life and some of his work.

In this article, William quotes Cullen from the Brooklyn Eagle where he says, ” If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET. This is what has hindered the development of artists among us. Their one note has been the concern with their race.” (Williams). I could not agree more with this statement. While many black writers from the early 1900s, such as Langston Hughes, took rightful pride in their work, I feel like they were not seeing themselves as a whole with the rest of America. And because black writers were separated from other (predominately white) writers, it was that much more significant to be labeled a black poet. But this bold statement that Cullen said about not wanting to be labeled as a black poet is not showing disrespect towards his race, but rather, enveloping it into the world of writing as a whole. I love it because Cullen is saying this talent has no color and no boundaries. That we are one, essentially, and when you read his work, you’re seeing the pure talent on paper and nothing more (at least nothing in a derogatory sense), and other black writers should see themselves that way as well.

Cullen continues with, ” But what I mean is this: I shall not write of negro subjects for the purpose of propaganda. That is not what a poet is concerned with. ” (Williams). I love the use of the word “propaganda” in this quote. It clearly shows that Cullen is well aware of the influence his writing has on different audiences, be it whatever race they are and how they perceive it. He would have a responsibility to uphold if he is always labeled a black poet, as if he represents all of Black America. Even though we know this clearly isn’t the case. No one man can represent all of his race, but can only add to that of the entirety of the human race. Which is the point I feel like Cullen is trying to make. That he is his own self. He is a poet, not wanting to be defined solely by his race, but by his incredible talent. But in America today, do we still use race as a way of describing artists, writers, and entertainers? And if we are initially “blinded” by that racial profile, how does that influence the way we see them?

Works Cited

Williams, Jasmin K. “Countee Cullen: A Renaissance Poet.” New York Amsterdam News, Apr, 2012, pp. 28. ProQuest, https://login.proxy055.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1010939571?accountid=10616.

When I first read T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, I immediately assumed it was about World War II and how Eliot himself was struggling to determine how to behave amongst a clueless and carefree pompous society who lived out their lives feigning normalcy in the midst of chaos. I honestly thought every time he would ask, “Do I dare?…Do I dare?”, he was asking if he should dare rattle society’s fragile cage of peace they had created for themselves (Eliot, 38). But that’s why I bask in deciphering poems because during class I saw a different approach, which to me almost came from left field, even though the word is in the title: Love.

As mentioned before, I couldn’t see where this poem was about love, but once I did, that’s when the questions came flooding in. Why is Prufrock having such a tough time trying to decide when or if he should ask this foreboding question? I understand if nerves got in the way but what’s so bad about this question that it would disturb the universe? In my opinion, usually when someone is afraid to ask something or get something off their chest -that has to do with love- and the result ends in disturbing the universe (or as I’d like to think, breaking away from the norm), it seems like all arrows are pointing to one possible conclusion: Maybe Prufrock was gay. Or struggling with his sexuality. Or was Eliot hinting about his own personal insecurities? And if so, was this riddle of a love poem the best way he could portray them during his time?

In my research, I found that Edward Lobb more or less supports my theory. Lobb points out Prufrock’s/Eliot’s possible gender anxieties and shows how the roles of man and woman are switched in the poem, “The woman is sexually frank and aggressive, impatient with the mere talk and therefore ‘male’, Prufrock is implicitly feminized as he talks at length to no apparent purpose, and senses that his own masculinity is called into question by his appearance and his hesitations…Prufrock takes on the woman’s traditional role of procrastinator and becomes ‘coy’…” (Lobb). By mentioning that Prufrock is “hesitant” and “coy” in a world back then where gender roles in writing were firmly set along a strict path of macho men and timid women speaks volumes. And one can’t help but wonder what personal issues Eliot might have been going through to create this character of Prufrock in this feminine way.

While Lobb didn’t directly state that Prufrock or Eliot could’ve been gay, throughout the article he mentions how the poem dallies with sex, metaphysics, as well as the questioning of masculinity, “(Prufrock) has explained his fear of raising metaphysical questions, however, only in sexual terms; would it not be possible for him to raise those questions in a non-erotic setting with the right woman or a male friend?” (Lobb). He also states that, “Prufrock’s positioning of himself as effectively androgynous is not simply an excuse for avoiding sexual pursuit but also…a way of encompassing contraries and avoiding definition.” (Lobb).

In conclusion, I see this beautiful poem that struggles with sexuality as a veil of sorts over Eliot’s own life. Which is ironic because Eliot insisted that readers distance “the man who suffers from the mind which creates” (Norton Anthology, 354). But could it honestly be said that nothing from the author’s personal life trickles into his or her writings, T.S. Eliot?

Works Cited

Lobb, Edward. “Ellipsis and Aposiopesis in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.” Connotations : a Journal for Critical Debate 22.2 (2013): 167-86. ProQuest. Web. 14 Sep. 2019.

Eliot, T.S. “The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume D: 1914-1945 Edited by Robert S. Levine, ninth edition, W. W. Norton & Company, 2017, pp. 354-358.

Hello my fellow peers! My name is Zena. Congrats for making it to my blog, make yourself at home, but don’t touch anything. The types of books I like to read tend to fall in the romance or thriller genres (brownie points if it’s a mix of both genres in one). It still boggles my mind that I like romance novels because I loathe sappy romance films. I think maybe it’s because I like to escape into the author’s ideal world of what love is. As far as thrillers are concerned, I simply love the emotions it brings out of me: excitement, fear, anxiety even. Add a murder into the pot and nothing is getting done that day.

I would like to describe myself as an avid reader…depending on my mood and the season as well as what I have on hand to read. So, for example, I could be an avid reader throughout the entire month of December because it’s cold, I’d most likely be inside most of the time, and there’s this underlying happiness because of Christmas and my birthday being in the same month.

As far as what I look forward to reading in class, we’ve already covered one, and that’s Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. I just admire that story because the way Charlotte writes is intimate in it’s diary-style approach and she makes the main character seem so “normal”. Another couple authors I’m looking forward to reading are Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. I recall reading them ages ago and would love to dip back into their world and break apart the meanings behind their stories.