ipl-logo

Postpartum Depression In Jane's The Yellow Wallpaper

582 Words3 Pages

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

Show More
Related
875 Words | 4 Pages

The significance of the color yellow in the story is that yellow represents sickness. The woman drives herself crazy by staring at the yellow wallpaper. The intended audience goes from her love interest at that point in time to simply questioning the heavens. For example, in the text it says, “Her poems about death confront its grim reality…her poems about religion, she expressed piety and hostility and she was fully capable of moving within the same poem from religious consolation to a rejection of doctrinal piety and a querying of

Read More
1862 Words | 8 Pages

There are many events that can foreshadow the rest of one’s life for the better, or, for the worst. In Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Jane (the narrator) struggles with a mental illness that causes her to become very weak so her husband, John, takes her to a country home to heal. While at the house she stays in a room that has old yellow wallpaper. Jane is deeply disturbed yet highly intrigued and maintains her deep inspections of the wallpaper as she stays there.

Read More
231 Words | 1 Pages

The color yellow, when used negatively, represents sickness or weakness. in "the yellow wallpaper", Charlotte Perkins Stetson uses the wallpaper to represent how the main character is perceived by her husband, but also to help her understand herself. To her husband it is just wallpaper, but to her it becomes the personification of her life. The appearance she is forced to perceive versus the reality of her mind is expressed in the setting, the symbols use, and the irony of her situation.

Read More
511 Words | 3 Pages

This can be seen in The Yellow Wallpaper and through the effects of jane’s relationship with her

Read More
650 Words | 3 Pages

In the beginning we learn that Jane, her husband John, their new baby, move into a supposedly haunted home for the summer so Jane can go through treatment for her illness. We also learn that John is a physician and Jane is struggling with depression but possibly progressed into post-partum depression after having their child. Jane stays in a room with barred windows, scratched floors, furniture that is nailed to the floor and what she says, “I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.” (Gilman 194) Jane’s husband insists of jane being isolated so she can rest, and that doing this would cure her illness as Jane spends more and more time in the room, she became obsessed with the strange patterns in the wallpaper, claiming “The front pattern does move-and no wonder!

Read More
749 Words | 3 Pages

At night, her intense observation of the paper seems to change her very personality. She watches it as the patterns come to life to form the bars of her postpartum and her longing to be liberated. Darkness has the power to release the mask disguising human nature. In the story of "The Yellow Wallpaper", the main character is trapped by her sickness, constantly feeling as though she has no power to change the course of her life.

Read More
798 Words | 4 Pages

It's yellow color symbolizes the way the narrator feels about her situation. "Unclean", "dull", "sickly" is how she may have felt deep down about her relationship with her husband and the life she lived under him. The wallpaper itself becomes a symbol for her. She uses it as a coping method and projects her feelings onto it and the woman she sees in it. The windows symbolize how she is trapped in this marriage and she can only view the beautiful outside through the many windows, reminding her of what she cannot have.

Read More
1096 Words | 5 Pages

The narrator is a woman who is imaginative trying to make her mind think and realize the meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper as, “repellant, almost revolting; smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 641). This specific wallpaper makes the narrator feel a certain way. At first, she does not like the color or how it looks. But then not having anything else to do in the room, she starts examining the wallpaper.

Read More
1008 Words | 5 Pages

Martin states that the narrator’s confinement in the upstairs bedroom fortifies her mental illness developing into “a frightening hallucinatory world constructed around the pattern of the yellow paper on the wall.” This shift in her identity happens as the shift in her disposition towards the wallpaper changes. The wallpaper is a visible metaphor that eventually becomes her identity. In the beginning of her stay in the bedroom she says the wallpaper is “committing artistic sin” (Par34) and can push anyone to “suddenly commit suicide” (Par35) These comments show her despise towards the wallpaper and the separation she originally has from it.

Read More
802 Words | 4 Pages

It 's here where she discovers the yellow wallpaper that leads to her mental demise. What is the symbolic meaning of the yellow wallpaper and how do her interactions with the wallpaper represent the change in her feelings towards her husband and society. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes women 's suffrage and the struggles women went through, and her interactions with the wallpaper represent the problems woman had with their husbands and society. The main symbolism present in the story is how the yellow wallpaper represents woman suffrage and the problems they endured during the 19th century.

Read More
571 Words | 3 Pages

At the beginning of the short story Jane absolutely hates the wallpaper in her bedroom, but at the end Jane claims that she is “getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper.” (page ) At the beginning of the story Jane is aggravated at John and after John’s treatment she describes him as “so wise” (page ) and “loving [her] so.” (page ) Throughout the “Yellow Wallpaper” John consistently makes Jane’s condition worse and worse until she finally has a mental breakdown.

Read More
1202 Words | 5 Pages

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story told through diary entries of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, becomes obsessed with the ugly yellow wallpaper in the summer home her husband rented for them. While at the home the Narrator studies the wallpaper and starts to believe there is a woman in the wallpaper. Her obsession with the wallpaper slowly makes her mental state deteriorate. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary devices such as symbolism, personification and imagery to help convey her message and get it across to the reader.

Read More
562 Words | 3 Pages

(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”

Read More
1106 Words | 5 Pages

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator, Jane, has postpartum depression. In order to cure this depression, John, Jane’s husband and a doctor, administer the rest treatment on her. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” through her personal experience. Along with writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” she wrote an explanation for why she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

Read More
584 Words | 3 Pages

At first it is seen as nothing but an old ruined wallpaper with a “bad” pattern. As the story progresses she stares at the paper for hours and sees a sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light. She hen sees a desperate woman trying to leave the wallpaper which shows how the women feel trapped. The author uses the yellow wallpaper as a symbol of the oppressive life that many women have today and back then.

Read More

More about Postpartum Depression In Jane's The Yellow Wallpaper

Related Topics

Open Document