During her time in the room she felt the room “at night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!” (Gilman 304). The narrator of the yellow wallpaper descends into madness to escape the cruel dominance of her society. As the story progresses the yellow wallpaper becomes a constant companion. She first dislikes the color and despises the pattern, but after closely studying the pattern “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” and after obsessing over the painting she finds bars hidden.
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
The narrator eventually comes to identify with the woman she believes is trapped in the paper. Mínguez asserts that the young woman is, "projecting her own desire for escape onto her incomprehensible hieroglyphics" (55). The protagonist feels so confined that she sees herself as the one trapped in the wallpaper. If the woman had been allowed to use writing as an outlet, her obsession with the wallpaper may have never
This obsession leads to her tearing off the wallpaper
No wonder the children hated it!” , but with the constant medication and being confined to that room with nothing else to look at she began to start obsessing over it. At first it was just the abstract markings on the wall and how peculiar they were in shape and how they were so random in every way. Then after being medicated for weeks she started to see a women trapped behind bars that was hidden in the markings of the wallpaper“I didn't realize for a long time what the thing that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman”. It became her sole mission to free the women but figuratively she was just looking at herself in a mirror.
As the story progresses, the narrator's mental state continues to deteriorate. She becomes convinced that there is a woman trapped behind the wallpaper, and she becomes obsessed with freeing her. This obsession is a manifestation of the narrator's own desire to break free from the constraints that society has placed upon her. She feels trapped in her role as a wife and mother, and she longs for the freedom to express herself and to be taken
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.
Susan S. Lanser’s “Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the politics of color in America” examines the impacts “The Yellow Wallpaper” had on feminist writing styles and critiques. Lanser writes that the story helps to analyze the reading trough “the lens of a female consciousness” and apply the knowledge gained from a female perspective onto other literature (418). The transition that the narrator displays from being dependent on John to becoming independent reflects the feminist movement and challenges the “male dominance” that currently takes precedence in society (418). The “patriarchal prisonhouse” that is society controls the narrator and oppresses women not only in “The Yellow Wallpaper” but in real life as well (419). The
Secondly, throughout the story, the narrator describes seeing an evolving woman trapped inside of the wall. Although readers can assume that this woman is merely a product of the narrator’s mind, the woman can also be seen as a symbol of the narrator and her feelings of being trapped. Eventually, the woman in the wall aids the narrator in her escape. In conclusion, many elements of the narrator’s increasing madness throughout The Yellow Wallpaper contributed to her freedom from the confines of the room, the confines of society, and the confines of her
However as time moves on, and the woman in the wallpaper becomes more and more real to her, it’s clear that her mental state is rapidly depleting. Her first description of a figure in the wallpaper came when she stated that the wallpaper had a “recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (219). By the time the story ends, the narrator had turned into the
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.
(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”
By the end of the story the narrator was incredibly disassociated and has convinced herself that she freed herself from the wallpaper by tearing it off of the wall and that she shall be able to creep around the house no matter what John and Jennie try to do to "put her back in the wallpaper". She believes she has won her freedom, when she has only imprisoned herself inside of her own
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
