Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story that depicts the changing circumstances of the narrator and the resulting transformation of her character. Gilman uses a variety of textual details to reveal the complexity of this development, including the narrator's deteriorating mental state, the symbolism of the yellow wallpaper, and the use of language techniques such as tone, diction, and syntax. At the beginning of the story, the narrator is a submissive and obedient wife, forced to live in isolation and rest for her "nervous depression" at her husband's command. The narrator's initial tone is subdued and passive, with little indication of her own thoughts or feelings. However, as the story progresses, the tone becomes increasingly frantic and obsessive, reflecting the narrator's growing fixation on the yellow wallpaper in her room. The yellow wallpaper itself is a powerful symbol that represents the narrator's confinement and descent into madness. Initially, the wallpaper is a dull and unremarkable pattern, but as the narrator becomes more and more obsessed with it, she begins to see strange and disturbing images in the pattern. The wallpaper becomes a symbol of the narrator's own deteriorating mental state, and its transformation mirrors her own. As she becomes increasingly consumed by the pattern, the wallpaper begins …show more content…
As the narrator's mental state becomes more unstable, her sentences become more fragmented and disjointed, reflecting her increasingly fragmented thoughts. The syntax also becomes more erratic and irregular, with sentences that are incomplete, run-on, or illogical. This creates a sense of confusion and disorientation for the reader, mirroring the narrator's own state of mind. The use of first-person point of view also highlights the narrator's increasingly unstable mental state, as her thoughts and perceptions become more unreliable and