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The Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism Analysis

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Symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper
Symbolism in a story is when a person or an object in the story symbolizes something else that is not directly stated. There are many types of symbolism in Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper. The wallpaper itself, Jennie the housekeeper, the husband, the nursery, and the woman in the wallpaper are all symbols for something more. All of these things symbolize an aspect of the lives of women in the 19th centuries. Gilman wanted her story and the characters in it to relate to a deeper issue than Jane’s “illness”. The symbolism helps develop the theme of freedom and confinement. The reason Jane is acting insane is because being locked away in the nursery without being able to write or express her thoughts is driving her mad. Every person, woman or man needs freedom and should not be confined or stripped of the ability to express their thoughts and ideas.
The biggest symbol in the story is the yellow wallpaper in the nursery that Jane is locked in. The dreary and lifeless patter that Jane explains in the story represents the lives of women in her time. “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 …show more content…

Her husband locked Jane away in the nursery and forbid her from the rest of the house. Jane also does not believe she fits in well at the mansion just as she does not fit into the role of a wife. Her husband also hides her away from everyone else in the nursery as if he is embarrassed of her. Towards the end of the story Jane even begins to suspect that the room was actually an asylum for adults. The windows of the room are barred up and windows represent freedom in many ways. Jane’s freedom has been taken away and she is confined in the

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Ultimately, as a woman, she is a limited agent and can only do so much indecently. Jane breaks off from the domestic sphere to which she is confined

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To develop the setting of the house, Gilman uses vivid diction to craft an image of the house to show how men a imprisoning the minds of women in Victorian society. Gilman introduces the house as a “colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity” (1066). Although her description uses the words “romantic felicity” which seem to carry a light tone, these words are preceded by the dark statement that the estate is a “haunted house”. By contrasting these two tones, Gilman foreshadows that the house in which the narrator is interned for treatment might seem magnificent and grand, but in reality, the house and the rest cure will turn out to be her doom. The foreshadowing hints that Gilman uses the contrasting description of the house to point out how physicians like John are oppressing women by denying them their right to a postpartum experience with their baby, a thing of “romantic felicity,” and instead, turning it into an ordeal as nightmarish as a “haunted house.”

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In the passage from “The yellow wallpaper,” by charlotte Perkins Gilman uses literary techniques such as imagery to analyze the narrators portray to her attitude towards her environment. A women begins to explain her morals about the way the wallpaper made her feel. She explains how her fascination with the wallpaper and a strange figure that she imagines moving around in its

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For the time period, in which the story takes place, a male-controlled marriage was normal. Jane stated, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.” (Gilman) from the statement the reader can deduce the fact, that unequal balance between male and female in marriage was common. Throughout the story of Jane being neglected and belittled, leads to her losing her mind at the end go the story. Jane imagines that a woman is in the wallpaper to hide her problems.

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It's yellow color symbolizes the way the narrator feels about her situation. "Unclean", "dull", "sickly" is how she may have felt deep down about her relationship with her husband and the life she lived under him. The wallpaper itself becomes a symbol for her. She uses it as a coping method and projects her feelings onto it and the woman she sees in it. The windows symbolize how she is trapped in this marriage and she can only view the beautiful outside through the many windows, reminding her of what she cannot have.

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The progressive degeneration in the narrator’s mental health and the slow but sure spiritual assertion in the female protagonist are worked out with the help of the central symbol of yellow wallpaper” (Rao 44). Moreover, the wallpaper illustrates the metamorphosis of Jane from a state of confinement to liberation. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” illustrates a woman’s unique path from mental and physical confinement to liberation of them both.

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In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator 's husband John, who also happens to be her physician, prescribes the rest cure to help lift his wife of her depressive state and ultimately heal her depression. However, the rest cure does not allow the narrator to experience any mental stimulation. Therefore, to manage her boredom the narrator begins obsessing over the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. After analyzing the pattern for awhile, the narrator witnesses a woman trapped behind bars.

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As this progresses, the woman starts to go mad from ignorance and starts to believe there is someone behind the Wallpaper. In her room, the narrator starts to obsess over the Wallpaper. The Wallpaper symbolizes women starting to realize how unfair they were treated and how responded to this. As the women’s illness keeps getting subdued by her husband, she starts to go mad and the wallpaper demonstrates this. In the third entry of her diary she says, “Of

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Domestic Imprisonment in The Yellow Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper is an epistolary short story written in 1892 using conventions of the psychological Gothic horror to critique the position of women in the domestic circle within a Victorian society by prominent American feminist and social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman who lived from 1860 to 1935. This work of fiction is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century towards women’s health, both physical and mental. In this essay, I will be discussing the portrayal of imprisonment within the domestic sphere in The Yellow Wallpaper with close commentary on space and setting primarily, as well as supporting references to other

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It 's here where she discovers the yellow wallpaper that leads to her mental demise. What is the symbolic meaning of the yellow wallpaper and how do her interactions with the wallpaper represent the change in her feelings towards her husband and society. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes women 's suffrage and the struggles women went through, and her interactions with the wallpaper represent the problems woman had with their husbands and society. The main symbolism present in the story is how the yellow wallpaper represents woman suffrage and the problems they endured during the 19th century.

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She wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in an effort to open the public’s eyes to the unfairness of this treatment. By infusing Jane’s narrative with childish language and actions without ever actually calling “Jane” by her name, Gilman creates a universal experience any woman of the time could insert herself into. This allowed women to fully realize the injustice they faced. John’s belittlement of Jane also serves to create both a universal and eye opening experience for the women reading it. Additionally, for those who were willing to read into the symbolism, the nursery and the meaning underlying it added to the injustice Gilman conveys.

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How she describes her surroundings and her interactions with her family evolves as her condition worsens. By the end, the reader can truly see just how far gone the narrator has gone. The narrator’s fixation on the yellow wallpaper had gone from a slight obsession to full mental breakdown. As it is with most good stories, the presence of strong symbolism and detailed settings is a very important aspect of the story that helps to draw the reader into the story.

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Symbolism is one of the literary device used in The Yellow Wallpaper. Symbolism is the use of symbols, in this case objects, to represent ideas or qualities, by giving them symbolic meaning that is different in a literal sense. Some of the symbols used are the nursery, the wallpaper, the yellow color and the greenhouses. Firstly, the nursery symbolizes the way her husband John treats her like a child

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At first it is seen as nothing but an old ruined wallpaper with a “bad” pattern. As the story progresses she stares at the paper for hours and sees a sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light. She hen sees a desperate woman trying to leave the wallpaper which shows how the women feel trapped. The author uses the yellow wallpaper as a symbol of the oppressive life that many women have today and back then.

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For instance, there is an understanding of the woman’s feelings as she describes “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” and the pattern looking at her “as if it knew what a vicious influence it had” (Gilman 437). The personification is symbolic in displaying how the woman felt as she was stuck in the lonely room with allowance of her husband and Jennie, their child’s nanny, keeping their eyes on her with the dependence of her healing. Additionally, the woman specifies that behind the yellow wallpaper she can see “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman 438). As the appearance of the wallpaper is personified, the author taps into the hidden meaning that the woman’s sickness is taunting her as she is attempting to heal. In the end, readers are given the most significant piece of personification in the statement, “and then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared that I would finish it today!”

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