“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