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Viciousness In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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Viciousness, a term that is severe to say, and heavy laden when spoken. Viciousness is vile, a type of cruelty, or brutality. A word that should be spoken seldom, so when the occasion arises it has depth. The narrator, Jane, attests that the wallpaper “looks at [her] as if it knew what vicious influence it had!”(Gilman 834). So when we think about the context the narrator uses it in, it doesn’t seem to be very “vicious”, right? It is just wallpaper. However, what Charlotte Perkins Gilman is trying to convey is that the wallpaper is just a mere symbol of the life the narrator has and the domestic viciousness a lot of women face within marriage. The “vicious influence” the wallpaper had on the narrator was describing the “vicious influence” …show more content…

Many of them were written off as hysterical and were just ordered into isolation as a treatment plan. This is seen within The Yellow Wallpaper as John puts his wife away hoping she will come to her senses and takes away all things that give her joy or the slightest taste at life. The wallpaper wasn’t the only thing vicious within this time period as it was the men as they trampled over women, their souls, and overwhelmingly missed that women were mere humans too. The deepest of hopes is that women don’t experience this today, however, the superiority men often take upon themselves often captures women in this “vicious” cycle of …show more content…

She referenced the wallpaper having “vicious influence”. As referenced earlier, it is just wallpaper, so why would the narrator refer to it as being alive or having “vicious influence”? Even in the story, Gilman did not give the wallpaper the ability to encase magical talents or magical purpose, but rather was intended to be a symbol of the trapment the narrator is facing. It is easy to dismiss what the narrator believes about the wallpaper giving her condition, however, we aren’t the husband, so we shall not be dismissive. Yet, the wallpaper was alive. Not in the sense, we are, as it is not breathing, but it is alive in revelation. The liveliness the wallpaper bestowed was simply the truth. The truth is what began to come alive to the narrator, revealing the sorrow and the devastating life that she lived unknowingly and subconsciously. The wallpaper, being an object, didn't come to life and tell the narrator to wake up and realize, but was metaphorically coming alive in the narrator's mind. The wallpaper represented her life, so when the narrator stared at it and analyzed the wallpaper, she was analyzing the life she was living and began to see it unfold as her

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Gilman-Perkins utilizes exaggeration in this instance, as such a wallpaper would certainly not be characterized as “torturing” by a “normal mind”, serving to convey the protagonist’s abnormal state of mind by highlighting the disparity between her thought patterns and those which the reader would likely have after having read the description of the object. Here the author uses a metaphor to characterize the effects of the wallpaper upon the narrator’s mind by emphasizing her obsession with and the detriment caused to her sanity by the wallpaper’s enigmatic patterns. It may also be worth noting that the wallpaper is personified, possibly in reference to her subsequent conclusion that there is a woman imprisoned in it.

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Once Gilman has done ripping the paper, she begins to behave like the woman on the wallpaper, sneaking around the room and tracing the pattern on the wall, this was the falling action. The resolution of the story occurs when her husband realizes the seriousness of his wife's mental illness and chooses to move her from the house and seek medical treatment for her. The fact it depicts the negative impacts of a patriarchal society on women's mental health is

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The narrator's husband, John, who is also her physician, continually downplays her concerns, attributing them to "hysteria" and prescribing rest and isolation as a cure. This gaslighting and invalidation of the narrator's feelings reflect the societal norm of silencing women and denying them agency and autonomy. Gilman uses ambiguity to highlight the damaging consequences of such dismissal and invalidation, as the narrator's mental state deteriorates further under the weight of societal oppression. Furthermore, Gilman employs ambiguity through the symbolism of the yellow wallpaper itself.

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The narrator is a woman who is imaginative trying to make her mind think and realize the meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper as, “repellant, almost revolting; smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 641). This specific wallpaper makes the narrator feel a certain way. At first, she does not like the color or how it looks. But then not having anything else to do in the room, she starts examining the wallpaper.

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The wallpaper becomes a symbol of the narrator's own mental state. She describes it as "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. " This description mirrors the narrator's own mental state, which is confused and erratic.

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(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….

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She becomes obsessed with the patterns of the wallpaper, but she mainly notices a woman that she thinks is trying to free herself from the confines of the wall. During the day this woman is still, but when night time comes around, it seems as though the woman creeps around. Towards the end of the story, the narrator has a breakdown and thinks that she is this woman inside of the wallpaper, and begins to perform similar actions like creeping around. This meaning of this scene is simple cause and effect. Not only did she already have postpartum depression, but she is basically trapped in this house for a whole summer with nothing to do so she can heal.

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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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At the beginning of the story, Gilman shows us the wife slowly becoming more interested in the wallpaper. Shortly after she notices it, she becomes obsessed and wants to understand what it means. When she

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At first the narrator just see the wallpaper as a unpleasant addition to the room as it’s a “repellent, almost revolting… unclean yellow” (Gilman 801), and the

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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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562 Words | 3 Pages

(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”

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1155 Words | 5 Pages

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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779 Words | 4 Pages

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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810 Words | 4 Pages

The yellow wallpaper is not just the dreadful décor the narrator is stuck within the story but the most important symbol in the story. It symbolizes how women were not allowed to change or free to make their own decisions. The narrator once said that the wallpaper "sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it" (Gilman). She felt like the wallpaper stuck and not able to succumb to change she demonstrates this as well when she says "The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out" (Gilman). The narrator herself became the women she saw in the wallpaper that she felt trapped in a life without change which manifested itself into the wallpaper further increasing the symbolism and importance of yellow wallpaper.

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