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The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

677 Words3 Pages

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s work of fiction, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” published in 1892 is based on Gilman’s personal experiences after receiving a hysteric diagnosis, and a "rest cure" that prohibited her from writing. In the story, the narrator receives a similar diagnosis and treatment from physicians, John, and her brother. The narrator opens her confidential diary entry by praising the grandeur of the home and grounds her husband has rented for their summer vacation; however, this place soon shifts to the setting where we see the narrator begin to dissociate with reality. The narrator's gradual descent into psychosis is symbolized by her obsession with the yellow wallpaper, the women in the wallpaper, and her unconscious actions. The yellow …show more content…

John frequently mocks her when she "fancies." To control her conduct, John whisks her away to a country estate where she is confined to a room with barred windows, peeling yellow wallpaper, and a bedstead fastened to the floor, giving the room an impression of a penitentiary. Owing to the narrator's limited capacity for mental stimulation and social interaction, she’s been driven to use her imagination through the wallpaper, the one part of her life she has control over. As she seeks out human interaction, she begins to find heads behind imperceptible bars on the wallpaper. The narrator's psychosis worsens as she focuses her desire to escape the constraints in her life onto a figure 2 Pho hidden beneath the strangling pattern—a figure of a woman, "stooping down and crawling around," as she herself creeps about her restricted world. The narrator does not recognize the similarities between her imprisoned state and the life of the woman in the yellow wallpaper. Ultimately, the wallpaper is a symbol of confinement in the narrator's life, as she wants to “get that woman out.” Correspondingly, the narrator finds it difficult to believe that the situation the woman …show more content…

Eventually, the narrator's actions unconsciously reflect the woman on the wall, who represents her emotions. According to Freud, the unconscious mind is a repository of memories, desires, and thoughts that are hidden from our everyday consciousness. Jennie's curiosity about the paper “ruining everything it touched” and the yellow “smooches” on their clothing is interpreted by the narrator as cunning. However, she’s unaware that the yellow smooches are her own from creeping on the floor, much like the woman in the wallpaper. The old yellow wallpaper is frantically peeled off by the narrator, who is determined to release the woman. After getting freed from the wallpaper, she brought the rope to "tie her up," but she ended up tying herself to the rope. Via a self-fulfilling prophecy, the narrator's unconscious thoughts and behaviors molded her into the woman in the wallpaper. 3 Pho Although John gives his greatest efforts to be a good husband to his wife, he is

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Together the themes of manipulation and mental illness will trigger a series of events that change their lives. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the protagonist becomes increasingly obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom and seclusion from human contact. This was a cure that her husband John prescribed that proved detrimental to her mental health. As she spends more time alone in the room, she becomes fixated on the patterns and images, slowly becoming convinced there is a woman behind the wall that is trapped and that she must free, "The front pattern does move—and no wonder!

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The Narrator’s disdain for the situation she is in is clearly shown through how she tells her story. As her insanity grows deeper, the wallpaper is described as a prison, something that has a sub-pattern whose “dim shapes get clearer every day. […] And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” (Gilman). This life that The Narrator has been born into is not one that she fits into, so she identifies with this hypothetical woman trapped behind a metaphorical wall of femininity.

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The narrator is a woman who is imaginative trying to make her mind think and realize the meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper as, “repellant, almost revolting; smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 641). This specific wallpaper makes the narrator feel a certain way. At first, she does not like the color or how it looks. But then not having anything else to do in the room, she starts examining the wallpaper.

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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.

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The yellow wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story plays a significant role in illuminating the narrator’s psychological unraveling. On a literal level, the wallpaper serves as a symbol of the narrator’s confinement within her oppressive domestic life. From the beginning, the narrator is presented as a woman who is struggling to find her place in the world. She is in a state of emotional limbo and her husband’s treatment of her only serves to further her sense of entrapment and powerlessness.

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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

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In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman, Gilman uses symbols to portray the situation of John and his wife, who's the narrator, after the arrival at their rental home. The theme represents the complexity of relationships coupled with inequitable decisions. Gilman discusses how the wallpaper led the wife to insanity, how her illness affected her mental and physical health, and how John tried to “help” his wife overcome her illness. To begin, Gilman discusses throughout the story how the wife became more and more interested in the wallpaper.

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Martin states that the narrator’s confinement in the upstairs bedroom fortifies her mental illness developing into “a frightening hallucinatory world constructed around the pattern of the yellow paper on the wall.” This shift in her identity happens as the shift in her disposition towards the wallpaper changes. The wallpaper is a visible metaphor that eventually becomes her identity. In the beginning of her stay in the bedroom she says the wallpaper is “committing artistic sin” (Par34) and can push anyone to “suddenly commit suicide” (Par35) These comments show her despise towards the wallpaper and the separation she originally has from it.

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However, in stories such as “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator’s point of view is what truly helps define the setting and symbolism. Without the narrator’s distinct point of view on how she

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(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!”

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Enclosed to the four wall of this “big” room, the narrator says “the paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it” because “it is stripped off” indicating that males have attempted to distort women’s truth but somehow did not accomplish distorting the entire truth (Perkins Gilman, 43). When the narrator finally looked at the wall and the paint and paper on it, she was disgusted at the sight. The yellow wallpaper, she penned, secretly against the will of men, committed artistic sin and had lame uncertain curves that suddenly committed suicide when you followed them for a little distance. The narrator is forced to express her discomfort with the image to her husband, he sees it as an “excited fancy” that is provoked by the “imaginative power and habit of story making” by “a nervous weakness” like hers (Perkins Gilman, 46). Essentially, he believes that her sickness is worsening and the depth of her disease is the cause of the unexpected paranoia.

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John constantly tries to "fix" the narrator by giving her "phosphates or phosphites - whichever it is, and tonics, and journey's, and air, and exercise" as well as forbidding her to work until she is well again. The narrator feels depressed and alone, especially since her child has been taken away from her and everybody is too focused on "fixing" her to see the problems she is dealing with. This causes her to form an attachment to the yellow wallpaper plastered around her room as her mental state deteriorates. As her state of mind worsens, she begins to think that she is seeing a woman trapped in the wallpaper. The narrator believes that the wallpaper pattern changes because the trapped woman shakes the walls and creeps around the room over and over, when in reality, it is the narrator who is continuously crawling around the room, scraping the wallpaper from the walls.

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(99). The woman on the floor trying to take the wallpaper down would not let her husband in as he tried to knock the door down, but she does not realize she is doing it to herself. For example, Catherine Golden states in her article that, “The narrator seems detached from the bits of wallpaper on the floor next to her and John wallpaper fragments that could be read as a literal representation of the source of her insanity. The narrator’s hallucinations and action of tearing down the wallpaper to free the woman trapped behind the wallpaper pattern condemn her to madness” (60).

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman was not just an author but a great feminist. Gillam inspired countless women to seek indecency with her work like "The Yellow Wallpaper. " The story is a fictionalized short story of a woman who is descending into madness while dealing with her mental illness and cannot heal due to her husband 's lack of belief. At the same time, the woman also known as the narrator feels imprisoned in her marriage. The story takes place during a time were women and had no independence and were not able to voice their own opinion.

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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

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