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Postpartum Depression In Jane's The Yellow Wallpaper

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Jane writes that her journal is dead paper, which is an odd way of describing it. Coupled with the way that she quickly personifies the wallpaper, it highlights that the wallpaper is symbolic and it represents things that are present in her life and the culture around her. Jane sees the wallpaper as having three parts, the color and the two patterns. The color yellow is symbolic of happiness and hope. It is then ironic that the color embodies Jane’s depression. Jane’s postpartum depression is the reason why she is unable to visit any of her friends and do anything other than sit around all day. Jane and her sister-in-law both see the wallpaper affect life around it. Jennie mentions that the color stains their clothing and can’t get it out. Jane sees her other bedroom walls, and later the whole house, is smudged with it. Jane also notes that the color make her “think of all the yellow things [she] ever saw— not beautiful ones like butter cups, but old foul, bad yellow things” (Gilman). Jane likens the color to fungus and mole, perhaps a metaphor of depression rotting away her life. We see her in a cycle of her depression lifting and deepening, this is mirrored in the pattern changing in the moonlight. …show more content…

At night, when she is the most active and intellectual, the outside pattern transforms. It is only then that she can see that the woman trapped behind the wallpaper. Jane tries to remove the overlaying pattern from the sub pattern but she can’t. It would be impossible for her to recognize that she is oppressed without the desire to change she

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