Consider the Theme of Transformation in Metamorphosis and the Yellow Wallpaper. free essay sample

Consider the theme of transformation in Metamorphosis and The Yellow Wallpaper. Apart from the very apparent theme of transformation that runs through both stories there are also many underlying themes connected with transformation, not just physical but also mental. Metamorphosis sees Gregor wake up one morning physically transformed overnight into a huge insect, by the description given by Kafka, possibly similar in appearance to a cockroach, although the description given does not allow the reader to make any definite identification. He has been the breadwinner of the family, working as a travelling salesman to keep a roof over the heads of his mother, father and younger sister. This is a service that he has got no thanks or recognition for from his parents who do nothing towards the up keep of the household and just expect Gregor to take care of everything. The Yellow Wallpaper, in contrast, sees the nameless protagonist narrating her confinement to an old nursery in a large house, due to a temporary nervous depression, by her doctor husband. The enforced rest is Gilman’s own version of Silas Weir Mitchell’s treatment of prolonged rest and lack of stimulation, a treatment that Gilman herself had been subjected to. Her mental state gradually transforms throughout the story, until finally she becomes reduced to a childlike state, crawling round the edge of the room, in a relatively sinister way, not even recognising her husband, or stopping when he gets in her way. Gregor’s relationship with his family undergoes a severe transformation following his unfortunate situation. He goes from being someone who has at least been needed, even though he has not been appreciated, by his family, to something that is despised, feared and neglected. His family themselves also undergo some transformation in the way they conduct themselves. With the misfortune of Gregor they have to become more responsible for themselves, and self sufficient if they are to retain their home. It also considers the transformation through the length of the story of Grete from a girl into a young woman, realised by her parents at the very end of the story. When comparing the two stories there are differences in who undergoes changes. The Yellow Wallpaper sees solely the protagonist changing both mentally and physically, in contrast Metamorphosis sees Gregor mainly physically changing and having to adapt to life as a bug and it is his family that change mentally to cope with the situation they have found themselves thrust into. It would be expected that through his family’s treatment of Gregor that his love and devotion for them would morph into a type of hatred or resentment, however his want and need to be with them never changes throughout. Even his last service is selfless and he dies for the good of his family after hearing his sister uncontrollably upset about the creature that has taken the place of her brother. â€Å"We must try to get rid of it, it will be the death of both of you, I can see that coming. When one has to work as hard as we do, all of us, one can’t stand this continual torment at home on top of it. At least I can’t stand it any longer. † (Kafka 2005) Gregor had always been close to his sister and had indeed been hoping to send her to study music. In his sister’s words he finally realises that he will never be accepted back into the fold of the family and will only continue to cause them hurt if he continues to stay. The only choice he has is to give in to the infection that has set in from the wound of the apple embedded in his back, and to pass away quietly. On the realisation that he is dead the Samsas almost seem to have a small attack of conscience, they huddle together and shed tears in the privacy of the parent’s bedroom and Mrs Samsa nearly stops the charwoman brushing his corpse aside. ‘I should say so,’ said the charwoman, proving her words by pushing Gregor’s corpse to one side with her broomstick. Mrs Samsa made a movement as if to stop her, but checked it. † (Kafka 2005) Grete realises just how neglected Gregor was as she sees him close up and prolonged for the first time since he first transformed, â€Å"Just see how thin he was. It’s such a long time since heâ€⠄¢s eaten anything. † (Kafka 2005) Unlike Gregor the protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper does have some control over her destiny as she demonstrates. Gilman writes her story as a demonstration of the effects of gender inequality, and the male patriarchal hold over women. The narrator slowly slips into a deeper psychosis the more time she spends alone in the room, however in her studies of the text Catherine Golden questions whether her transformation is simply a sign of her increasingly hallucinatory state or a larger awareness of the limitations of her patriarchal world. This is a very interesting question and one that has many possible answers. The text itself is open to many interpretations and has been received by critics in several different ways. The wallpaper itself morphs gradually the more time the narrator spends looking at it. At first just dim shapes are seen behind the pattern the narrator tells us that â€Å"The dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. † (Gilman 1998) The theme of imprisonment is apparent from the first mention of something behind the pattern as the narrator tells us that â€Å"the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out. (Gilman 1998) The feeling of being imprisoned seems to match not only the mental state of the narrator, but also the position of her too. She is imprisoned in a world where she is expected to be loyal and subordinate to her husband and have no thoughts of her own. She is not even able to write and has to do it in secret when nobody is in the room. The morphing of the wallpaper is in direct correlation to the breakdown of the narrator’s own mental state. As the patterns form into images that become gradually clearer, so the narrator’s mind becomes more disturbed. She becomes trapped not only in the room but also within the wallpaper that surrounds her, as she finds herself staying up all night to watch the goings on behind the wallpaper. Her mental health suffers as a consequence as it almost becomes locked in a strange tug of war with the wallpaper over which is going to have the final influence. In the same way that the narrator is trapped in The Yellow Wallpaper, so Gregor and his family are in Metamorphosis. When they are faced with the fate that has befallen Gregor they become immediately encased in an impossible situation that they can see no out of. Some critics have suggested that the transformation of Gregor into a bug is reflective of his own family’s treatment of him. They live off his earnings, expecting him to keep a roof over their heads while his parents do nothing and live almost as parasites feeding off his hard work and commitment to them. So to represent their behaviour Kafka gives us the physical embodiment of their attitude and blatant ungratefulness. Another idea, suggested by Ramon G. Mendoza is that Gregor’s transformation is the embodiment of his own self-image. He sees himself as nothing but a worthless bug, rejected by his father, who he still unsuccessfully attempts to win approval from. In his transformation though, their relationship becomes a much more balanced one, which sees his father treating him in a way that would be expected of something verminous. Gregor’s new physical form is a punishment Mendoza goes on to suggest that â€Å"the metamorphosis is therefore a punishment for the protagonist’s self-image, which coincides with his father’s reputed son-image. † (Mendoza 1986) Gregor’s relationship with his sister changes throughout the novella. Having been very close to his sister he finds that gradually she is distancing herself from him. At the beginning she takes the time and care to try to look after him as best she can, selecting foods that she thinks he might like and cleaning his room out nicely for him. However as the story progresses this care and attention turns into whatever food might be left over pushed into his room with her foot and then removed with a broom. Also allowing his room, which she had previously had cleared so he had more room to crawl, to become a dumping ground for the household. Gregor becomes alienated from his parents and eventually from humanity itself. He has been stripped of his human identity as soon as he changed into his insect form, however slowly all forms of humanity are taken from him. Following his metamorphosis, as he leaves his room, he is confronted by the violent reaction of his father driving him back into his bedroom. At first he is able to communicate with his mother and the chief clerk, so still holds some form of human trait enabling him to still think of himself as playing some part at least in the human race. However as soon as he has the realisation that to everyone else he has lost all rights to hold any human qualities the power of speech leaves him as well, and he only has the ability to hiss as his father drives him back to his room with a stick. Gregor does retain his human qualities such as feelings, emotions and senses, but the only one who realises this is Gregor himself. The ability to communicate with anyone has been taken away from him, so even if his was not forced to live in the isolation of his room he would be isolated anyway through his inability to communicate his thoughts and feelings. In this way he is doubly isolated and forced into an alienated situation no matter what happens. In The Yellow Wallpaper Gilman also explores the idea of alienation and isolation. The narrator begins to feel more and more isolated, pushing her mental state further into unbalance and pushing her more and more behind the bars of the wallpaper. Both Gregor and the protagonist of The Yellow Wallpaper are in situations of forced alienation rather than voluntary. The narrator sees herself eventually cut off even from the garden as her husband concludes that she is too weak. She lives in a time where all women’s minds were isolated and they were expected to fill them with thoughts of being a good wife and mother, keeping a respectable household and not wanting to pursue pastimes such as writing or education. She seems to find a purpose in the wallpaper, something that settles and arouses her, â€Å"Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am much quieter than I was. † (Gilman 1998) Many things within the story change from what they should be into something much more sinister. The bars that are on the windows, designed to prevent children falling out, a seemingly innocent task become symbols of the narrators own imprisonment, keeping her in the room, and possibly pushing her further into the wallpaper. Even the sunlight becomes something grotesque, causing her deteriorating mental state to be reflected within the wallpaper, showing within it â€Å"a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind. (Gilman 1998) As she does nothing by day but watch the wallpaper, the narrator cites following the constant changing pattern as tiresome and perplexing and eventually starts sleeping during the day so she can watch the movements behind the paper at night when things are clearer. â€Å"The moon shines in all night when there is a moon- I wouldn’t know it was the same paper At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight , lamplight and worse of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be. (Gilman 1998) In the same way that the narrator’s mental state alters through the story so too does the mentality of Gregor in Metamorphosis. When he first wakes up Gregor remains as a human trapped in the body of a beetle; he still thinks as a human in terms of movement, attempting at first to get out of bed as he would normally do. He soon adapts to thinking of his movement in terms of his present body rather than that of a human, and actually comes to enjoy in some way the new experiences this gives him. He especially enjoyed hanging suspended from the ceiling; it was much better than lying on the floor; one could breathe more freely; one’s body swung and rocked lightly;† (Kafka 2005) Gregor still attempts to hold on to his last part of his humanity by feeling some involvement in the family. He listens at the door of his room, trying to hear the conversations that are taking place between the family members; by this action he feels that he is not completely alienated from humanity. The fact that he can understand completely what has been said reminds him that he is not fully inhuman. His sister, who has always respected him, loses her respect for him and his own personal space, she no longer thinks of him as human in any way. This is demonstrated by her need to throw open his window noisily each time she enters his room after a short time since his metamorphosis. In the immediate aftermath of the change she still seems to think of him with some compassion as she cares for him; however in her later behaviour she almost becomes worse than her parents. She has made the commitment from the beginning to see to him, but when she decides to move the furniture out she is doing a service to him as a bug, but this just proves to Gregor that she no longer regards him as human in any form. As a human with feelings and sentiment Gregor would want his personal effects around him, but Grete gives no though to this and now just regards him as an ‘it. ’ It is his sister’s final betrayal of him that causes Gregor to give up; having just found the nourishment in her music that he has been searching for for months. The physical state of Gregor’s father alters at several points within the story. At the beginning he seems to do nothing but lounge on the sofa, barely even raising an arm to greet Gregor when he returns from a business trip. He only leaves the house on very rare occasions, and when he does is described as shuffling along with a stick. He then transforms into a strong man, who seems proud to be wearing his blue uniform. It is in this state that he bombards Gregor with apples, causing the injury that would finally lead to Gregor’s death. He then transforms again into what Vladimir Nabokov suggests as, a sort of beetle man, he reverts to lying on the sofa again allowing his uniform to become dirty but making no move to improve. The Yellow Wallpaper sees the protagonist come to a realisation that there may be a great many more women trapped behind the bars of wallpaper just as she is, â€Å"sometimes I think there are a great many women behind it. † (Gilman 1998) Gilman writes intending the wallpaper to represent the patriarchal repressive hold men have over women. The narrator actually goes so far as to describe the wallpaper as a fungus, and says that she can see it spreading further, this could represent the fact that she is recognising how her repressed spirit is becoming weaker as the influence of her husband is growing over her until she will eventually have no free will at all. The madness that the narrator finds herself in as she is transformed at the end of the story could be seen as an actual triumph by her rather than something terrible that has taken it’s hold on her. By convincing himself that his wife is getting better and the treatment he has prescribed is working her husband is blind to the real cause of her maladies, his power over her. In her final act of madness she has the power back to show him exactly the level she has been forced to go to. It would appear that many women before her have suffered the same fate as this is what has caused the deep groove in the wall, exactly where her shoulder now fits. Gilman is showing that if the gender inequality continues then many more women will have to start taking control back in this way also. When the mind has no stimulation, especially the female mind, it will make its own stimulation from whatever surrounds it. So the narrator begins to find a story to play out behind the pattern in the wallpaper. She seems to know that it will not be a very pleasant story as she is immediately repulsed by the sight of the wallpaper, describing it as, â€Å"the colour is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. And the pattern as â€Å"dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide† (Gilman 1998) What she does not realise is that the story that she so avidly watches playing out behind the wallpaper is that of herself. She is the one imprisoned behind the bars, desperately shaking them to get out from under the control of her husband and the others around her. She realises at the very end that the only way out is to let herself and the woman behind the paper become one and to release what has been suppressed. â€Å"â€Å"I’ve got out at last,† said I, in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back! †Ã¢â‚¬  (Gilman 1998) For Gregor, his transformation takes on several stages. The initial transformation is that of him becoming the beetle and being immediately removed from humanity by his inability to communicate. Gregor realises gradually the reality of his situation and deals with it accordingly but as he does he becomes more and more hopeless. He is further removed from his human traits when his furniture and belongings get removed from him. He attempts to join the family at only three points in the plot; all three are met with violence from his father physically forcing him back into his alienation. His sister undergoes the transformation of the eventual complete emotional abandonment of Gregor. This realisation that his sister, who he has always cared for, no longer regards him as anything but an inconvenience, a thing to be dealt with, pushes him to his death. Mendoza writes that the story is the ultimate metaphor of extreme human alienation, describing Gregor’s situation as being on the outside of humanity with no net below. Gregor’s whole family dynamic transforms itself, Mendoza again suggests that Gregor may have the form of a bug, but is essentially still human, whereas his family become human outwardly but inside are themselves the bugs. Bibliography Alter, R. (1991). Necessary Angels, Tradition and modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem, Harvard University Press: Massachusetts. BBC. co. uk/dna/h2g2 Gilman, C. P. (1998). The Yellow Wallpaper, Bedford Books: Boston. Golden, C. J. (1992). The Captive Imagination, The Feminist Press: New York. Golden, C. J. (2004). The Yellow Wallpaper, A Sourcebook and Critical Edition, Routledge: Oxton. Helium. com/items/1104993-charlotte-perkins-gilmanthe-yellow-wallpaper-literary-analysis. Janouch, G. (1968). Conversations With Kafka, The Trinity Press: London. Kafka, F. (2005). Metamorphosis, Vintage: London. Mendoza, R. G. (1986). Outside Humanity, A Study of Kafka’s Fiction, University Press of America: Lanham. Nabokov, V. ( 1983). Lectures on Literature, Pan Books Ltd: London.