Yellow Wallpaper Construction

“The Yellow Wallpaper”, a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, is about a woman with a serious mental disorder. The story shows the decline of the narrator's mental state by the change in her actions throughout the story. The narrator makes an effort to do as she is told to do to try to get better, but unfortunately she just kept getting worse. No matter how hard the narrator tries, she gets distracted and turns away from following the instructions her physician gave her. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the improper prescription that the physician (who was also her husband) prescribes has a negative influence on the narrator's mental state.
The narrator is forbidden to doing a number of activities, such as reading and writing.

The yellow wallpaper in her room has a pattern in it, along with a few rips. The narrator stares at the paper for long periods of time and begins to believe that there are human like images trapped in the wallpaper. “I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Stetson 650). She thinks it is trying to escape from the wall, so she proceeds to rip the paper off of the walls as far as she can reach. The narrator also claims that she sees the figure all over the house,”It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs” (Stetson 654). The narrator would walk around the room and hug the walls because she wants to chase the woman in the wallpaper, which creates yellow marks on her clothing. She finds yellow smooches on all her clothes. The narrator has such an obsession with the wallpaper that she will go to any measure to try to help free the

The ‘provoking’ figure in the wallpaper is stirring up strong emotions in the narrator's mind and desperation to take some kind of action, rather than rest. Towards the end of the story, she begins to implicate that she would harm herself to help the figure in the wallpaper: “I am getting angry enough to do something-desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong to even try” (Stetson 655-656). She also shuts everyone out. She does not want anyone coming in her room, so she locks and throws the key away. “I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path” (Stetson 655). She did not want anyone entering her room including her husband. When her husband finally finds the key and enters her room, he sees that all the wallpaper is ripped and she explain this to him what she sees in the paper. He faints because he is in shock and she continues to circles around the room tracing the