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Paula Treichler's The Yellow Wallpaper

278 Words2 Pages
“The Yellow Wall-Paper" was written in 1892, and is seen as a feminist short story. The woman in the story goes ‘mad’ due to her very limited role within society at the time. Along with her madness, the ability to express herself creatively is also being confined within the very yellow walls of a room, that has bars on the window, and a lock on the other side of the door, on the top level of the house her husband has her locked up in. Forbidden to write due to her doctor husband’s prescription of ‘absolute and complete rest of body and mind’, the narrator, who is unnamed. This narrator soon becomes obsessed with the room's wallpaper. This wallpaper is a shade of yellow which the she first finds repulsive and horrible and then as she goes ‘mad’ she finds what used to be terrible, which is the very wallpaper itself, a very interesting and almost riveting aspect of her own personal hell. When placed in a historical context this personal hell is the confinement women felt when it came to the expression of their very own intelligent thoughts and ideas. On this yellow wallpaper she eventually deciphers an imprisoned woman whom she actually tries to ‘set free’ by peeling the paper off the wall with her very own fingers until her hands are bloody.
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