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The Yellow Wallpaper Research Paper

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The Yellow-Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the color yellow of wallpaper. The yellow wallpaper is described as being ugly and torn in the nursery. It is may meant to be ironic or that the wallpaper is past its prime as it has yellowed with age. The color of the wallpaper is probably chosen for a variety of reasons. Detailed descriptions of the wallpaper described to us as hideous. The narrator states that “The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-tiring sunlight” (649). Her first impressions of seeing the wallpaper are her saying “No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long” (649).
The color of the wallpaper promotes a counterintuitive reading. The color yellow is normally associated with happiness and light; therefore, in this case it is linked to a malignant source that drives the narrator insane. The reader expects the color yellow to be benevolent. The reader is then disappointed and is forced to question everything else in the short story, especially things that seem to come off as obvious. The color of the wallpaper may relate to illness or discriminated minorities of the time period. …show more content…

If she is not actually insane, then the mere confinement and inactivity could have been sufficient to cause a mental breakdown. Either way, whether she is actually insane or not, the yellow wallpaper does serve a purpose as an obvious catalyst for her mental deterioration. We do not yet know if it is merely a symptom of her insanity or the cause. The narrator, however tears up the wallpaper at the end, which shows that she does not want to accept how insane she has become. She attempts to find the “women” when tearing down the wallpaper. It shows the narrator struggling to regain her

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