The Role Of The Narrator In The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper is a narrative story that was told by a woman who was experiencing an illness while telling her story. This peculiar narrative by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is different from other narratives because this one doesn’t introduce the narrator. The narrator is unnamed because the importance resides in the characteristics. In the first sentence of this story, “It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer” (307) tells us that the narrator and John are either high-end middle class or upper class because the ancestral halls would not be available for the lower class. From the passage “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (307) tells us that the narrator

Once again, the narrator was told that she couldn’t do something because John said so. During this time, the narrator’s condition has gotten worse because she is seeing things in the wallpaper. “And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.” (315). The narrator noticed this change in the wallpaper as her condition worsen. However, she decides to keep this a secret from John and his sister, Jennie because she is too wise. The narrator hates the hideous wallpaper, but yet she can’t stop herself from studying and analyzing the patterns behind the wallpaper. As time goes on, she began to notice that a woman was behind bars in the yellow wallpaper, who was trying to

Ever since she set foot in the house, she has hated the hideous yellow wallpaper. Then after looking at it for months, she realized there is a women barred inside the yellow wallpaper. She realized the woman inside the wallpaper is herself because she said “I’ve got out at last, “in spite of you and Jane? And I’ve pulled most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (320). Although we don’t know who Jane is, but it is most likely the narrator because she freed herself from John and her domestic self. The narrator was not allowed to do anything, but rest. She was mentally driven to insanity by her