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Analysis Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is about a wife who is confined to a room due to a condition such as depression or anxiety. The woman does all she can, to get rid of her sickness, still she still is not allowed to work. She speaks about how she controls her temper towards her husband John with pills, despite they make her tired she tries to find new excitements. The pills she takes for her to control emotions tire her greatly. She then walks into the old house writing about the horrid color on the wall, But then when John visits her in her room, she must not write about it, she hides her book she was writing on. John refuses to change the wallpaper being he thinks it suits her well, he states “If he were to change it that,the next doing will be barred windows as well as a heavy bedstead.” The Wife dislikes that he would say such towards her even with her mental sickness. …show more content…

She finds the yellow wallpaper in her room to be irritating. She began to be fond of her room, perhaps from of the wallpaper, it stuck in her mind. She has Anxiety, she wants to go see cousin Henry along with Julia, but then ends up breaking down after thinking too much, thinking of how her husband wouldn't be able to stand her even after they got there. John makes her feel like she's the only reason he has to live as well as that she's all he has. She thinks saying that's the only reason she takes care of herself id because John loves her so much. She concentrates on the wallpaper then thinks of how it looks like a woman trapped behind

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As she understands that the women trapped in the wallpaper is a reflection of herself she free herself mentally. Resulting in her going

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The Restriction of a Wallpaper The narrator in 'The Yellow Wallpaper', whose name we never learn, is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression. She is being treated by her husband, John, in a big beautiful house that is far off the road. Her husband, as well as others, believes that isolating her from everyone and everything will cure her. John is a physician, so he and the narrator convince themselves that he knows what is best for her. After spending some time alone in this house, while being inconsiderably taken care of by her husband, the narrator's condition worsens.

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1130 Words | 5 Pages

The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper was written by a lady named Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “Charlotte was a young lady born in the 1860s right into poverty. Her upbringing was in poverty and didnt have it very easy at a young age. She was born in England and at the age of 22 she married a man by the name Charles Walter Stetson. They eventually had a child and almost immediately right after the birth of the child Charlotte fell into a deep depression.

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1096 Words | 5 Pages

The Struggle of Many Women The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, reflects the life of many women during the difficult times they were living in. The narrator can relate to many people during the Victorian age where the woman’s role was to be a wife and a mother only. The narrator is a woman who is imaginative and is dissociated from herself and from the world.

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875 Words | 4 Pages

The narrator is constantly crying, has no appetite, and has insomnia, all of which are symptoms of postpartum depression. The room she abides in, is an old nursery which promotes her deep detest for the room. The indication that she had possibly gave birth, and cannot see her child, expands on the perception of domestic abuse. One may insinuate that the narrator gave birth and her reaction afterwards was deemed as irrational, on the brink of hysteria. John takes it upon himself to say that she is being overly dramatic and places her into solitary confinement, in his poor attempt to heal her.

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1232 Words | 5 Pages

As this progresses, the woman starts to go mad from ignorance and starts to believe there is someone behind the Wallpaper. In her room, the narrator starts to obsess over the Wallpaper. The Wallpaper symbolizes women starting to realize how unfair they were treated and how responded to this. As the women’s illness keeps getting subdued by her husband, she starts to go mad and the wallpaper demonstrates this. In the third entry of her diary she says, “Of

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1480 Words | 6 Pages

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

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797 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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Her descriptions of the room, with the furniture seemingly being nailed to the floor and the windows being “barred” show an underlying understanding that her thoughts and personality is being confined. The irony present in this description, due to her belief that the room used to be a nursery, shows her early denial of her husband’s dominance over her. As the story progresses and she begins to see the woman behind the wallpaper, the reader is exposed to the narrator’s realization that she is the one that is actually being suppressed. The descriptions of the wallpaper, showing how confining it is for the symbolic woman behind it, shows how the narrator is being trapped by those bars in both her marriage and in her mental illness. Thus when she says, “At night in any kind of light… it becomes bars,” the reader is shown how restricted the narrator feels, reflected through the wallpaper.

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At the beginning of the short story Jane absolutely hates the wallpaper in her bedroom, but at the end Jane claims that she is “getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper.” (page ) At the beginning of the story Jane is aggravated at John and after John’s treatment she describes him as “so wise” (page ) and “loving [her] so.” (page ) Throughout the “Yellow Wallpaper” John consistently makes Jane’s condition worse and worse until she finally has a mental breakdown.

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814 Words | 4 Pages

How she describes her surroundings and her interactions with her family evolves as her condition worsens. By the end, the reader can truly see just how far gone the narrator has gone. The narrator’s fixation on the yellow wallpaper had gone from a slight obsession to full mental breakdown. As it is with most good stories, the presence of strong symbolism and detailed settings is a very important aspect of the story that helps to draw the reader into the story.

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She begins to slip away from reality and into her dreamlike world. The woman seen in the wallpaper mirrors the narrator 's plight for freedom. While she is free from the restraints of marriage and motherhood, she has been consumed by madness. John dominates the relationship, both as doctor and husband.

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562 Words | 3 Pages

(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!”

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501 Words | 3 Pages

John constantly tries to "fix" the narrator by giving her "phosphates or phosphites - whichever it is, and tonics, and journey's, and air, and exercise" as well as forbidding her to work until she is well again. The narrator feels depressed and alone, especially since her child has been taken away from her and everybody is too focused on "fixing" her to see the problems she is dealing with. This causes her to form an attachment to the yellow wallpaper plastered around her room as her mental state deteriorates. As her state of mind worsens, she begins to think that she is seeing a woman trapped in the wallpaper. The narrator believes that the wallpaper pattern changes because the trapped woman shakes the walls and creeps around the room over and over, when in reality, it is the narrator who is continuously crawling around the room, scraping the wallpaper from the walls.

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893 Words | 4 Pages

She states that there are things in the paper that “nobody knows about but me, or ever will.” (Kennedy and Gioia 469). Further, the moonlight shines into the room at night and reveals the women creeping in the wallpaper. As she begins to feel imprisoned she projects her feelings onto the wallpaper, but the idea of the room being her prison goes from figurative to more literal as the isolation deepens her need for an escape. During this time period the colored wallpaper has become a living thing it begins to affect not just her sense of sight but also smell.

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