“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story written in a first person point of view journalistic style. The narrator is a woman who is confined to a single room in a country house, because her husband, a physician, believes it will help cure her nervous condition. The narrator writes in her journal in secret only, for her husband forbids her to use her imagination in any way. The journal style of the story gives the reader an inside look into the narrators brain, and lets them get a more up front experience of her losing her mind. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", Gilman uses style and structure to demonstrate ones descent into madness by showing it through the narrator’s eyes and experiences, giving the reader an …show more content…
Gilman uses point of view, language and structure in order to show the effects of the confinement that leads to the narrator’s mental illness and insanity. The use of first person point of view in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is important because it makes the narrator’s story more genuine and realistic. The intimacy of not being told what is happening, but being shown step by step through the narrator’s eyes, helps the reader empathize with the her and her situation. The extensions on the narrator’s thoughts, “I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs… had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings”(Gilman), humanizes her, and insinuates to the reader her competence in the beginning of the story. As the story continues, the narrator has fewer opinions on different matters, suggesting that being stuck in the room with the yellow wallpaper is deteriorating her mind. The point of view becomes more important throughout the narrators mental decline, for the reader gets to know what the narrator