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Character Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper

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The Wallpaper becomes a "living", narrating character which tells this story from the perspective of an it-narrative, mainly because of its intensive relationship with the main narrator. Physically, it cocoons the main character, and gradually, over the course of the character's descent into madness, also nears its own destruction until what has been trapped behind the wall, and within the main character, frees itself. Psychologically, the wallpaper in the story, has the role of conversation partner for the nameless character and becomes another narrator, one mirroring and narrating the character's inner life, which can then aids in the narration of what the woman can not say but what needs to be transmitted to the reader in order to make the character understandable (Tischleder 2014: 36). …show more content…

A important part of this transformation is what she sees inside the paper, a being she acknowledges right from the beginning, and the wallpaper stares right back and becomes a main focus of her otherwise underutilized mind (Gilman 1997: 1-15.). Over time she begins to see eyes which stare back at her, sees something moving behind the patterns, and slowly, over the course of the journal entries, this movement becomes another character she begins to interact with while steadily descending in a worse and worse mental state (Gilman 1997: 1-15.). This is what creates the impression of "life", what enables the paper to be counted among the it-narrative, and what, in the end, enforces the impact of the main characters transformation throughout the story by transforming right along

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She proceeds to explain the contributing factors of the narrator succumbing to her “disease” of hysteria which was isolation from social interaction and the restriction of her own thoughts. She points out that the narrator is confined to a simple square room with nothing to offer in terms of mental health therapy. The narrator’s lack of the ability to interact with anything or anyone leads to infatuation with the wallpaper, which turns out to be “the

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Moreover, the author admits her visualizations to be eerie and uncanny, when she exclaims, “I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing”, which shows that she recognizes the absurdity of the situation. The use of an exclamatory sentence displays feelings of desperation since the narrator illustrates the desire to justify her actions. The visualization of the wallpaper as an animated objects creates a connection between the narrator and the wallpaper, as she desperately yearns for help for her problems. The use of a nervous tone through figurative diction shows the narrator’s deterioration of a cognitive abilities as she analyzes the wallpaper through a negative and gruesome lens. The description of the patterns as lifeless also contributes as evidence for her transition from rationality to insanity.

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Essentially, it is the physical and subsequent metaphorical entrapment of the female protagonist by her husband in The Yellow Wallpaper that leads to a loss of her identity. In addition to physical descriptions, a sense of identity can be established through the delivery of relationships with others, and moral beliefs. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the interplay of characters plays a key role in defining the narrator’s identity through the imbalance of power in her marriage with John. Gilman arguably presents the narrator’s descent into madness through her inability to create a new identity counter to John’s entrapment of her.

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One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.” (381) Her constant mention of hating the wallpaper seems like it becomes an odd obsession for the narrator. The woman who she is seeing

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No wonder the children hated it!” , but with the constant medication and being confined to that room with nothing else to look at she began to start obsessing over it. At first it was just the abstract markings on the wall and how peculiar they were in shape and how they were so random in every way. Then after being medicated for weeks she started to see a women trapped behind bars that was hidden in the markings of the wallpaper“I didn't realize for a long time what the thing that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman”. It became her sole mission to free the women but figuratively she was just looking at herself in a mirror.

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After being confined to the upper room, the narrator begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper and conjure up of the idea that there is an imprisoned woman behind the wallpaper waiting to be freed. The narrator seems to relate to the woman behind the wallpaper as she feels as though she is imprisoned also. The narrator becomes plagued by the woman behind the wallpaper and she begins to peel off all of the wallpaper to free the woman. She starts crawling around the room and the narrator is convinced that she is trapped and was once herself in the wallpaper. The narrator’s descent into complete madness escalates and the narrator is creeping along the walls of the room and her husband arrives.

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Ironically, writing about the walls keeps her grounded, yet leads to her madness. The shadows from a window above Jane’s bed, fueled by her imagination, fashion themselves to look like tiny women. The wind and normal flow of nature cause these images to seem animate. As the summer ends, she becomes obsessed with figuring the wallpaper out.

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Secondly, throughout the story, the narrator describes seeing an evolving woman trapped inside of the wall. Although readers can assume that this woman is merely a product of the narrator’s mind, the woman can also be seen as a symbol of the narrator and her feelings of being trapped. Eventually, the woman in the wall aids the narrator in her escape. In conclusion, many elements of the narrator’s increasing madness throughout The Yellow Wallpaper contributed to her freedom from the confines of the room, the confines of society, and the confines of her

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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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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.

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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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(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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Nonetheless, the narrator continues to pen her ideas about the wallpaper as it transpired from being perplexing to gaining clarity each day. Amidst arriving at a full conclusion of what the wallpaper depicts, the narrator says she sees “a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (Perkins Gilman, 50). As the days passed,

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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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The Secret Annex Living within the secret annex wasn't the easiest thing to do. Secrets were kept, stories were told, things changed in the Frank's life and the Van Danns life. Not everyone got along well in the secret annex. There were limitations and restrictions they all had to follow. The rooms annex wasn't a huge house, they had to share lots of things.

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