The narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the main character in the short novel. She is a young newly married mother in the upper middle class who is very imaginative. The narrator is going through a stage of depression and believes the house they have temporarily moved into is haunted. What the narrator is actually experiencing is called Postpartum depression, depression suffered by a mother following childbirth. This illness can arise from the combination of hormonal changes, psychological adjustment to motherhood, and fatigue.
An unreliable narrator is someone who we as the readers can’t fully trust, usually because of their personality, obvious bias, or in the case of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a mental illness. Any reason that would cause us to question the validity of a narrator's opinion within the context of the story might be filed under unreliable. We take what these narrators tell us with a grain of salt because we know their view of the world is influenced by something else. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines unreliable narrator as “a narrator whose accounts of events appears to be faulty, misleadingly biased, or otherwise distorted, so that it departs from the 'true' understanding of events shared between the reader and the implied author. The discrepancy between the unreliable narrator's view of events and the view that readers suspect to be more accurate creates a sense of irony”.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin are two of the many famous short story writers. Charlotte Perkins is the author of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, which was written in 1899. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman inclination into madness for postpartum depression while being treated by her husband, John while living in their summer mansion. The woman is locked into a nursery by her husband, which is covered in yellow wallpaper. “So we took the nursery at the top of the house.”
Oppression & Isolation: The Ugly Faces of Old-school Motherhood. In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins, the protagonist suffers through an apparent post-partum depression that showcases the submissiveness of women in the 19th century as well as the social pressure they faced. The story is intense and somewhat disturbing and explores certain topics that were controversial at the time. This tale shows the descent into madness of a woman who recently became a mother and is experiencing many psychological issues. The protagonist recently gave birth and is now isolated in a nursery room with a yellow wallpaper due to a “sickness” she is supposed to be experiencing.
“The Yellow Wall-Paper" was written in 1892, and is seen as a feminist short story. The woman in the story goes ‘mad’ due to her very limited role within society at the time. Along with her madness, the ability to express herself creatively is also being confined within the very yellow walls of a room, that has bars on the window, and a lock on the other side of the door, on the top level of the house her husband has her locked up in. Forbidden to write due to her doctor husband’s prescription of ‘absolute and complete rest of body and mind’, the narrator, who is unnamed. This narrator soon becomes obsessed with the room's wallpaper.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator 's husband John, who also happens to be her physician, prescribes the rest cure to help lift his wife of her depressive state and ultimately heal her depression. However, the rest cure does not allow the narrator to experience any mental stimulation. Therefore, to manage her boredom the narrator begins obsessing over the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. After analyzing the pattern for awhile, the narrator witnesses a woman trapped behind bars.
Throughout the generation, women have always been trapped in some way or another. In the short story, ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ and the novel ‘The Awakening’ highlights the struggle of women in the late 1800’s and the early 1900s in society. The Yellow wallpaper is a short story about women giving birth and being imprisoned in a room with a weird view of the yellow wall-paper. This resulted in her hallucination lead to the development of mental illness. By the end of the story, she rips off the yellow wallpaper and kills her husband.
In the short story “the Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator, Jane who has just given birth becomes progressively more ill and depressed. Her husband John, who is a physician prescribes that she get lots of rest and fresh air so Jane and John rent a colonial mansion for the summer. Throughout the story John is one of the main causes for Jane’s deepening depression.
The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story. It’s clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator’s point of view greatly differs from that of her husband’s and other family in her life.
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.
The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 shows mental illness through the narrator first hand. The theme in this story is going insane verses loneliness as well as being trapped. These themes are shown through the main character (the narrator of the story) as she works through her own mind, life, and surroundings. First, the theme of the woman’s state of mind is the main focus in this story.
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.”
The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a brilliant piece of fictional literature. The tale involves a mentally ill woman who is kept in a hideous, yellow room under the orders of her husband, John, who is a physician. The ill woman is conflicted due to the fact that the horrifying yellow wallpaper in the room is trapping a woman who she must help escape, but the sick woman is aware that she must get better in order to leave the terrifying, yellow room. The setting and personification applied in the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, allows readers to develop an understanding of the sickness of the main character faces.
People have beliefs that short stories are narrated by people who are reliable. However, unreliable narrators are people who are telling the story in their own way. The three stories, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, and Strawberry Spring by Stephen King.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of a young woman who is battling severe depression. The protagonist is essentially locked away for the summer as a cure for her psychological disorder(s) (Craig 36). Being locked in the house with the yellow wallpaper worsens her mental state and eventually drives her to insanity. Throughout the course of the story, the protagonist’s mental state noticeably declines; she claims there are people in the wallpaper and believes it is haunting her. Several Gothic themes are scattered throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”; however, the protagonist’s isolation, the presence of insanity, and the occurring idea of supernatural elements are most prominent and can be used to justify “The Yellow
