Setting And Symbolism In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is Gilman’s most famous short story; in the nineteenth century “The Yellow Wallpaper” was a landmark for feminists and an impactful influence at this time for American literature. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the literary elements of setting and symbolism to convey the reality of the nineteenth century women.

Gilman uses the setting to convey her confinement and lack of control. In the late nineteenth century, people did not talk about mental illnesses such as depression and hysteria, now known as post pardon depression. In the nineteenth century, physicians believed that the “rest cure” was the only way to cure a woman with hysteria. “Quiet alone, standing well

Yellow is believed to be a happy color, but the excitement of yellow was destroyed, symbolic of her sanity being destroyed. The wallpaper was a dingy yellow that the narrator hates more than anything, “I never saw a worse paper in my life” (487). The narrator at first loathes the wallpaper, but the more she looks at it the more she finds it fascinating and the more she is intrigued by the many patterns and the color of the wallpaper. Moreover, the pattern, “by moonlight, it becomes bars… and the women behind it is as plain as can be” (492). The women in the wallpaper cannot leave, she is stuck, “Poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern” (495). The imprisonment of the women in the wallpaper represents the narrator, her confinement in the marriage and house. “I pulled and she shook… and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper” (495), symbolizing the narrators understanding of her imprisonment and what she had to undergo. By peeling off the wallpaper she symbolizes her freedom. Additionally, at the end of the short story the narrator states, “in spite of you and Jane”. Is Jane the name of the narrator or is the name Jane symbolic of Mary Jane the unknown female or the female with no name.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” writes about the extreme of the “rest cure” and how it can affect a woman mentally. The reader sees the narrators’ mental illness decline