The Yellow Wallpaper Sympathetic

Throughout her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman draws her audience into a fascinating story of a woman who is locked away against her will and struggles to make sense of her situation and surroundings. Though the narrator exhibits clear signs of madness and irrationality, it is challenging to not feel remorse and sympathy for her as she describes her situation and draws on the reader's sense of compassion. Gilman makes the narrator a sympathetic character whose madness is understandable because of her controlling husband, isolation from society and what brings her joy, and how she loses touch with reality because of her treatment.
From the very beginning of the story, the words and actions of the narrator’s husband,

This is seen consistently throughout the short story, as the narrator’s insanity heightens as the story progresses. One way in which the narrator’s madness is displayed is through her experiences with the wallpaper that decorates her room. From the beginning she holds great contempt towards it, despising its color and design. She writes that “I have never seen a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.” (2). She goes on to discuss it in great detail and with passionate hatred. However, it is not until later in the story that it begins to wear her down and pave the way to further insanity. The narrator begins each new section of writing discussing normal daily life and what is happening, but always ends up bringing the topic around to the wallpaper, at first to speak about how much she despises it, and later to comment on how she does not hate it so much anymore, and finally speaking of how she is fascinated by it. A quote from further on in the short story that marks the narrator’s changing opinion of the wallpaper is when she writes “Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be…. John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wallpaper. I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was because of my wallpaper– he would make fun of me.” (7). This line greatly contrasts the narrator’s opinion of the wallpaper at the beginning of the short story and further adds to her status as a deeply sympathetic