Isolation In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author uses repetitive diction, imagery of a bedroom, and situational irony. This ultimately illustrates the control that men had over women on aspects of their lives such as social, marital, and personal identities in the late 19th century. Although some women were trying to fight for their independence, men kept them quiet, weak, and unable to defend themselves or make their own decisions about their own lives. Throughout the story, the word “creep” is repeated many times in many different forms. Each time the word is repeated, the tone of the story becomes increasingly eerie. This exemplifies the insanity that the forced “rest treatment” has caused the main character.

It foreshadows that her “condition” is going to get worse as she remains in isolation because she feels such discomfort after only a few nights in the room. Following this first encounter, the protagonist once again sees the same woman lurking behind the wallpaper. She knows that she is the same woman that she has seen before because “she's always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight” (Gilman 654). Therefore, she acknowledges that many women have experienced this same treatment by their husbands and resulted in the same outcome: insanity due to forced isolation. Additionally, the character begins to experience delusion when she begins to creep and lock the door when she creeps by daylight (Gilman 654). This is one of the first times that she creeps around the room. Since she locks the door, it illustrates that she does not want her husband to find out that there actually is something in the matter with her now. At the conclusion of the story, the character creeps almost constantly. She ends up scaring her husband and continues “to creep over him every time!” (Gilman

Each woman had been creeping so much that they left permanent marks on the wall. It is apparent that the mark on the wall is from the other women because the protagonist’s “shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall” (Gilman 656). She has succumbed to the insanity that the women before her did as well. Each time a woman is sentenced to this house, there is the same outcome: that the men are wrong and that the women know themselves better than the men ever could, but they are powerless to do anything against it. Finally, there is situational irony at the end of the story. Considering this story takes place in the 1890s, men always held more power over women, and especially their wives. They also had an arrogance about them that made them believe that they could never be wrong about any situation. The husband of the main character believed that the only way to “cure” his wife of her “slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 648) was for her to remain in isolation and to not do any hard work. However, it is this treatment that causes her to decline into