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The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

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Not nearly enough words can describe the eerie feeling of reading ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Throughout the short story, you are left to question whether the main character is living in a haunted estate or if her hysteria is getting the better of her. As Gilman crafted this short story, she highlighted the importance of focusing on a main character, with side characters also playing significant roles. The plot was left with the reader wanting more, and Gilman’s incredibly thought-provoking use of detail adds depth. In this letter, I am hoping to convince you to embark on this reading journey and experience the same compelling emotions I felt after reading this short story. We read this story from the perspective of an unnamed main character who is instantly described to have “a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman, 580) due to her temporary nervous depression. Secondary characters, her physician husband and his sister, play crucial roles in conveying the deterioration of the main character’s mental health throughout the story. These side characters seem to possess knowledge that we, as readers, lack; they attribute her illness to her writing and exhibit a peculiar fixation with the wallpaper after convincing the main character that nothing is wrong with it. As we read the story from the main character’s point of view, it is difficult to determine what these side characters know about the situation of …show more content…

By the end of the story, we are almost completely convinced that our belief in the main character’s insanity is correct. In addition to the house being described as haunted, the side characters getting caught staring at the paper further questions what is really happening. Gilman has brilliantly constructed this story in a way that never quite satisfies the reader with concrete evidence of a structured ending or

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Since her husband, a physician of high standard, has prescribed a "rest cure" for her nervous condition, the protagonist is forced to suppress her creative urges and conform to societal expectations of a submissive and passive wife who is to remain still in a room with “the yellow wallpaper.” This suppression ultimately leads to her descent into madness as she struggles to reconcile her own desires with the expectations placed upon her. While the lady narrates the entire story, it is interesting to note that she is not in control of her own life and decisions. Rather, she is a victim of societal norms and gender roles that restrict her agency and

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In charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman illustrates the topic of mental health and through the employment of foreshadowing the theme isolation can lead to insanity is evident and contributes meaning to the story. The theme is shown through the foreshadowing of the narrator's diminution of rationality. One scenario in which this is instituted is when the narrator found that the her “bed stead is fairly gnawed” (Gilman 13). This foreshadowed the narrator’s insanity because it hints at maybe she isn’t revealing everything about her behavior that she lets on. Later on, when the narrator is psychotically trying to pull of all of the wallpaper, she “tried to lift and push it (the bed) until I was lame, and then I got so angry

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The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a portrayal of a woman’s descent into madness and how the society around her contributes to her illness. As a matter of fact, the story was inspired and written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own personal experience. Gilman’s use of a first person point of view and tone allows the reader to experience and understand the narrator's actions and situation. The narrator’s tone also plays a role in establishing her character and the theme through the paragraph structure, her thoughts and expressions and finally her ironic expressions. To begin with, the narrator's tone helps establish character through her paragraph structure within the story.

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