Symbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman gothic tale of “The Yellow Wallpaper” wrote in 1892 is a classic in feminist literature. It is a wonderful and frightening gothic tale that can also be viewed into feminist terms. It is a story that contains many typical gothic trappings, but beneath the surface lies a tale of freedom and repression told in intricate symbolism as it is seen through the eyes of a mad narrator. Although it is represented as an innovative story of the narrator’s physiological meltdown it contains elements of classic gothic literature. “The Yellow Wallpaper” represents a woman being driven to madness because of the Victorian “rest-cure”. The “rest-cure” was once a frequently prescribed period of inactivity used to cure nervous conditions

Beverly Hume states “that with his dismissal of all but the tangible and his constant condescension to his wife, but some critics have viewed this character as near-caricature” (478). I believe that John is the center of his wife’s madness because of his dismissal to her condition. Greg Johnson tells readers that “John exhibits a near-obsession with “reason,” even as his wife grows mad. He is the narrator’s necessary counterpart, without whose stifling influence her eventual freedom would not be gained. And he is also transformed at the end of the tale—in a reversal of traditional gothic roles—because it is he, not a female, who faints when confronted with madness” (529). The narrator has absolutely no control over her life due to her husband making all the decisions for her. He toys with her emotions by giving her hope and then disappointing her and even laughs at her about the wallpaper in the room in which he confined her. She says that “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that” (1392. )He consistently reminds her that he is superior so that she feels inferior to him. He plays the figure of a dominant male gothic role by forcing her into solitude while he is

It is within the wallpaper that the narrator sees her hidden self and her eventual freedom. The obsession she has with the yellow wallpaper consumes both the story and the narrator. Once she has settled in the long and empty “ancestral estate,” which is a typical gothic setting the narrator then realizes her husband has chosen a ridiculous top floor nursery room for her that is papered in horrible yellow wallpaper (1393). The narrator views it as a design that “commits every artistic sin” (1393). The design begins to fascinate the narrator and she begins to see more than just the outer design of the yellow wallpaper. She starts off seeing “bulbous eyes” and “absurd unblinking eyes . . .everywhere” (1394). These phrases are coherent to John Bak of a panopticon, an “alternative” prison which was developed by Jeremy Bentham in the nineteenth century to replace the dank English prison of the time (39). Bak gives the suggestion that nursery room was designed to restraint mental patients. The room included rings in the wall and barred windows these were common safety precautions used in Victorian