Mental Issues in 'The Black Cat' and 'The Yellow Wallpaper'

Is it not it a big mistake to fear such small things like darkness, silence, and loneliness when the real monsters lie in our heads? Clive Barker once said, “You just have to trust your own madness.” The story written in 1843 'The Black Cat' and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' written in 1892 are very different stories, but with something in common. They both had characters that suffered from mental issues. The main characters from 'The Black Cat,' written by Edgar Allan Poe and 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, share a mental illness caused by different factors such as alcoholism and isolation' helping us understand the social and moral values of the gothic area as well as some political vales.

During the gothic era, people experienced many changes in culture, behaviors and even clothing styles. Many people experience these changes every day in their social, cultural, and imaginary values. As explained by Piatti-Farnell, Lorna and Beville, Mariathey the gothic era was a “multiple and multi-faceted connotations that resonate feelings of both finality and immortality, bygone experience, and future fantasy.” The Gothic era was born during a period where a person could not express his or herself without being judged or called out. If a woman were to express herself either mentally or physically, she would be cast aside or forced to adjust her life to how a woman was expected to behave and act. Soon enough, horror stories started to be written and people enjoyed reading them and feel the excitement of fear from death/murder, illusions, suicidal and revolting. Some great examples would be “the black cat” by Edgar Allan Poe and “The yellow wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. There writing techniques were different, but both had in mine Gothic and that’s how many fell in love with each of their stories. Edgar Allan Poe preferred his writing to be more virtuoso and horror with a style where he would take away the breath of a person with his punctations, exclamations and sentence structure. While writing was more feminist were, she would start a story normal to complete insanity.

One of the most literary arts of the gothic culture is the motive of terror. Many people showed fear as American society was becoming less democratic, less virtuous, and less exceptional as simple allusions in the gothic culture showed people who chose to be neither white, nor Christian, nor human. It began to be recognized and spread widely on the aspects of an everyday living on the darker side of a person condition both social and moral. Edgar Allan Poe wrote in his story the black cat, “From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition”. Even when been control to the most extreme forms of behavior some things such as character and disposition are characteristic that can only be change in the most improving and temporary of ways.

Some people dwelled on aspects of their societies with the authors that bring terror onto a daily life that some are restrain to the past and thus prevented progress, “Scholars, however, disagree to some extent as to how narrowly one should define in the gothic work” (Kelly Grey 137-161). This has found embodiment in various cultural trends and behaviors, from fashion to the emergence of beliefs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote on her story the yellow wallpaper “But I must say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief”. Been given a great amount of critical attention to the people, especially to woman in the living culture, through its intersections with the everyday, and with the communication and expression of shared experience. Started to become fad when the uncanny and supernatural began to cultivate in the modern. With no liberty to show one kept isolated and lived a live through a room with a window and stories.

It manifested itself before reaching to Edgar Allan Poe and it was an environment where many still got critics but lived well when it reached Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The future of the Gothic was a combination to form collective insight into the relationship between the Gothic and the past, not only in the traditional sense of the past as history. helping us understand the social and moral values of the gothic area as well as some political vales with the main literature of terror and horror as the main subject.