essay on yellow paper

The Yellow Wallpaper: Essay Examples

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📝 The Yellow Wallpaper: Essay Samples List

• Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: Point of View Genre: Essay Words: 1098 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper: literary analysis Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• The Yellow Wallpaper: Themes & Symbols Genre: Essay Words: 881 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper themes Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• The Need for Change in Ragged Dick and The Yellow Wallpaper Genre: Essay Words: 929 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper context Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• Depression due to Repression in The Yellow Wallpaper Genre: Research paper Words: 1837 Focused on: Feminism in The Yellow Wallpaper Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• A Rose for Emily and The Yellow Wallpaper: Compare & Contrast Essay Genre: Essay Words: 875 Focused on: Compare & contrast Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• Feminism in The Yellow Wallpaper Genre: Essay Words: 896 Focused on: Feminism in The Yellow Wallpaper Characters mentioned: the Narrator, John
• Loneliness in The Yellow Wallpaper Genre: Essay Words: 955 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper themes Characters mentioned: the Narrator, John, Jennie
• Gender Roles in the The Yellow Wallpaper Genre: Essay Words: 1480 Focused on: Feminism in The Yellow Wallpaper Characters mentioned: the Narrator, John, Jennie
• Marriage in The Yellow Wallpaper Genre: Critical writing Words: 598 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper themes Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• The Story of an Hour & The Yellow Wallpaper: Characters Comparison Genre: Essay Words: 1319 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper characters Characters mentioned: the Narrator, John
• The Yellow Wallpaper Essay Genre: Essay Words: 1734 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper themes Characters mentioned: the Narrator, John
• The Yellow Wallpaper: Symbolism Genre: Argumentative essay Words: 570 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper symbolism Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• Women’s Role in The Yellow Wallpaper, The Awakening, & The Revolt of Mother Genre: Essay Words: 700 Focused on: Compare & contrast Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• Solitude as a Theme in The Yellow Wallpaper & A Rose for Emily Genre: Essay Words: 1821 Focused on: Compare & contrast Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• The Yellow Wallpaper: Summary, Analysis, & Interpretation Essay Genre: Essay Words: 609 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper analysis Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• The Yellow Wallpaper: Symbolic Interpretations Essay Genre: Essay Words: 648 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper symbols Characters mentioned: the Narrator
• Gender Roles in The Yellow Wallpaper & Trifles Genre: Essay Words: 2159 Focused on: Compare & contrast Characters mentioned: the Narrator, John
• Mental Illness as a Theme of The Yellow Wallpaper Genre: Essay Words: 1395 Focused on: The Yellow Wallpaper themes Characters mentioned: the Narrator, John
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Study Guide Menu

• Summary & Analysis
• Themes & Symbols
• Quotes Explained
• Essay Topics
• Essay Examples
• Questions & Answers
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Biography
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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General Education

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" tells the story of a young woman’s gradual descent into psychosis. " The Yellow Wallpaper" is often cited as an early feminist work that predates a woman’s right to vote in the United States. The author was involved in first-wave feminism, and her other works questioned the origins of the subjugation of women, particularly in marriage. "

The Yellow Wallpaper" is a widely read work that asks difficult questions about the role of women, particularly regarding their mental health and right to autonomy and self-identity. We’ll go over The Yellow Wallpaper summary, themes and symbols, The Yellow Wallpaper analysis, and some important information about the author.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" Summary

"The Yellow Wallpaper" details the deterioration of a woman's mental health while she is on a "rest cure" on a rented summer country estate with her family. Her obsession with the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom marks her descent into psychosis from her depression throughout the story.

The narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" begins the story by discussing her move to a beautiful estate for the summer. Her husband, John, is also her doctor , and the move is meant in part to help the narrator overcome her “illness,” which she explains as nervous depression, or nervousness, following the birth of their baby. John’s sister, Jennie, also lives with them and works as their housekeeper.

Though her husband believes she will get better with rest and by not worrying about anything, the narrator has an active imagination and likes to write . He discourages her wonder about the house, and dismisses her interests. She mentions her baby more than once, though there is a nurse that cares for the baby, and the narrator herself is too nervous to provide care.

The narrator and her husband move into a large room that has ugly, yellow wallpaper that the narrator criticizes. She asks her husband if they can change rooms and move downstairs, and he rejects her. The more she stays in the room, the more the narrator’s fascination with the hideous wallpaper grows.

After hosting family for July 4th, the narrator expresses feeling even worse and more exhausted. She struggles to do daily activities, and her mental state is deteriorating. John encourages her to rest more, and the narrator hides her writing from him because he disapproves.

In the time between July 4th and their departure, the narrator is seemingly driven insane by the yellow wallpaper ; she sleeps all day and stays up all night to stare at it, believing that it comes alive, and the patterns change and move. Then, she begins to believe that there is a woman in the wallpaper who alters the patterns and is watching her.

A few weeks before their departure, John stays overnight in town and the narrator wants to sleep in the room by herself so she can stare at the wallpaper uninterrupted. She locks out Jennie and believes that she can see the woman in the wallpaper . John returns and frantically tries to be let in, and the narrator refuses; John is able to enter the room and finds the narrator crawling on the floor. She claims that the woman in the wallpaper has finally exited, and John faints, much to her surprise.

Background on "The Yellow Wallpaper"

The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was a lecturer for social reform, and her beliefs and philosophy play an important part in the creation of "The Yellow Wallpaper," as well as the themes and symbolism in the story. "The Yellow Wallpaper" also influenced later feminist writers.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, known as Charlotte Perkins Stetsman while she was married to her first husband, was born in Hartford, CT in 1860. Young Charlotte was observed as being bright, but her mother wasn’t interested in her education, and Charlotte spent lots of time in the library.

Charlotte married Charles Stetsman in 1884, and her daughter was born in 1885. She suffered from serious postpartum depression after giving birth to their daughter, Katharine. Her battle with postpartum depression and the doctors she dealt with during her illness inspired her to write "The Yellow Wallpaper."

The couple separated in 1888, the year that Perkins Gilman wrote her first book, Art Gems for the Home and Fireside. She later wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" in 1890, while she was in a relationship with Adeline Knapp, and living apart from her legal husband. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was published in 1892, and in 1893 she published a book of satirical poetry , In This Our World, which gained her fame.

Eventually, Perkins Gilman got officially divorced from Stetsman, and ended her relationship with Knapp. She married her cousin, Houghton Gilman, and claimed to be satisfied in the marriage .

Perkins Gilman made a living as a lecturer on women’s issues, labor issues, and social reform . She toured Europe and the U.S. as a lecturer, and founded her own magazine, The Forerunner.

Publication

"The Yellow Wallpaper" was first published in January 1892 in New England Magazine.

During Perkins Gilman's lifetime, the role of women in American society was heavily restricted both socially and legally. At the time of its publication, women were still twenty-six years away from gaining the right to vote .

This viewpoint on women as childish and weak meant that they were discouraged from having any control over their lives. Women were encouraged or forced to defer to their husband’s opinions in all aspects of life , including financially, socially, and medically. Writing itself was revolutionary, since it would create a sense of identity, and was thought to be too much for the naturally fragile women.

Women's health was a particularly misunderstood area of medicine, as women were viewed as nervous, hysterical beings, and were discouraged from doing anything to further “upset” them. The prevailing wisdom of the day was that rest would cure hysteria, when in reality the constant boredom and lack of purpose likely worsened depression .

Perkins Gilman used her own experience in her first marriage and postpartum depression as inspiration for The Yellow Wallpaper, and illustrates how a woman’s lack of autonomy is detrimental to her mental health.

Upon its publication, Perkins Gilman sent a copy of "The Yellow Wallpaper" to the doctor who prescribed her the rest cure for her postpartum depression.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" Characters

Though there are only a few characters in the story, they each have an important role. While the story is about the narrator’s mental deterioration, the relationships in her life are essential for understanding why and how she got to this point.

The Narrator

The narrator of the story is a young, upper-middle-class woman. She is imaginative and a natural writer, though she is discouraged from exploring this part of herself. She is a new mother and is thought to have “hysterical tendencies” or suffer from nervousness. Her name may be Jane but it is unclear.

John is the narrator’s husband and her physician. He restricts her activity as a part of her treatment. John is extremely practical, and belittles the narrator's imagination and feelings . He seems to care about her well-being, but believes he knows what is best for her and doesn't allow her input.

Jennie is John’s sister, who works as a housekeeper for the couple. Jennie seems concerned for the narrator, as indicated by her offer to sleep in the yellow wallpapered room with her. Jennie seems content with her domestic role .

Main Themes of "The Yellow Wallpaper"

From what we know about the author of this story and from interpreting the text, there are a few themes that are clear from a "Yellow Wallpaper" analysis. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was a serious piece of literature that addressed themes pertinent to women.

Women's Role in Marriage

Women were expected to be subordinate to their husbands and completely obedient, as well as take on strictly domestic roles inside the home . Upper middle class women, like the narrator, may go for long periods of time without even leaving the home. The story reveals that this arrangement had the effect of committing women to a state of naïveté, dependence, and ignorance.

John assumes he has the right to determine what’s best for his wife, and this authority is never questioned. He belittles her concerns, both concrete and the ones that arise as a result of her depression , and is said so brush her off and “laugh at her” when she speaks through, “this is to be expected in marriage” He doesn’t take her concerns seriously, and makes all the decisions about both of their lives.

As such, she has no say in anything in her life, including her own health, and finds herself unable to even protest.

Perkins Gilman, like many others, clearly disagreed with this state of things, and aimed to show the detrimental effects that came to women as a result of their lack of autonomy.

Identity and Self-Expression

Throughout the story, the narrator is discouraged from doing the things she wants to do and the things that come naturally to her, like writing. On more than one occasion, she hurries to put her journal away because John is approaching .

She also forces herself to act as though she’s happy and satisfied, to give the illusion that she is recovering, which is worse. She wants to be a good wife, according to the way the role is laid out for her, but struggles to conform especially with so little to actually do.

The narrator is forced into silence and submission through the rest cure, and desperately needs an intellectual and emotional outlet . However, she is not granted one and it is clear that this arrangement takes a toll.

The Rest Cure

The rest cure was commonly prescribed during this period of history for women who were “nervous.” Perkins Gilman has strong opinions about the merits of the rest cure , having been prescribed it herself. John’s insistence on the narrator getting “air” constantly, and his insistence that she do nothing that requires mental or physical stimulation is clearly detrimental.

The narrator is also discouraged from doing activities, whether they are domestic- like cleaning or caring for her baby- in addition to things like reading, writing, and exploring the grounds of the house. She is stifled and confined both physically and mentally, which only adds to her condition .

Perkins Gilman damns the rest cure in this story, by showing the detrimental effects on women, and posing that women need mental and physical stimulation to be healthy, and need to be free to make their own decisions over health and their lives.

The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis: Symbols and Symbolism

Symbols are a way for the author to give the story meaning, and provide clues as to the themes and characters. There are two major symbols in "The Yellow Wallpaper."

The Yellow Wallpaper

This is of course the most important symbol in the story. The narrator is immediately fascinated and disgusted by the yellow wallpaper, and her understanding and interpretation fluctuates and intensifies throughout the story.

The narrator, because she doesn’t have anything else to think about or other mental stimulation, turns to the yellow wallpaper as something to analyze and interpret. The pattern eventually comes into focus as bars, and then she sees a woman inside the pattern . This represents feeling trapped.

At the end of the story, the narrator believes that the woman has come out of the wallpaper. This indicates that the narrator has finally merged fully into her psychosis , and become one with the house and domesticated discontent.

Though Jennie doesn’t have a major role in the story, she does present a foil to the narrator. Jennie is John’s sister and their housekeeper, and she is content, or so the narrator believes, to live a domestic life. Though she does often express her appreciation for Jennie’s presence in her home, she is clearly made to feel guilty by Jennie’s ability to run the household unencumbered .

Irony in The Yellow Wallpaper

"The Yellow Wallpaper" makes good use of dramatic and situational irony. Dramatic literary device in which the reader knows or understands things that the characters do not. Situational irony is when the character’s actions are meant to do one thing, but actually do another. Here are a few examples.

For example, when the narrator first enters the room with the yellow wallpaper, she believes it to be a nursery . However, the reader can clearly see that the room could have just as easily been used to contain a mentally unstable person.

The best example of situational irony is the way that John continues to prescribe the rest-cure, which worsens the narrator's state significantly. He encourages her to lie down after meals and sleep more, which causes her to be awake and alert at night, when she has time to sit and evaluate the wallpaper.

The Yellow Wallpaper Summary

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is one of the defining works of feminist literature. Writing about a woman’s health, mental or physical, was considered a radical act at the time that Perkins Gilman wrote this short story. Writing at all about the lives of women was considered at best, frivolous, and at worst dangerous. When you take a look at The Yellow Wallpaper analysis, the story is an important look into the role of women in marriage and society, and it will likely be a mainstay in the feminist literary canon.

What's Next?

Looking for more expert guides on literary classics? Read our guides on The Cask of Amontillado and The Great Gatsby .

Need important and interesting quotes? Check out these 18 To Kill a Mockingbird Quotes and 9 Great Mark Twain Quotes .

For help analyzing literature and writing essays , read our expert guide on imagery , literary elements , and writing an argumentative essay .

Carrie holds a Bachelors in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, and is currently pursuing an MFA. She worked in book publishing for several years, and believes that books can open up new worlds. She loves reading, the outdoors, and learning about new things.

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The Symbolism of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Explained

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is an 1892 short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A powerful study of mental illness and the inhuman treatments administered in its name, the story succeeds largely because of its potent symbolism. Let’s take a look at some of the key symbols in the tale.

First, however, let’s briefly summarise the plot of the story: the narrator and her husband John, a doctor, have come to stay at a large country house. As the story develops, we realise that the woman’s husband has brought her to the house in order to try to cure her of her mental illness. His proposed (well, enforced ) treatment is to lock his wife away from everyone except him, and to withhold everything from her that might excite her.

It becomes clear, as the story develops, that depriving the female narrator of anything to occupy her mind is making her mental illness worse, not better. The narrator outlines to us how she sometimes sits for hours in her room, tracing the patterns in the yellow wallpaper on the walls of her room.

She then tells us she thinks she can see a woman ‘stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.’ She becomes obsessed with the wallpaper as her mental state deteriorates, before eventually locking herself within the room and crawling around on the floor.

The Mansion.

‘ The Yellow Wallpaper ’ begins with the idea that we are about to read a haunted house story, a Gothic tale, a piece of horror. Such stories were a staple of late nineteenth-century magazines and enjoyed huge popularity.

And why else, wonders the story’s female narrator, would the house be available so cheaply unless it was haunted? And why had it remained unoccupied for so long? This is how many haunted house tales begin, so we are deliberately placed on this track, but it will turn out to be the wrong track.

But as we read on, we realise that the ‘haunting’ is not supernatural but psychological: the narrator of Gilman’s story contains her own demons within her mind, and her husband’s ‘treatment’ actually accentuates and intensifies these.

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ has the structure and style of a diary. This is in keeping with what the female narrator tells us: that she can only write down her experiences when her husband John is not around, because he forbids her to write because he thinks it will overexcite her. The whole story thus has the air of a secret text, with the narrator confiding in us – indeed, the reader is her only confidant.

But it also has the effect of shifting the narrative tense: from the usual past tense to the more unusual present tense. This has benefits in that it creates the sense of a continuous narrative, and events unfolding as we read them.

The Husband.

The narrator’s husband, John, is a doctor, but he is a world away from the ‘mad doctor’ trope found in Gothic texts, especially those influenced by Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde .

John’s greatest flaw is not his inherent evil but his dogged devotion to the prevailing scientific opinion of the day. His danger to his wife is not in being some eccentric or power-hungry outlier, but in holding too fast to the medical orthodoxy of the time. He believes that incarcerating his wife alone away from her family – even her own children – will make her better.

Gilman uses suggestive symbolism to dramatise the complex relationship between husband and wife in the story. Take that final dramatic scene where John is about to break down the door to his wife’s chamber with an axe. So far, so ‘mad axeman found in countless horror stories and fairy tales’, with shades of Bluebeard , that wife-killer from European folk history.

But this narrative is complicated by the fact that John has come to save his wife from herself, while she – having locked herself away in the room in order to protect her husband and family from the strange women she believes are behind the yellow wallpaper in the room – believes she is protecting him.

Of course, her madness has been made worse by John’s treatment of her in the first place, but he believes he is acting in her own interests. The symbolism of the axe here, and the husband being prepared to break down the door to his wife’s bedroom, is layered and complex.

The Nursery.

It is significant that the room in which the narrator is incarcerated is the old nursery in the large house. The narrator tells us that there are bars on the windows to protect little children from hurting themselves, although ‘bars’ here also symbolise the narrator’s de facto imprisonment in the room.

The fact that the room was once a nursery and then, the narrator deduces, a ‘gymnasium’ is loaded with significance. The room thus symbolises the narrator’s own childlike state as she is treated like a naughty child by her husband and locked away in her room. The reference to a gymnasium is ironic, since a gymnasium is a room for exercise, but the room actually worsens the narrator’s health.

The Yellow Wallpaper.

The most powerful symbol in the story is the yellow wallpaper itself. But it is also, perhaps, the most ambiguous symbol in the story, because it can invite at least two very different interpretations.

The first interpretation views the yellow wallpaper as an outward and visible symbol of the narrator’s own internal state of mind. Her disordered mental state leads her to see all manner of figures in the paper’s patterns. Human beings have evolved to look for patterns as a survival mechanism, but here the narrator’s pattern-hunting is her undoing.

At one point, she mentions a ‘particularly irritating’ pattern which ‘you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then’. This closely ties the paper’s patterns with the narrator’s shifting moods and highlights the subjective nature of what she sees (or thinks she sees) in the wallpaper.

However, given the kinds of shapes the narrator describes seeing in the wallpaper, a second interpretation is possible. This one is more firmly focused on the story’s feminist message, and sees the shapes in the wallpaper as symbols of female oppression at the time the story was written. For example, the narrator describes detecting a figure ‘like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.’

Indeed, the word ‘creeping’ (and its accompanying adjective, ‘creepy’, which seems doubly apt here) recurs numerous times throughout this short story. It implies that the narrator sees a version of herself – and all oppressed women – within the wallpaper, having to tread carefully around others, unable to be fully themselves. The verb ‘stooping’ also suggests bearing the weight of some kind of burden.

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Written as diary notes, the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a masterpiece by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. As in many novels in American literature, the book speaks about the unfair treatment of women trying to break loose from partial oppression. As a result, it paves the path for endless The Yellow Wallpaper essay topics and examples.

Told in first person, the narration reveals the writer’s depression due to her worsened emotional and mental state. Conversely, John symbolically represents the male-dominated world that assigns women specific roles they must take and remain trapped in the wallpaper.

With the feminism movement gaining traction, you will probably have to write an argumentative essay on The Yellow Wallpaper in school. To this end, you’ll need a catchy topic sentence, summary, introduction, and outline for essays on The Yellow Wallpaper.

If you lack ideas or prompts for your papers or struggle with finding a thesis statement for The Yellow Wallpaper, check SupremeStudy. The platform abounds with theme and literary analysis essay examples about The Yellow Wallpaper to draw inspiration for your research paper on The Yellow Wallpaper.

As per Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ has been first distributed 1899 by Small and Maynard, Boston, MA. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ was a women’s activist break however and elucidation of the imagery and it was viewed principally as a powerful story of ghastliness and craziness in the convention of Edgar Allan Poe. Charlotte Perkins Gilman constructed the story in light of her involvement with a ‘rest fix’ for psychological instability. The ‘rest fix’ motivated her to compose a scrutinize of the medicinal treatment recommended to ladies experiencing a condition at that point known as ‘neurasthenia’ (Golden 145).

Indeed, it applauded the work as ‘one of the uncommon bits of writing we have by a nineteenth-century lady who straightforwardly faces the sexual governmental issues of the male-female, spouse wife relationship.’. Almost these pundits recognize the story as a women’s activist content written in dissent of the careless treatment of ladies by a man centric culture.

In any case, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, the storyteller experiences misery following the introduction of her tyke. Her significant other, John, analyze her conduct as ‘delirium.’ He endorses her rest and rents a house in the nation for her recovery, and it was on its surface, about a lady made crazy by post pregnancy anxiety and a risky treatment. In any case, an examination of the hero’s portrayal uncovers that the story is in a general sense about personality. The hero’s projection of a fanciful lady which at first is just her shadow against the bars of the backdrop’s example pieces her character, disguising the contention she encounters and inevitably prompting the total breakdown of the limits of her personality and that of her anticipated shadow.

On July 3, 1860, Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman was conceived in Hartford, Connecticut. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was the main scholarly in the ladies’ development amid the initial twenty years of the twentieth century. Her dad was Frederick Beecher Perkins, and her mom was Mary Fitch Westcott. The Beecher’s, including her initial good example, Harriet Beecher Stowe, affected her social feelings. In her later life as an author, she was kept on doubting her innovative side, in spite of the fact that she at times gave it opportunity. In 1882 Gilman met Walter Stetson, who proposed marriage under three weeks after their first gathering.

In spite of the fact that Stetson regarded Gilman and comprehended her complaints to a conventional marriage, it was not to be a glad association. Gilman was pregnant inside half a month, and she was liable to extraordinary attacks of sorrow all through the pregnancy and a while later. She started to feel increasingly a detainee—not of her significant other but rather of the establishment of marriage—and preliminary detachments and treatment of her ‘nerves’ neglected to help. In 1886, Gilman had a breakdown and was dealt with for insanity by nervous system specialist S. Weir Mitchell, who recommended totaled rest and restraint from work. In spite of the treatment, Gilman deteriorated and dreaded for her mental soundness. She chose to bring matters into her hands, isolated from Stetson, and moved to California, where she started to distribute and address on the financial and household reliance of ladies.

Next, the fizzled marriage was to be the motivation for a few ballads that helped built up Gilman’s notoriety and for her story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ which has turned into her most generally anthologized work. At the season of its distribution in 1892, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ took advantage of perusing ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ it is essential to get a handle on the authentic setting of Gilman’s story. Since that time, Gilman’s story has been examined by scholarly commentators from an extensive variety of points of view, including personal, authentic, mental, women’s activist, semiotic, and sociocultural. Amid the late nineteenth century, ladies were viewed as weaker than men, both physically and rationally, and were permitted next to no close to home office.

Through the storyteller of the short story acknowledges she has a disease; her significant other’s sentiments of skill and predominance keep her from getting treatment. Indeed, even her conclusion of ‘mania’ is established in her general public’s comprehension of ladies’ wellbeing and life systems. Late nineteenth century assumptions about conjugal jobs and emotional wellness laid the foundation for this story. Amid the 1890s, Gilman distributed the short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ in light of her breakdown and rest treatment. Henceforth, Gilman experienced episodes of wretchedness stemming her longing to fill in as craftsman, essayist, and supporter of ladies’ rights and the contention between this craving and her more conventional job as spouse and mother.

One technique Gilman utilizes is the backdrop as an image of the storyteller’s repression. The backdrop can likewise be believed to symbolize the storyteller’s psyche. After some time, the storyteller sees the example of her room’s yellow backdrop as a progression of bars, detaining the state of a lady behind them. The storyteller and the caught lady can be translated. For instance, she composes,’ I pulled, and she shook, and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.’ Her gathering of people esteems the yellow backdrop on an individual level as a spouse with a controlling husband and on a fundamental level as a lady in a controlling society. Emblematically, this mirrors the estimations of the general public in which the storyteller lives. They esteem this since When the storyteller pulls at the yellow backdrop, the caught lady shakes it. On the other hand, when the storyteller shakes it, the caught lady pulls. The lady caught behind the backdrop’s example reflects the stifled female self-caught in a man centric culture.

In spite of the fact that the storyteller may not understand it, her demonstration of pulling down the backdrop fills in as a demonstration of insubordination. By attempting to free this lady, she is endeavoring to free herself. On a bigger topical scale, her demonstration shows how she needs to break free of the societal limitations holding her back. The storyteller’s possible suspicion of the caught lady’s character can be perused as emblematic of the storyteller’s recovery of her autonomy, inauspicious as it might be. Subsequently, by utilizing the word decision’ crawling’ done by the lady in the backdrop is a physical showcase of the untainted vulnerability the storyteller has been pushed into by her significant other and her sickness.

When it is later uncovered that the storyteller herself has been crawling around her room, it ends up questionable whether the storyteller is reliably observing the state of a lady in the backdrop or is, actually, responding to her shadow. John’s regular nonappearances and the inevitable disclosure that he knows about the storyteller’s evening time alertness consider the likelihood that her hallucinations have been expedited by cooperating with her shadow. In the event that this is valid, a definitive truth of the story—that the storyteller is the lady in the backdrop—conveys a physical and also mental measurement. For instance, she kept in touch with: ‘It is a similar lady, I know, for she is continually crawling, and most ladies don’t crawl by sunshine.’ The storyteller of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ encounters her battle in a profoundly close to home field: her home and brain.

In any case, entries, for example, this one propose that she perceives the more extensive ramifications of her encounters and the potential impacts they have on other ladies. In determining that ‘most ladies don’t crawl by sunshine,’ she appears to propose that most other ladies do in any case ‘creep,’ or slither, just not when they can be seen. While the storyteller proceeds to depict herself slithering around her room, the stating prompts perusers to consider how all ladies are diminished to sneaking in some ways, regardless of whether they take awesome consideration not to be taken note. This section strengthens the imagery of ‘crawling’ as a demonstration of enslavement and demonstrates the storyteller’s developing mindfulness that numerous components of her imprisonment are a direct result of her sex.

In the second logical component of the beginning of the story, another methodology Gilman utilizes the house in which the storyteller and her better half stay symbolize the general public that limits the storyteller. The house can be perused as a physical portrayal of the connection between the storyteller’s body and brain. At first, the storyteller needs a room on the principal floor of the house with roses by the window. She additionally wishes to draw in with the world outside herself: she needs to see companions and work on her composition. Rather, the storyteller is compelled to remain on the second floor of the house in an expansive, confused stay with noticeable harm and distractingly appalling backdrop. Thus, the storyteller is denied imaginative incitement and headed to focus on her psychological state.

Another technique Gilman utilizes sensational incongruity in depicting the storyteller’s association with her better half. In spite of the fact that John appears to think about his better half’s prosperity, he effectively hampers her treatment by setting her on a rest fix. While he demands that she needs to quit ‘working’ until the point that she recuperates, the storyteller experiences weariness and turns out to be effectively depleted by keeping her composition mystery. Her absence of office worsens her condition, driving her to tears and sadness. After some time, as the storyteller’s freedom develops through her singular battles with the backdrop, she appears to end up mindful of the incongruity of her circumstance: that her better half, the medicinal master, is totally uninformed of his significant other’s actual state.

Notwithstanding, she utilizes is presumptions the traditions of the mental repulsiveness story to investigate the situation of ladies inside the organization of marriage, particularly as drilled by the ‘respectable’ classes of her chance. At the point when the story was first distributed, most perusers accepting it as a frightening story about a lady in an extraordinary condition of awareness—a holding, exasperating.

Peeling Back the Layers: a Deep Dive into ‘The Yellow Wallpaper

This essay dives into the intriguing depths of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a haunting tale that intertwines mental illness with societal critique. Set in the 19th century, it follows the story of a woman subjected to a rest cure by her husband, John, in a peculiar room adorned with disconcerting yellow wallpaper. The narrative unfolds through her eyes, revealing her growing obsession with the wallpaper’s chaotic patterns, which she perceives as a trapped woman mirroring her own confinement. The essay highlights how this fixation intensifies, leading to a chilling climax where the line between reality and illusion blurs. Beyond the eerie storyline, the piece underscores the story’s profound commentary on the treatment of women, particularly in mental health, during Gilman’s time. “The Yellow Wallpaper” emerges not just as a spine-tingling story, but as a powerful statement against the oppressive medical practices and societal norms imposed on women. The essay captures the essence of the story – a journey into the psyche, a reflection on historical mistreatment, and a symbol of the struggle for understanding and liberation in women’s mental health. You can also find more related free essay samples at PapersOwl about The Yellow Wallpaper.

How it works

Picture this: a story that grips you with its eerie details and leaves you pondering long after the last word. That’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” for you – Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s masterpiece that’s as spine-tingling as it is thought-provoking. Written way back in 1892, this short story is a rollercoaster ride into the world of a woman’s mind, grappling with mental illness in an era when women’s voices were often hushed.

Let’s set the scene. Our narrator, who remains nameless (talk about being overlooked!), is whisked away to a country house by her husband, John.

He’s a doctor, and he’s got this idea that a summer of doing absolutely nothing – we’re talking no work, no writing, nada – will cure her “nervous depression.” So there she is, stuck in a room that screams ‘creepy’ with its unsettling yellow wallpaper. It’s not just any room; it’s a former nursery with barred windows and a gate at the top of the stairs – more of a prison than a retreat.

Now, let’s talk about this infamous wallpaper. It starts off as an eyesore but quickly morphs into an obsession. Our narrator can’t stand it, yet she can’t look away. It’s a mess of patterns, a jumble of chaos – kind of like her own thoughts. She starts seeing things in it – a trapped woman, shaking the bars, desperate to escape. Sounds familiar? That’s right, it’s a mirror image of her own situation.

As the story unfolds, things go from weird to downright alarming. The narrator, now totally consumed by the wallpaper, starts creeping around the room, becoming one with the woman she sees trapped in the patterns. The climax hits like a freight train – her husband faints dead away when he finds her tearing down the wallpaper, trying to free the woman she believes is stuck behind it.

But here’s the kicker – “The Yellow Wallpaper” isn’t just a spooky tale. It’s a bold statement on how women were treated, especially when it came to their mental health. Gilman herself had a run-in with the infamous ‘rest cure’ prescribed by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, and she wasn’t having any of it. This story was her way of showing the world how these so-called treatments were more suffocating than the wallpaper in that room.

In wrapping up, “The Yellow Wallpaper” isn’t just a story; it’s a journey into the past, a critique of how society treated women, and a nod to the inner turmoil that comes with being misunderstood and unheard. The wallpaper in that dreary room symbolizes the constraints and frustrations women faced, a pattern of societal norms they couldn’t escape from. It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go in understanding and respecting mental health. So, the next time you glance at wallpaper, remember, there’s more to it than meets the eye, especially if it’s yellow and a bit on the wild side.

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Peeling Back the Layers: A Deep Dive into 'The Yellow Wallpaper. (2024, Feb 01). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/peeling-back-the-layers-a-deep-dive-into-the-yellow-wallpaper/

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Peeling Back the Layers: A Deep Dive into 'The Yellow Wallpaper . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/peeling-back-the-layers-a-deep-dive-into-the-yellow-wallpaper/ [Accessed: 13 Apr. 2024]

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Essay Samples on The Yellow Wallpaper

The issue of mental illness in the yellow wallpaper.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper mental illness plays a central role. The author depicts the suffering a woman faced following the birth of her child. At this time women were dependent on men to provide shelter and live a maternal life....

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The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword: How Authors Change The World Around Them

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Portrayal Of Women's Oppression In The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in a period when women were oppressed by men: they were meant to be seen and not heard. The story does not discuss what John is treating the narrator as an official diagnosis. “As the story progresses, the...

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The Yellow Wallpaper: The Symbolism Of Mental Illness

In the 1890s, the prejudice against mental illness, especially in women, was reinforced by various physicians. They believed that if a woman was mentally ill, she was either insane or hysteric. They had little to no scientific basis to their theories of the women's lunacy,...

Out Of The Wallpaper: The Imagery Of Mentally Ill In Yellow Wallpaper

At first glance, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is merely the story of a helpless woman grappling with mental illness in a dysfunctional marital relationship. Her husband assumes that as a doctor he knows best what is necessary for his wife to recover from...

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Symbols As Used In Yellow Wallpaper And Story Of An Hour

Nineteenth century society saw the concept of separate spheres being used in society to help women understand their place, the ideology rested on the definition of the ‘natural’ characteristics of men and women. Men were seen as the superior sex and women inferior, both physically...

The Imagery Of Violation Of Women's Rights In Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-paper” serves as a perfect example of how women have been persecuted in the 19th century. Throughout the story, the main character, as she observes the house while in isolation, notices the true meaning in life, specifically for women. Gilman’s...

The Yellow Wallpaper: Symbols In Gilman's Short Story

In this class, we have read “Yellow Wallpaper” as our first reading material. This is a tragic and devastating story. “Yellow wallpaper” uses the first-person narration, and the narrator records her mental torture and destruction in her secret diary. The narrator is a young mother...

Figurative Language Used In The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Stetson is recognized as one of the important figures in the social reform movement of the late 1800s to early 1920s. Pieces of her life experiences are woven into the plot of her most recognized fictional short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Stetson’s short...

The Usage Of Imagery In The Yellow Wallpaper

Author Charlotte Gilman in 'The Yellow Wallpaper' gives a personal tale about emotional wellness care during her time. This record is close to home, as the character in the story has encounters near what author Gilman had during her time of getting the 'resting cure'...

Symbolism Found In Charlotte Gilman's Yellow Wallpaper

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses symbolism throughout the story, which gives the story a deeper meaning. After recently giving birth to her child, the narrator, a writer, happens to find herself more and more depressed, as well as undefinably fatigued...

The Analysis Of Women's Oppression In Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Gilman’s literary piece “The Yellow Wallpaper” is set in a period where women were oppressed and restricted from their true potential. Gilman was a fervent believer in women’s rights. She believed that women had a right to exercise their intellect and talents that were...

An Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper And Figurative Language Used

In 1892, feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” describing an intense summer vacation for a woman recovering from mental illness. The story takes the reader through the narrator’s erratic journal entries of a three month stay in a rented...

The Careful Use Of Symbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper written by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman was published in January 1892. The story begins with the narrator describing her marvelous summer home she shares with her husband John. While the narrator hopes to enjoy her summer, she begins to explain her...

Finding The Meaning Behind The Symbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper

The life of a woman wasn’t that easy back then in the 1800s. Gilman wrote a short story describing the point of view of the roles in society, the story was her way of bringing together women’s oppression to light. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written...

A Mind's Way: Symbolism In Yellow Wallpaper And Story Of An Hour

A symbol is a literary device that contains several layers of meaning. The symbol, is using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning. Authors and writers use symbols to connect to the theme or themes of their work. Symbolism can...

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The Symbols Showcased In The Yellow Wallpaper And Story Of An Hour

A symbol is a literary device that contains several layers of meaning. The symbol is using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning. In the short stories “The Story of an Hour” and “The Yellow Wall-Paper” both have it significant...

The Symbols Of Women Oppression In The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper story is based on the men dominated society in the nineteenth century. The story depicts the married life of narrator who is in depression and her husband. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman” tries to tell the readers about the mental harassment and physical abuse...

The Art Of Deception In Eminent Works Of Gothic Literature

Deceptive appearances are common in Gothic literature and across Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula; Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, The Yellow Wallpaper; Roald Dahl’s, The Landlady, and Robert Browning’s poem, Porphyria’s Lover. The authors explore the idea that appearances do not always reflect reality. In the first...

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Analysis of Literary Devices in "What You Pawn, I Will Redeem" and "The Yellow Wallpaper"

The use of literary devices in storytelling is crucial in conveying a message and keeping the reader engaged. Two excellent examples of such literary works are Sherman Alexie's "What You Pawn, I Redeem" and Charlotte Perkin Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." In these stories, the authors...

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Similarities in Setting and Symbolism in the Novels Young Goodman Brown and The Yellow Wallpaper

My essay will be on the similarities between Young Goodman Brown and The Yellow Wallpaper. Both stories seem to have a very dark theme, while also settling. They are both very direct in getting how the characters are feeling across. Young Goodman Brown is known...

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The Yellow Wallpaper: Relationship of Gender Roles

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' took place in England in the nineteenth century in the bedroom of the haunted rented mansion by the narrator named Jane and her husband. There's yellow wallpaper in the house that Jane swears to see a...

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The Yellow Wallpaper: Women's Rights in the Nineteenth Century

Nineteenth century society saw the concept of separate spheres being used in society as so to help women understand their place in society, the ideology rested balanced on the definition of the ‘natural’ characteristics of men and women. Men were seen to be the superior...

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The Use and Elements of Symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper

In one of his most significant essays “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, H. P. Lovecraft analyses the history of weird fiction and the horror genre itself. In this essay, he dictates about the literary genre, claiming that “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear,...

The Short Stories The Story of an Hour and The Yellow Wallpaper

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The Need for Creative Outlet in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'

Author Charlotte Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” gives a personal short story about mental health care during her time. This account is personal, as the character in the story has experiences close to what author Gilman had during her period of receiving the ‘resting cure’...

The Yellow Wallpaper: Realistic Account of Woman's Mental Illness

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the writer takes a deeper view into mental health complications during the 1800’s. In this book, the reader can understand that the author has clear equality beliefs between females and males, specifically mentally. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is...

Exploration of Victorian Feminism in The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story published by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 and has since been described as ‘An American Feminist classic’ (Lanser). It follows a woman’s deterioration at the hands of her husband’s prescription of the ‘rest cure’ which is ultimately detrimental...

Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper Written By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who wrote many tracts and books explaining feminist causes. This story has many features which make it interesting, this story clearly demonstrates role of women in 19th century and gender inequality. Moreover, how mental illness is subjected...

Biographical Criticism In Terms Of Motherhood In "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes a very detailed short story that for some, may not be understood well. For most women, mothers more specifically, I think that her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, becomes a familiar place that we’ve all been at one point or another....

• Literary Criticism

Literary Analysis Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Literary Elements a. The first element that stands out in the story is symbolism. Symbolism is used to reinforce the message of women being repressed in their domestic lives. The most noticeable symbol in the story is the wallpaper that is talked about throughout the...

The Issues Of Confinement, Seclusion And Imprisonment In “The Yellow Wallpaper” And “The Most Dangerous Game”

About five billion people in the world have cell phones, and, just in America, the average amount of text messages sent in a day by adults, ages from eighteen to twenty-four, are a little more than one hundred and twenty-eight. Now, picture having to stay...

• The Most Dangerous Game

Best topics on The Yellow Wallpaper

1. The Issue of Mental Illness in The Yellow Wallpaper

2. The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword: How Authors Change The World Around Them

3. Portrayal Of Women’s Oppression In The Yellow Wallpaper

4. The Yellow Wallpaper: The Symbolism Of Mental Illness

5. Out Of The Wallpaper: The Imagery Of Mentally Ill In Yellow Wallpaper

6. Symbols As Used In Yellow Wallpaper And Story Of An Hour

7. The Imagery Of Violation Of Women’s Rights In Yellow Wallpaper

8. The Yellow Wallpaper: Symbols In Gilman’s Short Story

9. Figurative Language Used In The Yellow Wallpaper

10. The Usage Of Imagery In The Yellow Wallpaper

11. Symbolism Found In Charlotte Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper

12. The Analysis Of Women’s Oppression In Yellow Wallpaper

13. An Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper And Figurative Language Used

14. The Careful Use Of Symbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper

15. Finding The Meaning Behind The Symbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper

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Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI

Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows.

A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. (Turnitin is owned by Advance, which also owns Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED.) Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.

ChatGPT’s launch was met with knee-jerk fears that the English class essay would die . The chatbot can synthesize information and distill it near-instantly—but that doesn’t mean it always gets it right. Generative AI has been known to hallucinate , creating its own facts and citing academic references that don’t actually exist. Generative AI chatbots have also been caught spitting out biased text on gender and race . Despite those flaws, students have used chatbots for research, organizing ideas, and as a ghostwriter . Traces of chatbots have even been found in peer-reviewed, published academic writing .

Teachers understandably want to hold students accountable for using generative AI without permission or disclosure. But that requires a reliable way to prove AI was used in a given assignment. Instructors have tried at times to find their own solutions to detecting AI in writing, using messy, untested methods to enforce rules , and distressing students. Further complicating the issue, some teachers are even using generative AI in their grading processes.

Detecting the use of gen AI is tricky. It’s not as easy as flagging plagiarism, because generated text is still original text. Plus, there’s nuance to how students use gen AI; some may ask chatbots to write their papers for them in large chunks or in full, while others may use the tools as an aid or a brainstorm partner.

Students also aren't tempted by only ChatGPT and similar large language models. So-called word spinners are another type of AI software that rewrites text, and may make it less obvious to a teacher that work was plagiarized or generated by AI. Turnitin’s AI detector has also been updated to detect word spinners, says Annie Chechitelli, the company’s chief product officer. It can also flag work that was rewritten by services like spell checker Grammarly, which now has its own generative AI tool . As familiar software increasingly adds generative AI components, what students can and can’t use becomes more muddled.

Detection tools themselves have a risk of bias. English language learners may be more likely to set them off; a 2023 study found a 61.3 percent false positive rate when evaluating Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exams with seven different AI detectors. The study did not examine Turnitin’s version. The company says it has trained its detector on writing from English language learners as well as native English speakers. A study published in October found that Turnitin was among the most accurate of 16 AI language detectors in a test that had the tool examine undergraduate papers and AI-generated papers.

David Gilbert

Matt Burgess

Lauren Goode

Schools that use Turnitin had access to the AI detection software for a free pilot period, which ended at the start of this year. Chechitelli says a majority of the service’s clients have opted to purchase the AI detection. But the risks of false positives and bias against English learners have led some universities to ditch the tools for now. Montclair State University in New Jersey announced in November that it would pause use of Turnitin’s AI detector. Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University did the same last summer.

“This is hard. I understand why people want a tool,” says Emily Isaacs, executive director of the Office of Faculty Excellence at Montclair State. But Isaacs says the university is concerned about potentially biased results from AI detectors, as well as the fact that the tools can’t provide confirmation the way they can with plagiarism. Plus, Montclair State doesn’t want to put a blanket ban on AI, which will have some place in academia. With time and more trust in the tools, the policies could change. “It’s not a forever decision, it’s a now decision,” Isaacs says.

Chechitelli says the Turnitin tool shouldn’t be the only consideration in passing or failing a student. Instead, it’s a chance for teachers to start conversations with students that touch on all of the nuance in using generative AI. “People don’t really know where that line should be,” she says.

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Announcing the NeurIPS 2023 Paper Awards 

Communications Chairs 2023 2023 Conference awards , neurips2023

By Amir Globerson, Kate Saenko, Moritz Hardt, Sergey Levine and Comms Chair, Sahra Ghalebikesabi 

We are honored to announce the award-winning papers for NeurIPS 2023! This year’s prestigious awards consist of the Test of Time Award plus two Outstanding Paper Awards in each of these three categories: 

• Two Outstanding Main Track Papers 
• Two Outstanding Main Track Runner-Ups 
• Two Outstanding Datasets and Benchmark Track Papers  

This year’s organizers received a record number of paper submissions. Of the 13,300 submitted papers that were reviewed by 968 Area Chairs, 98 senior area chairs, and 396 Ethics reviewers 3,540  were accepted after 502 papers were flagged for ethics reviews . 

We thank the awards committee for the main track: Yoav Artzi, Chelsea Finn, Ludwig Schmidt, Ricardo Silva, Isabel Valera, and Mengdi Wang. For the Datasets and Benchmarks track, we thank Sergio Escalera, Isabelle Guyon, Neil Lawrence, Dina Machuve, Olga Russakovsky, Hugo Jair Escalante, Deepti Ghadiyaram, and Serena Yeung. Conflicts of interest were taken into account in the decision process.

Congratulations to all the authors! See Posters Sessions Tue-Thur in Great Hall & B1-B2 (level 1).

Outstanding Main Track Papers

Privacy Auditing with One (1) Training Run Authors: Thomas Steinke · Milad Nasr · Matthew Jagielski

Poster session 2: Tue 12 Dec 5:15 p.m. — 7:15 p.m. CST, #1523

Oral: Tue 12 Dec 3:40 p.m. — 4:40 p.m. CST, Room R06-R09 (level 2)

Abstract: We propose a scheme for auditing differentially private machine learning systems with a single training run. This exploits the parallelism of being able to add or remove multiple training examples independently. We analyze this using the connection between differential privacy and statistical generalization, which avoids the cost of group privacy. Our auditing scheme requires minimal assumptions about the algorithm and can be applied in the black-box or white-box setting. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework by applying it to DP-SGD, where we can achieve meaningful empirical privacy lower bounds by training only one model. In contrast, standard methods would require training hundreds of models.

Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage? Authors: Rylan Schaeffer · Brando Miranda · Sanmi Koyejo

Poster session 6: Thu 14 Dec 5:00 p.m. — 7:00 p.m. CST, #1108

Oral: Thu 14 Dec 3:20 p.m. — 3:35 p.m. CST, Hall C2 (level 1) 

Abstract: Recent work claims that large language models display emergent abilities, abilities not present in smaller-scale models that are present in larger-scale models. What makes emergent abilities intriguing is two-fold: their sharpness, transitioning seemingly instantaneously from not present to present, and their unpredictability , appearing at seemingly unforeseeable model scales. Here, we present an alternative explanation for emergent abilities: that for a particular task and model family, when analyzing fixed model outputs, emergent abilities appear due to the researcher’s choice of metric rather than due to fundamental changes in model behavior with scale. Specifically, nonlinear or discontinuous metrics produce apparent emergent abilities, whereas linear or continuous metrics produce smooth, continuous, predictable changes in model performance. We present our alternative explanation in a simple mathematical model, then test it in three complementary ways: we (1) make, test and confirm three predictions on the effect of metric choice using the InstructGPT/GPT-3 family on tasks with claimed emergent abilities, (2) make, test and confirm two predictions about metric choices in a meta-analysis of emergent abilities on BIG-Bench; and (3) show how to choose metrics to produce never-before-seen seemingly emergent abilities in multiple vision tasks across diverse deep networks. Via all three analyses, we provide evidence that alleged emergent abilities evaporate with different metrics or with better statistics, and may not be a fundamental property of scaling AI models.

Outstanding Main Track Runner-Ups

Scaling Data-Constrained Language Models Authors : Niklas Muennighoff · Alexander Rush · Boaz Barak · Teven Le Scao · Nouamane Tazi · Aleksandra Piktus · Sampo Pyysalo · Thomas Wolf · Colin Raffel

Poster session 2: Tue 12 Dec 5:15 p.m. — 7:15 p.m. CST, #813

Oral: Tue 12 Dec 3:40 p.m. — 4:40 p.m. CST, Hall C2 (level 1)  

Abstract : The current trend of scaling language models involves increasing both parameter count and training dataset size. Extrapolating this trend suggests that training dataset size may soon be limited by the amount of text data available on the internet. Motivated by this limit, we investigate scaling language models in data-constrained regimes. Specifically, we run a large set of experiments varying the extent of data repetition and compute budget, ranging up to 900 billion training tokens and 9 billion parameter models. We find that with constrained data for a fixed compute budget, training with up to 4 epochs of repeated data yields negligible changes to loss compared to having unique data. However, with more repetition, the value of adding compute eventually decays to zero. We propose and empirically validate a scaling law for compute optimality that accounts for the decreasing value of repeated tokens and excess parameters. Finally, we experiment with approaches mitigating data scarcity, including augmenting the training dataset with code data or removing commonly used filters. Models and datasets from our 400 training runs are freely available at https://github.com/huggingface/datablations .

Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model Authors: Rafael Rafailov · Archit Sharma · Eric Mitchell · Christopher D Manning · Stefano Ermon · Chelsea Finn

Poster session 6: Thu 14 Dec 5:00 p.m. — 7:00 p.m. CST, #625

Oral: Thu 14 Dec 3:50 p.m. — 4:05 p.m. CST, Ballroom A-C (level 2)  

Abstract: While large-scale unsupervised language models (LMs) learn broad world knowledge and some reasoning skills, achieving precise control of their behavior is difficult due to the completely unsupervised nature of their training. Existing methods for gaining such steerability collect human labels of the relative quality of model generations and fine-tune the unsupervised LM to align with these preferences, often with reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). However, RLHF is a complex and often unstable procedure, first fitting a reward model that reflects the human preferences, and then fine-tuning the large unsupervised LM using reinforcement learning to maximize this estimated reward without drifting too far from the original model. In this paper, we leverage a mapping between reward functions and optimal policies to show that this constrained reward maximization problem can be optimized exactly with a single stage of policy training, essentially solving a classification problem on the human preference data. The resulting algorithm, which we call Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), is stable, performant, and computationally lightweight, eliminating the need for fitting a reward model, sampling from the LM during fine-tuning, or performing significant hyperparameter tuning. Our experiments show that DPO can fine-tune LMs to align with human preferences as well as or better than existing methods. Notably, fine-tuning with DPO exceeds RLHF’s ability to control sentiment of generations and improves response quality in summarization and single-turn dialogue while being substantially simpler to implement and train.

Outstanding Datasets and Benchmarks Papers

In the dataset category : 

ClimSim: A large multi-scale dataset for hybrid physics-ML climate emulation

Authors:  Sungduk Yu · Walter Hannah · Liran Peng · Jerry Lin · Mohamed Aziz Bhouri · Ritwik Gupta · Björn Lütjens · Justus C. Will · Gunnar Behrens · Julius Busecke · Nora Loose · Charles Stern · Tom Beucler · Bryce Harrop · Benjamin Hillman · Andrea Jenney · Savannah L. Ferretti · Nana Liu · Animashree Anandkumar · Noah Brenowitz · Veronika Eyring · Nicholas Geneva · Pierre Gentine · Stephan Mandt · Jaideep Pathak · Akshay Subramaniam · Carl Vondrick · Rose Yu · Laure Zanna · Tian Zheng · Ryan Abernathey · Fiaz Ahmed · David Bader · Pierre Baldi · Elizabeth Barnes · Christopher Bretherton · Peter Caldwell · Wayne Chuang · Yilun Han · YU HUANG · Fernando Iglesias-Suarez · Sanket Jantre · Karthik Kashinath · Marat Khairoutdinov · Thorsten Kurth · Nicholas Lutsko · Po-Lun Ma · Griffin Mooers · J. David Neelin · David Randall · Sara Shamekh · Mark Taylor · Nathan Urban · Janni Yuval · Guang Zhang · Mike Pritchard

Poster session 4: Wed 13 Dec 5:00 p.m. — 7:00 p.m. CST, #105 

Oral: Wed 13 Dec 3:45 p.m. — 4:00 p.m. CST, Ballroom A-C (level 2)

Abstract: Modern climate projections lack adequate spatial and temporal resolution due to computational constraints. A consequence is inaccurate and imprecise predictions of critical processes such as storms. Hybrid methods that combine physics with machine learning (ML) have introduced a new generation of higher fidelity climate simulators that can sidestep Moore’s Law by outsourcing compute-hungry, short, high-resolution simulations to ML emulators. However, this hybrid ML-physics simulation approach requires domain-specific treatment and has been inaccessible to ML experts because of lack of training data and relevant, easy-to-use workflows. We present ClimSim, the largest-ever dataset designed for hybrid ML-physics research. It comprises multi-scale climate simulations, developed by a consortium of climate scientists and ML researchers. It consists of 5.7 billion pairs of multivariate input and output vectors that isolate the influence of locally-nested, high-resolution, high-fidelity physics on a host climate simulator’s macro-scale physical state. The dataset is global in coverage, spans multiple years at high sampling frequency, and is designed such that resulting emulators are compatible with downstream coupling into operational climate simulators. We implement a range of deterministic and stochastic regression baselines to highlight the ML challenges and their scoring. The data (https://huggingface.co/datasets/LEAP/ClimSim_high-res) and code (https://leap-stc.github.io/ClimSim) are released openly to support the development of hybrid ML-physics and high-fidelity climate simulations for the benefit of science and society.   

In the benchmark category :

DecodingTrust: A Comprehensive Assessment of Trustworthiness in GPT Models

Authors: Boxin Wang · Weixin Chen · Hengzhi Pei · Chulin Xie · Mintong Kang · Chenhui Zhang · Chejian Xu · Zidi Xiong · Ritik Dutta · Rylan Schaeffer · Sang Truong · Simran Arora · Mantas Mazeika · Dan Hendrycks · Zinan Lin · Yu Cheng · Sanmi Koyejo · Dawn Song · Bo Li

Poster session 1: Tue 12 Dec 10:45 a.m. — 12:45 p.m. CST, #1618  

Oral: Tue 12 Dec 10:30 a.m. — 10:45 a.m. CST, Ballroom A-C (Level 2)

Abstract: Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models have exhibited exciting progress in capabilities, capturing the interest of practitioners and the public alike. Yet, while the literature on the trustworthiness of GPT models remains limited, practitioners have proposed employing capable GPT models for sensitive applications to healthcare and finance – where mistakes can be costly. To this end, this work proposes a comprehensive trustworthiness evaluation for large language models with a focus on GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, considering diverse perspectives – including toxicity, stereotype bias, adversarial robustness, out-of-distribution robustness, robustness on adversarial demonstrations, privacy, machine ethics, and fairness. Based on our evaluations, we discover previously unpublished vulnerabilities to trustworthiness threats. For instance, we find that GPT models can be easily misled to generate toxic and biased outputs and leak private information in both training data and conversation history. We also find that although GPT-4 is usually more trustworthy than GPT-3.5 on standard benchmarks, GPT-4 is more vulnerable given jailbreaking system or user prompts, potentially due to the reason that GPT-4 follows the (misleading) instructions more precisely. Our work illustrates a comprehensive trustworthiness evaluation of GPT models and sheds light on the trustworthiness gaps. Our benchmark is publicly available at https://decodingtrust.github.io/.

Test of Time

This year, following the usual practice, we chose a NeurIPS paper from 10 years ago to receive the Test of Time Award, and “ Distributed Representations of Words and Phrases and their Compositionality ” by Tomas Mikolov, Ilya Sutskever, Kai Chen, Greg Corrado, and Jeffrey Dean, won. 

Published at NeurIPS 2013 and cited over 40,000 times, the work introduced the seminal word embedding technique word2vec. Demonstrating the power of learning from large amounts of unstructured text, the work catalyzed progress that marked the beginning of a new era in natural language processing.

Greg Corrado and Jeffrey Dean will be giving a talk about this work and related research on Tuesday, 12 Dec at 3:05 – 3:25 pm CST in Hall F.  

Related Posts

2023 Conference

Announcing NeurIPS 2023 Invited Talks

Reflections on the neurips 2023 ethics review process, neurips newsletter – november 2023.

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‘Panama Papers’ trial starts. 27 people charged in the worldwide money laundering case

Lawyers and court workers leave the Supreme Court during a recess for the trial of the “Panama Papers” money laundering case in Panama City, Monday, April 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Agustin Herrera)

The Supreme Court stands in Panama City, Monday, April 8, 2024 as the trial starts for those charged in connection with the worldwide “Panama Papers” money laundering case. (AP Photo/Agustin Herrera)

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PANAMA CITY (AP) — The trial of 27 people charged in connection with the worldwide “Panama Papers” money laundering started Monday in a Panamanian criminal court.

Those on trial include the owners of the Mossack-Fonseca law firm that was at the heart of the 2016 massive document leak.

The Panama Papers include a collection of 11 million secret financial documents that illustrate how some of the world’s richest people hide their money.

The repercussions of the leaks have been far-ranging, prompting the resignation of the prime minister of Iceland and bringing scrutiny to the leaders of Argentina and Ukraine, Chinese politicians and Russian President Vladimir Putin, among others.

The often-delayed trial opened Monday, with lawyers Juergen Mossack, Ramón Fonseca and other former representatives, lawyers or ex-employees of the firm facing money laundering charges.

Mossack was present in the courtroom, and said “I am not guilty of such acts.”

Lawyers for Fonseca said he was in a hospital in Panama.

The case centers on allegations the firm set up shell companies to acquire properties in Panama with money from a sprawling corruption scheme in Brazil known as the Car Wash , or Lava Jato in Portuguese.

Fonseca has said the firm, which closed in 2018, had no control over how its clients might use offshore vehicles created for them. Both Mossack and Fonseca have Panamanian citizenship, and Panama does not extradite its own citizens.

The two were acquitted on other charges in 2022.

The records were first leaked to the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, and were shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which began publishing collaborative reports with news organizations in 2016.

U.S. federal prosecutors have alleged that Mossack Fonseca conspired to circumvent American laws to maintain the wealth of its clients and conceal tax dollars owed to the IRS. They alleged the scheme dates to 2000 and involved sham foundations and shell companies in Panama, Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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Panama Papers: trial begins of 27 Mossack Fonseca employees

Law firm’s founders among those to face money laundering charges after leak of 11.5m files in 2016

A criminal trial of 27 employees working for the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers on money laundering charges has commenced in a Panamanian court.

Eight years ago, leaked financial records from the law firm Mossack Fonseca sparked international outrage at the use of offshore companies by wealthy individuals to commit tax fraud and hide assets.

In 2016, files from Mossack Fonseca were leaked to reporters at the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Reporters from more than 100 media organisations, including the Guardian, collaborated to investigate the 11.5m files.

The firm’s founders, Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca Mora, are among those facing charges. They have previously denied any allegations against them, arguing that they had no control over the offshore companies that the firm set up for its clients. If convicted, they reportedly face up to 12 years in prison.

According to the Associated Press , Mossack attended the hearing to declare his innocence, telling reporters outside the courtroom that he was “very optimistic”. A representative for Fonseca told the court that his client was in hospital.

Battered by international criticism, Panama adopted new legislation modernising the country’s legal definition of money laundering in 2019. Aspects of the charges against the Mossack Fonseca employees concern activities predating the change in the law, which could complicate prosecutors’ attempts to convict them, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists .

Panama’s supreme court previously ruled that creating shell companies used for tax fraud could not be considered a crime if the companies in question were created prior to 2019.

Mossack and Fonseca were both acquitted of separate charges two years ago after a judge directed that the firm did not handle or attempt to hide money stolen from Brazil as part of a major corruption scandal involving the state oil company codenamed Lava Jato or the Car Wash.

Offshore companies linked more than 100 politicians from around the world, including 12 national leaders, were discovered by journalists analysing the Panama Papers. They included $2bn in an offshore company belonging to the Russian cellist Sergei Roldugin, the friend of the President Vladimir Putin.

Nawaz Sharif , then prime minister of Pakistan, and Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson , prime minister of Iceland, were both forced from office amid public fury at hidden offshore wealth connected to their families.

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Sharif was disqualified from office and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment by the Pakistani supreme court after reporters discovered undeclared real estate secretly owned by his family through offshore companies. Gunnlaugsson was forced to resign after it was revealed that he had never declared his family’s ownership of an offshore company with a $1m claim against one of Iceland’s failed banks.

After publication of the Panama Papers investigation, countries around the world initiated proceedings to recover unpaid taxes that had been hidden using offshore companies. By 2021 more than $1.36bn in fines and penalties for unpaid taxes were said to have been recovered by exchequers around the world, including $253m recovered by HMRC in the UK.

• Panama Papers

More on this story

Panama Papers whistleblower speaks out: ‘Politicians must act – now’

We were leaked the Panama Papers. Here’s how to bring down Putin’s cronies

EU states 'dragging their feet' over financial transparency, report finds

Panama Papers law firm Mossack Fonseca sues Netflix over The Laundromat

Meryl Streep on the Panama Papers: ‘People died to get the word out’

Fears UK law change could prevent scrutiny of money launderers

Deutsche Bank offices raided in connection with Panama Papers

Nevis: how the world’s most secretive offshore haven refuses to clean up

Money-laundering crackdown on public schools and law firms

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Yellow Wallpaper — Imagery In The Yellow Wallpaper

Imagery in The Yellow Wallpaper

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