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The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis Essay

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An analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Yellow Wallpaper is a story that was written during a time of great change by Charlotte Perkin’s Gilman. In the early to mid-19th century, the society positioned American middle class women as the spiritual and moral leaders of their homes. Based on this domestic ideology, a woman’s place in the society was only in the private domain of the home, where she was expected to fulfill her duties as a wife and mother. Men on the other hand took up public positions at work, in economics and politics. However, by the middle of the 19th century, this belief started changing as activists began advocating for the rights of women. By the end of the 1800s, the concept of “The New Woman” …show more content…

John’s (her husband) and the narrator’s sarcastic response portrays the strained nature of their marriage. Its suprising to see that their marriage exists during a period when there are such strains and power disparities. John represents a pragmatic and stoic typical male view of the world, incontrast to his wife, and doesn’t care much about his wife’s emotions. He prescribes rest cure for her by leaving her alone in a room with a yellow Wallpaper. Her thoughts later on succumb to the torment of being alone and she left with no choice but to stare at the Wallpaper continuously until she begins to see things in a pattern. She believes in the notion that there’s a woman behind the paper, and she is all the time trying to climb through, but unfortunately no one can climb through that pattern-it strangles so” (Gilman p.667). This symbolizes how women’s power is strangled by men and there are many women out there who are trying to escape and break free from suppression. She’s one of those women behind the wallpaper climbing to get out. The wallpaper represents imprisonment since the narrator tries to remove it from the wall but she’s not allowed to do so, yet she stays confined in the

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In the nineteenth century, woman had no power over men in society. They were limited in their freedom, as their lives were controlled by their husbands. Some women did not mind this lifestyle, and remained obedient, while some rebelled and demanded their rights. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, are short stories that exposes the lifestyle women lived in the nineteenth century. The protagonists from both stories, Jane and Georgiana, similarly lived a male dominated lifestyle.

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In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Jane is a mentally ill woman whose surroundings are only worsening her condition. Jane’s husband, a physician, thinks that a change of scenery will benefit her condition and takes it upon himself to relocate to a summer home, not knowing that this new environment will be Jane’s downfall. The entire story is written as a journal, inscribed by Jane whenever she can stealthily disobey her husband to write. Gilman writes the story from Jane’s point of view to coax the reader into a deeper understanding of Jane’s mental battles and the overall theme of oppression. Gilman’s choice of style for this short story exponentially enhances the effectiveness of the text because the reader is opened

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The woman in the wallpaper is trapped just like she is. The narrator creates a figure that she could relate to and then spends all her time focused on the figure and trying to figure out how to help the woman in the wallpaper escape her cell. As the story continues and she remains isolated, it is obvious Jane views herself as the woman inside the wallpaper. As a result of being trapped in her room, she begins to lose her sanity. She believes she is trapped in the wallpaper and must escape its holds.

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The Narrator from The Yellow Wallpaper tries to do the best she can to please her husband and fulfil her role to be the perfect wife, but she isn’t able to balance out her husband’s needs. Towards the end she starts to forget the desire she once had to become the perfect wife and mother and starts to think of ways she can release the imprisoned woman that is trapped from behind the yellow wallpaper. I can see the connection that the woman trapped in the yellow wallpaper can be her trying to get out of the position she’s in, sometimes the color yellow signifies being sick or very much ill. With the narrator tearing the paper apart wanting the sickness

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Throughout the story, the narrator disagrees with some of her husband’s orders, but obeys them anyway. Instead of listening to his wife, John was caught up in what he believed was the right thing to do. By making her rest all day and forbidding her to work he caused her illness to progressively get worse. In the end of the story when the narrator destroys the wallpaper releasing the lady trapped behind it, she herself feels free. When John comes into the room and sees his wife crawling on all fours across the floor, he faints.

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Passage Analysis #1 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman, in this particular passage of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” explores the theme of female oppression through imagery and symbolism of the wall-paper. These elements of literature make the wall-paper come to life for both the narrator and the audience. “The front pattern does move”(55) personifies the wall-paper to be so animate and physically restraining that the woman behind it must shake it to attempt to escape. The italicization of “does” serves to further affirm that the wallpaper exhibits restrictive human-like behaviors - particularly those of dominant men in society. The narrator states that there are “a great many woman behind”(55), extending the metaphor to all Victorian women in the United States and others around the world who are oppressed.

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In most interpretations of Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, it is usually deduced that John, the unnamed narrator’s husband in the short story, is a flat character that is used solely for plot advancement. This is most likely due to the combination of indirect discourse, an unreliable narrator, and the ambiguous ending that negatively impacts the reader’s opinion of him. But, if the reader views the short story as a tragedy, John plays a more impactful role in the story. By analyzing the story from an Aristotelian perspective of tragedy, John becomes Gilman’s unintentional tragic hero.

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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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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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The vast majority of people wouldn’t give the wallpaper much thought, however the narrator becomes obsessed with it. To the narrator, the wallpaper is alive and becomes the focus of all her time. Her overwhelming lure to the wallpaper becomes obvious when she first provides a very vivid description stating “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (217-218). As she begins to lose her grip on reality, the narrator beings to see faces and eventually a woman within the wallpaper. At first, her description of seeing faces in the wallpaper seems like it could be her mind making since of the varying patterns or just part of her imagination.

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a first-person written feminist short story that critiques and condemns the nineteenth-century American male attitude towards women and their physical as well as mental health issues. In the short story, Perkins Gilman juxtaposes universal gender perspectives of women with hysterical tendencies using the effects of gradually accumulating levels of solitary confinement; a haunted house, nursery, and the yellow wallpaper to highlight the American culture of inherited oblivious misogyny and promote the equality of sexes. The narrator and her husband, John, embody the general man and woman of the nineteenth century. John, like the narrator’s brother and most men, is “a physician of high

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Gender Inequality: A Woman’s Struggle in “The Yellow Wallpaper” In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman captures the lives of women in a society based on societal expectations during the late nineteenth century. She focuses on the issue of gender inequality where women were often discriminated against and expected to fulfill the role of a perfect wife and mother. The narrator is based on on Gilman’s personal experience of suffering from her treatment for postpartum depression due to the social restrictions on women which represents a reflection on women's social status in society. The narrator, who remains anonymous, is depicted as a depressed and isolated prisoner who is oppressed under her husband’s control and struggles to break free.

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