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How Does Charlotte Perkins Use Of Dramatic Irony In The Yellow Wallpaper

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The reflection of one’s life is heavily influenced by the moral values we believe in and practice. Although we hold these values to be strong, they can easily be altered by the experiences we face and the environment we are set in. This idea is explored in the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins. Perkins's use of abstract imagery followed by dramatic irony depicts how our surroundings can bend the physical and mental stability of one’s life. In the near beginning, Perkins displays the use of imagery to convey the narrator’s thoughts and feelings about the room lined with yellow wallpaper. Perkins writes, “The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sticky sulfur tint in others.” (Perkins 649) The use of abstract diction like the phrase, “repellant, almost revolting” allows readers to envision this room being something the narrator runs away from. The room is a constant reminder of what she once was and what she wishes she still …show more content…

Perkins writes, “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough but the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.” (Perkins 653) Picking this quote a part, we see how Perkins's use of diction adds to the overall image of the room. Comparing her feelings from the beginning quote, they have dramatically intensified using phrases such as, “hideous”, “infuriating”, and “torturing”. This being said she also uses the phrase, “like a bad dream” which elaborates on the nightmare she is living, in her

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Finally, the yellow wallpaper plays the biggest role in the story. Not only for the reason that the narrator saw a woman behind it. But for the reason that the woman behind the yellow wallpaper was Perkins. According to the narrator "And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. "(Perkins 532),"I don't like it a bit"(Perkins 532), Trying to send out the moral of the story which was gender oppression.

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3. As the story reaches a close, the descriptions of the wallpaper in the narrator 's bedroom become less realistic and start to mirror the narrator 's deteriorating mental state. The yellow color of the wallpaper isn 't as concerning to the narrator as the "yellow smell" (203) and the "many women behind" (203) it. She believes that the wallpaper "strangles them off" (203) so that the women can 't escape. In reality, the only woman the wallpaper is trapping is the narrator.

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Stetson, Vonnegut, and Cline are among the authors who recognize and emphasize on the importance of imagery to provide readers with multiple perspectives and allow them to evaluate dystopian characteristics in various situations. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,”

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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.

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I don’t like it a bit. I wonder— I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here!” (231). Shortly after the narrator who remains unnamed and her husband John rented an old mansion, the narrator encountered a state of delusion in the wallpaper that surrounded her. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator develops a peculiar relationship with the wallpaper; the author’s use of allusion, symbolism, and personification identifies the existence of the woman’s illness.

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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.

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In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the female narrator is greatly troubled by the suppression of her imagination by her husband and her ultimate isolation due to this subordination. These feelings are reflected through the author’s use of setting as the narrator’s dreary and malicious descriptions of the house and the wallpaper mirrors her emotional position. Throughout the reading, the reader is exposed to the narrator’s in-depth loss of touch with reality as she sinks further and further into her own reality. As she becomes more isolated, her descriptions of the house become more abstract as she begins to focus on the wallpaper and starts to see herself as being hidden behind it.

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It is evident that change is a natural component in the average person’s life. Some however, are more drastic than others. This is exhibited through the first-person narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall Paper”, who undergoes a drastic change in her health due to postpartum depression, her relationships with the individuals around her, and her isolation. These changes later develop an internal conflict in the form of a troubling identity plight.

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At first the narrator just see the wallpaper as a unpleasant addition to the room as it’s a “repellent, almost revolting… unclean yellow” (Gilman 801), and the

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Secondly, there is also a sense of confinement throughout the story. The Yellow Wallpaper fits the winter or the anti-romantic phase of Northrop Frye's monomyth diagram as it, "tells the story of imprisonment … and fear." (Bressler 152). The narrator is imprisoned in the room which has yellow wallpaper. Basically, the room where the narrator is staying in is like a prison.

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The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story. It’s clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator’s point of view greatly differs from that of her husband’s and other family in her life.

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The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 shows mental illness through the narrator first hand. The theme in this story is going insane verses loneliness as well as being trapped. These themes are shown through the main character (the narrator of the story) as she works through her own mind, life, and surroundings. First, the theme of the woman’s state of mind is the main focus in this story.

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Enclosed to the four wall of this “big” room, the narrator says “the paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it” because “it is stripped off” indicating that males have attempted to distort women’s truth but somehow did not accomplish distorting the entire truth (Perkins Gilman, 43). When the narrator finally looked at the wall and the paint and paper on it, she was disgusted at the sight. The yellow wallpaper, she penned, secretly against the will of men, committed artistic sin and had lame uncertain curves that suddenly committed suicide when you followed them for a little distance. The narrator is forced to express her discomfort with the image to her husband, he sees it as an “excited fancy” that is provoked by the “imaginative power and habit of story making” by “a nervous weakness” like hers (Perkins Gilman, 46). Essentially, he believes that her sickness is worsening and the depth of her disease is the cause of the unexpected paranoia.

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The yellow wallpaper is not just the dreadful décor the narrator is stuck within the story but the most important symbol in the story. It symbolizes how women were not allowed to change or free to make their own decisions. The narrator once said that the wallpaper "sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it" (Gilman). She felt like the wallpaper stuck and not able to succumb to change she demonstrates this as well when she says "The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out" (Gilman). The narrator herself became the women she saw in the wallpaper that she felt trapped in a life without change which manifested itself into the wallpaper further increasing the symbolism and importance of yellow wallpaper.

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