The Tell-tale Heart Vs The Yellow Wallpaper

The term “unreliable narrator” is used often nowadays. Was this originally the creation of Henry James from the governess in The Turn of The Screw?

No, the technique is much older than James, or indeed the novel itself. There are unreliable narrators in the _Canterbury Tales_ (the Wife of Bath and the Merchant both provide highly biased accounts of their respective tales). The narrator of _Don Quixote_ makes some curious choices when it comes to establishing the “factualness” of his tale. DeFoe’s Moll Flanders casts a positive slant on most everything she does, as does Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon. Sterne’s Tristam Shandy narrates the story of his own conception and birth, despite not having been an eyewitness to those events in any practical sense. Twain’s Huckleberry Finn doesn’t deliberately lie (too much), but he’s very naive about the world and therefore some things go over his head.Notable examples in horror stories and “weird tales” that preceded _The Turn of the Screw_ include:Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman” (1835) is exactly what it says in the title.Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) is narrated by a character who swears up and down that he is definitely sane, it’s just the “vulture eye” of the old man that’s bothering him.Charlotte Perkins’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) is a first-person account by a woman who gradually goes insane during the story.Arthur Machen’s _The Three Imposters_ (1895) presents several tales that are being told by characters within the overall story, Arabian Nights style. Most (if not all) of those tales are deliberate lies.Many of the narrators of the stories in Chambers’s _The King in Yellow_ (1895) are here to tell you about what happened to them after they read a play called _The King in Yellow_, which invariably drives the reader insane.The various narrators in _Dracula_ (1897) are writing diary entries and letters to each other which are from necessarily limited and possibly unreliable perspectives— and then there’s a larger issue of whether Mina (who acts as the vampire hunters’ archivist) and/or Dracula himself may have tampered with the documents before publication.(For more on the history of the technique, see Unreliable narrator - Wikipedia.)James built on his predecessors’ use of the unreliable narrator and, as his party-goers would put it, gave it “one turn more.”

What was Edgar Allan Poe like in real life?

Poe wrote.from.Experience. He describes many characters in his tales with symptoms that are recognized today as hallmarks of CO poisoning. Since CO had not yet even been discovered, he could only have known these symptoms from his own personal experience living and working in the gas-lit cities of Baltimore, Phila and Manhattan.In contrast, Poe didnt write of any CO symptoms when he lived in gas-free cities of Boston and Richmond. The most detailed descriptions are in Fall of the House of Usher, where Usher = us + her; us = narrator and roderick ( his conscious self ); and her = roderick's sister (his unconcscious self). This tale contains over 50 mental and physical symptoms of CO poisoning! See www.Mcsrr.OrgOther tales of Poe's CO woes include Premature Burial, Tell Tale Heart, The Man Who Was Used Up. Among his poems, read The Bells to understand how he suffered from tinnitus, another symptom of CO poisoning.Gas light in his era was made from coal gas and contained about 50,000ppm in the raw gas before you lit it, so if it leaked indoors it could make you quite ill or kill you.In comparison, cars without working catalytic converters produce about 15000-30000 and US EPA today allows exposure of only 9ppm average over 8 hours.It is amazing that Poe was able to write as cogently as he did. His hypergraphia is actually another symptom of chronic CO poisoning which also afflicted Lincoln in the White House and Van Gogh in the Yellow House in Arles.Psychologically closest to Poe in so many ways was Baudelaire. Before he published his own tales, he first translated all of Poe's into French because he was "like me."For famous female sufferers in the gas light era, see CP Gilmore's tale of The Yellow Wallpaper.

What is an interesting story that you have read till now?

A man was an avid gardner...Saw a small butterfly laying a few eggs in one of the pots in his garden since that day he looked at the egg with ever growing curiosity and eagerness.The egg started to move and shake a little. He was exited to see a new life coming up right in front of his eyes. He spent hours watching the egg now. The egg started to expand and develop cracks.. A tiny head and antennae started to come out ever so slowly.The man's excitement knew no bounds he got his magnifying glasses and sat to watch the life and body of a pupa coming out.He saw the struggle of the tender pupa and couldn't resisit his urge to HELP. He went and got a tender forcep the help the egg break, a nip here a nip there to help the struggling life. And LO!The pupa was out the man was ecstatic! He waited now each day for the pupa to grow and fly abt like a beautiful butterfly, but Alas that never happened the larvae pupa had a oversized head and kept crawling along in the pot for the full 4 weeks and died! Depressed the man went to his botanist friend and asked the reason. His friend told him the struggle to break out of the egg helps the larvae to send blood to its wings and the head push helps the head to remain small so that the tender wings can support it thru its 4 week life cycle, in his eagerness to help the man destroyed a beautiful life!Struggles help all of us, that's why a wee bit of effort goes a long way to develop our strength to face life's difficulties!As parents, we sometimes go too far trying to help and protect our kids from life's harsh realities and disappointments.We don't want our kids to struggle like we did.But Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Dan Kindlon says that overprotected children are more likely to struggle in relationships and with challenges.We're sending our kids the message that they're not capable of helping themselves.To quote clinical psychologist Dr. Wendy Mogel: "It is Our Job to prepare Our Children for the Road..., & Not prepare the road for Our Children..."