Jay Patel Ms. Murchie AP English 12 Feb 2016 The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman portrays the story of the heavily restricted domestic life of a woman who is suppressed by being trapped in a marriage with no personal growth. She does this through the usage of many different types of literary devices. Throughout this short story, with exception to the ending, the main character is restricted from expressing herself due to her husband and behaves in a subservient manner towards him. She uses an anaphora to describe how the woman “personally” disagreed with “their ideas” and “personally” believed that “congenial work” with “excitement and change” would possibly cure her and do her “good” (Gilman 1). …show more content…
Through foreshadowing, we realize that the “something” that is “strange” is the woman’s mental portrayal of the yellow wallpaper (Gilman 1). Gilman uses distinctio and imagery to describe how the woman begins to think of the “unclean yellow” color of the house as “almost revolting” and “strangely” fading by the sun (Gilman 2). Then, by personification, the woman thinks that even the spots and “pattern” on wallpaper began to move “up and down” as they “crawl” (Gilman 3). Despite her “crying” to merely get some time outside of her house and visit her cousins, John tells her that she isn’t “able to go”. All this isolation creates a build up of emotions swarming with no outlet due to her isolation and causes her to see something like a “woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (Gilman 5). Along with this hyperbole, the author uses personification to show that the wallpaper has a “smell” and distinctio to portray this smell as one that “creeps all over the house” (Gilman 7). At the end of the story, the woman loses all of her sanity and vigorously begins peeling off the wallpaper to free the women trapped behind the yellow wallpaper even though it “hurt” her “teeth”. The ending also contains situational irony because the woman ends up gaining back all of her freedom by freeing the trapped women, or herself,
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a highly respected feminist of her era. Her semi-autobiographical “The Yellow Wallpaper” was an inspiring and a notable short story in the eyes of the feminists in the early 1890s. Her work toward representing woman’s health, both physically as mentally, became transcendent. She challenges how the men can oppress woman, even if not intentionally, by determining the best course of treatment without taking into consideration the woman’s point of view. It’s remarkable how these patterns happened through the centuries and is still occurring in some places.
The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a brilliant piece of fictional literature. The tale involves a mentally ill woman who is kept in a hideous, yellow room under the orders of her husband, John, who is a physician. The ill woman is conflicted due to the fact that the horrifying yellow wallpaper in the room is trapping a woman who she must help escape, but the sick woman is aware that she must get better in order to leave the terrifying, yellow room. The setting and personification applied in the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, allows readers to develop an understanding of the sickness of the main character faces.
Martin states that the narrator’s confinement in the upstairs bedroom fortifies her mental illness developing into “a frightening hallucinatory world constructed around the pattern of the yellow paper on the wall.” This shift in her identity happens as the shift in her disposition towards the wallpaper changes. The wallpaper is a visible metaphor that eventually becomes her identity. In the beginning of her stay in the bedroom she says the wallpaper is “committing artistic sin” (Par34) and can push anyone to “suddenly commit suicide” (Par35) These comments show her despise towards the wallpaper and the separation she originally has from it.
In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses literary devices such as imagery and personification to create a feeling of fear within the reader. This can be seen in the way the narrator describes in detail the smell of the yellow wallpaper. Gilman uses personification when the narrator says the smell of the yellow wallpaper was “hovering in the dining room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall” (654). A smell is not something that one would usually refer to as hovering, skulking, or hiding, so it makes the reader wonder what is so peculiar about this smell. The way the narrator describes the smell creates this creepy and almost eerie feeling because it makes one wonder how this smell is possessing these humanlike qualities.
The narrator is a woman who is imaginative trying to make her mind think and realize the meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper as, “repellant, almost revolting; smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 641). This specific wallpaper makes the narrator feel a certain way. At first, she does not like the color or how it looks. But then not having anything else to do in the room, she starts examining the wallpaper.
She becomes obsessed with the patterns of the wallpaper, but she mainly notices a woman that she thinks is trying to free herself from the confines of the wall. During the day this woman is still, but when night time comes around, it seems as though the woman creeps around. Towards the end of the story, the narrator has a breakdown and thinks that she is this woman inside of the wallpaper, and begins to perform similar actions like creeping around. This meaning of this scene is simple cause and effect. Not only did she already have postpartum depression, but she is basically trapped in this house for a whole summer with nothing to do so she can heal.
It's yellow color symbolizes the way the narrator feels about her situation. "Unclean", "dull", "sickly" is how she may have felt deep down about her relationship with her husband and the life she lived under him. The wallpaper itself becomes a symbol for her. She uses it as a coping method and projects her feelings onto it and the woman she sees in it. The windows symbolize how she is trapped in this marriage and she can only view the beautiful outside through the many windows, reminding her of what she cannot have.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story told through diary entries of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, becomes obsessed with the ugly yellow wallpaper in the summer home her husband rented for them. While at the home the Narrator studies the wallpaper and starts to believe there is a woman in the wallpaper. Her obsession with the wallpaper slowly makes her mental state deteriorate. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary devices such as symbolism, personification and imagery to help convey her message and get it across to the reader.
(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”
Initially, the narrator is disgusted and irritated by the paper, claiming, “I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (339). This reaction mirrors that of a sane person’s--fearing the unknown, they distance themselves from insanity and any iteration of it, seeing it as grotesque and shameful. Yet, as she spends more time in the room, she grows interested in the wallpaper and begins to investigate. She comes to the conclusion that: “I didn 't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (346).
(99). The woman on the floor trying to take the wallpaper down would not let her husband in as he tried to knock the door down, but she does not realize she is doing it to herself. For example, Catherine Golden states in her article that, “The narrator seems detached from the bits of wallpaper on the floor next to her and John wallpaper fragments that could be read as a literal representation of the source of her insanity. The narrator’s hallucinations and action of tearing down the wallpaper to free the woman trapped behind the wallpaper pattern condemn her to madness” (60).
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator 's husband John, who also happens to be her physician, prescribes the rest cure to help lift his wife of her depressive state and ultimately heal her depression. However, the rest cure does not allow the narrator to experience any mental stimulation. Therefore, to manage her boredom the narrator begins obsessing over the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. After analyzing the pattern for awhile, the narrator witnesses a woman trapped behind bars.
She begins to see strangles heads in the wallpaper, which can be a symbolic representation of the patriarchal order that stifled women. The bars on the wallpaper that cage the imaginary women are a reflection of her own situation where she is confined in the old mansion. Even the smell of the wallpaper, which she describes as being ‘yellow’ and present throughout the house, is a reflection of the mental repression that is always present in her life. She is so consumed by the smell that she thinks about burning the old mansion just to cover it
Rationale Part 3 of the Language and Literature course, named “Literature - texts and contexts,” has been focused on evaluating literature from a contextual and stylistic framework. In our classroom, we’ve focused much of our time on reading A Doll’s House, a play written by Henrik Ibsen in 1879. The play, set within the Victorian Era, lay an insight into many facets and innate flaws of society. I have decided to focus my written task on the societal notion and perspective on marriage, and its transition through the course of the play.
Kate Chopin’s feminist bias is clearly portrayed in chapter one of her novel, The Awakening. As a woman, she is caged by her society to be a certain way, but she writes the novel to establish her power as a woman and to prove that the societal norms need to change. The first interaction between husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Pontellier, establishes that their marriage is toxic. While Mr. Pontellier smokes his cigar, his wife and Robert Lebrun are walking by the beach towards the cottage, and his immediate reaction is to comment on her sunburn. As a reader, this type of reaction causes animosity towards Mr. Pontellier because he sees his wife as a “piece of property” (2) and also shocking that their relationship lacks emotion and affection.