Syntax In The Yellow Wallpaper

1. Short stories often utilize suspense to peak a reader 's interest and keep them reading until the end of the story. One story that utilizes suspense is CP Gillman 's "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a woman 's experience with a rest treatment is described through an intriguing stream of consciousness. By looking at how the narrator describes her mental state, and using the syntax of the text, the reader is better able to understand exactly how the narrator is feeling and discern her mental state. In the last section of "The Yellow Wallpaper" CP Gillman destabilizes the reader by using unique syntax to describe the wallpaper and the narrator 's actions illustrating the narrator 's descent into madness.
2. At the end of the story, CP Gillman uses

3. As the story reaches a close, the descriptions of the wallpaper in the narrator 's bedroom become less realistic and start to mirror the narrator 's deteriorating mental state. The yellow color of the wallpaper isn 't as concerning to the narrator as the "yellow smell" (203) and the "many women behind" (203) it. She believes that the wallpaper "strangles them off" (203) so that the women can 't escape. In reality, the only woman the wallpaper is trapping is the narrator. In order to free the women trapped by the paper in turn possibly freeing herself, the narrator begins to peel off the wallpaper and after a few days almost all the wallpaper was off the wall. However, as the amount of wallpaper on the wall decreases so does the narrators mental stability. By the time that she had "peeled off all the paper (she) could reach standing on the floor" (206) the narrator wanted "to do something desperate" (206). It is at this point in the story that the reader realizes that the narrator will not recover before the story ends. By peeling off the wallpaper, the narrator is in theory freeing herself from the yellow room; however, the fate of the narrator is left open to

5. Some people interpret the ending of the story as the last example of the narrator 's insanity. They believe that it is her final creeping state that causes her husband to faint, as he sees the full extent of her insanity. The narrator says that she "can creep smoothly on the floor" (207) with her shoulder "in that long smooch around the wall" (207). Looking at these two quotes it makes it seem as if the women didn 't use the rope to hang herself but to tie herself to the room while she was creeping. This interpretation would leave the text with open suspense, since the reader still isn 't certain what will happen to the narrator. The woman 's mental deterioration is completed, answering some of the reader 's questions, but what will happen to her in the future is not stated. Whether or not the story ends with open or resolved suspense depends on which interpretation the reader prefers and which quotes they focus their analysis on.
6. CP Gillman 's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" illustrates how syntax can add suspense to the a story and impact on whether or not the story is interpreted as an open or closed text. By analyzing the words chosen to describe the actions of the narrator and the wallpaper in her bedroom, the reader can fully grasp what makes the story suspenseful and why there are multiple interpretations of the ending. CP Gillman utilizes her story to discuss the ineffective treatment of mental illness in women during the early 1900 's (191), and