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The Yellow Wallpaper Rhetorical Analysis

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“It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all the way, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things on the walls. The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off the paper - in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the …show more content…

Perkins's first-person account features a protagonist grappling with postpartum depression who considers her confinement and the medication her husband, a physician, prescribed for her. This analysis will dive into the rhetoric and other strategies that were used by Perkins in her short story. At first, the most seen rhetorical strategy that Perkins uses is ‘imaginary’. The narrator emphasizes that the windows in the nursery that was converted to a bedroom were closed for young kids, signifying both mental and physical isolation. The narrator claims “windows that look all the way” This highlights that the narrator feels like she’s being watched all the time, there’s no such privacy. This imagery shows the narrator being suffocated in the atmosphere and being confined in that certain situation Furthermore, the narrator's desire for freedom of movement represents an appeal for self-determination and female empowerment, opposing the repressive systems that want to limit and control women. The narrator appears in this imagery as being imprisoned and suffocating in the atmosphere. Furthermore, the room first presents itself as a space of potential freedom, given its description as "a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore." The narrator characterizes the room's wallpaper as a "sprawling flamboyant" design that displays "artistic sin." She uses this metaphor to emphasize her dislike for the wallpaper's aesthetics as well as the constraints and limitations that were placed on women in the past. The narrator frequently refers to the wallpaper as "dull" and "pronounced" to highlight how oppressive it is for her and how this negatively affects her mental health. This creates a link to the ladies in earlier societal eras. Their options were restricted, and they never received treatment or had their mental health

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In the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows how the narrator gained more authority and freedom as her sanity was leaving her. Through the use of “I” many times in the first few sentences, a reader can see that the narrator is showing a sense of authority due to the fact the she is now in control of the events that are about to unfold. A key example of the repetition of the word “I” to show authority is, “But I must get to work. I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path. I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anybody come in, till John comes.

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3. As the story reaches a close, the descriptions of the wallpaper in the narrator 's bedroom become less realistic and start to mirror the narrator 's deteriorating mental state. The yellow color of the wallpaper isn 't as concerning to the narrator as the "yellow smell" (203) and the "many women behind" (203) it. She believes that the wallpaper "strangles them off" (203) so that the women can 't escape. In reality, the only woman the wallpaper is trapping is the narrator.

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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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One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.” (381) Her constant mention of hating the wallpaper seems like it becomes an odd obsession for the narrator. The woman who she is seeing

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However, we later see a shift in her feelings towards the wallpaper as she states that she is growing “really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper” and comes to a realization that it may be “because of the wallpaper” (Par 94) As her opinions on the wallpaper begin to change, the progression of her mental instability becomes increasing visible. She begins to build a relationship with the wallpaper and claims that “There are things in that paper that nobody knows about” (Par 22) her. As this relationship with the wallpaper builds, her sanity begins to slip, and the hallucinations begin in a somewhat minor manor. In her first mention of “the woman” she says that the pattern on the

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The "windows are barred" (648), and the unmovable bed "that is nailed down" add to her feeling of imprisonment. (650). Thirdly, the narrator suffers from oppression.

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The vast majority of people wouldn’t give the wallpaper much thought, however the narrator becomes obsessed with it. To the narrator, the wallpaper is alive and becomes the focus of all her time. Her overwhelming lure to the wallpaper becomes obvious when she first provides a very vivid description stating “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (217-218). As she begins to lose her grip on reality, the narrator beings to see faces and eventually a woman within the wallpaper. At first, her description of seeing faces in the wallpaper seems like it could be her mind making since of the varying patterns or just part of her imagination.

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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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She mentions the bedstead that is nailed onto the ground and the canvas mattress that is on it. This shows the expression of imprisonment and the remotion that she is controlled from. The author also conveys the patterns on the wallpaper to describe the nursery room. The intricate design of the yellow wallpaper is impersonating the narrator and reflecting on her own self. Furthermore, the practical idea of the medical institution was to keep her away from becoming more ill, but in the end, it was rather destroying her more as she faced the truth of the inner reality of her life.

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