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The Yellow Wallpaper Naturalism Analysis

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses naturalism as evident through her characterization of characters as victims from forces beyond control and as caricatures of animalistic behaviors to make her point about the oppression of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In this piece of work, the main character is struggling with a form of depression likely imposed from her oppressive husband and society. While trying to explain her illness to her husband, who is a physician, she is basically dismissed as being hysterical and having nothing wrong. She continues to seek support from her husband only to find opposition. She enjoys writing and seeks intellectual stimuli as possibly helping her with her melancholy, but is only turned against it by her husband, …show more content…

The woman is forced to stay in a room with bars on the window and the bed is nailed down with chew marks on it. This implies the nature of a caged wild animal. The wallpaper also ties into this characteristic as it is described as yellow with an odor implying human defecation such as a wild animal marking it’s territory, “It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper!” “Such a peculiar odor too! There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A stream that runs round the rom. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even smooch, as if it had been rubbed over and over.” (pg. 852) The longer she stays in the room the more her illness turns to madness as she begins to see things such as a woman trapped in the wallpaper. This madness turns animalistic as she starts tearing into the wallpaper and moving strangely, “But here I can creep smoothly on the floor”, “I kept creeping…”, “It is so pleasant to get out in this great room and creep around as I please!” “That was clever, for really I wasn’t alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.” “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled…”

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