Isolation In The Yellow Wallpaper

Narration has been a part of novels for decades, but it takes a new form in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator struggled with depression after she gave birth to her first child. The narrator’s husband is a physician and does not believe she is depressed he just thought she was hysterical and told her she needs to rest. So, he rented an estate for the summer because he thought putting her in a different environment and getting fresh air would help feel better. He ended up keeping her in what used to be a nursery but had barred windows and strange miscellaneous objects coming out of the walls. She was isolated in that one room for the entire summer from everyone and everything besides her

The narrator believes the woman is trapped and is trying to free herself; therefore, she rips the wallpaper to help the woman she is visualizing. This shorty story was written as if the mentally unstable narrator was writing in her diary. The perspective of the narrator brings another level of depth to the metaphor that the wallpaper represents because the story is from her point of view so we watch the entire process of her losing her sanity due to being isolated from the world (she became lonely and helpless). Gilman brilliantly displayed how the narrator perceived the yellow wallpaper and allowed the audience to see how a mentally stable person perceived the yellow wallpaper at the end of the story. Gilman’s use of the narrator allows the audience to empathize and relate to the narrator and the struggles she faces throughout the story. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the perception and perspective of the narrator plays a major role in the story because it allowed her to see her surroundings in the house as something they were not, to create a physical metaphor of herself with the wallpaper and to show her confusion about the truth, while simultaneously addressing how gender roles connect with the narrator’s perception and