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Yellow Wallpaper Literary Devices

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Wimberly 1 Weston Wimberly K. Billo D.C. English 1302 22 March 2018 Literary Analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a unique story about a woman, her husband and his sister is explained using a variety of purposeful literary devices. Of these rhetorical strategies, there lies repetition, juxtaposition, metaphor, specific moods and tones, personification, irony, theme, and polysyndeton. Through these devices, characterization, symbols, setting, and meaning behind the passage is explained. First, by using repetition, Gilman establishes a purpose for the repeated words or sentences. For example, she states “You see he does not believe i am sick! And what can one do?” Then the passage goes on to repeat the phrase, “What is one to do?” multiple times. The purpose of restating this quote proves that the wife is so confused about what is going on the situation. Asking herself this question over and over throughout the story shows her helpless nature, and Gilman specifically includes these lines to establish the wife’s character. Also, by juxtapositioning two opposite meaning phrases, the author establishes the …show more content…

For example, it states, “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow…” The strong tone words such as “repellent” and “revolting” in this line give a purpose of the disgust and hatred that the wife has for the wallpaper. This also adds to the mood of the passage because the wallpaper plays such a huge role in the story. Moreover, the way the author describes the dirtiness of the wallpaper further helps explain the color of the wallpaper and its meaning. Since the wallpaper is yellow, it already has a built in meaning behind it because the color yellow is a symbol for decline and deterioration. This further emphasizes the wasting away of the wife and her knowledge of her

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Critical Statement: In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman employs exclamatory functions within her syntax to display the symbolism of the woman within the wallpaper to illustrate her own constricted freedom due the influence of the masculine dominance. In the beginning of the story, Gilman illustrates the wallpaper as a catalyst for exhibiting the intensity of the narrator’s psychological disorder. After the narrator and her husband settle into their new house, the narrator inspects her room, and begins discerning ominous relations and elements within the wallpaper.

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Gilman is frightened about the woman, and keeps this fear to herself. Another thing that Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses to show imagery is the scent that she smells. “But there is something else about that paper - the smell! It creeps all over the house. I find it in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall.. ”

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Who Is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper?

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an advocate, author, and poet. Gilman’s writings expressed concerns of a dysfunctional family. In 1892 Gilman wrote her first story called “The Yellow Wall Paper” (484). In this story she expresses her observations, surroundings, and feelings. Gilman doesn’t feel her husband supports her writings, she states “he hates to have me write a word” (487).

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Essay Comparing The Yellow Wallpaper And The Story Of An Hour

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"The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Story of an Hour" written by Kate Chopin were written in the late 1800s. They may seem pretty different at first, but they both discuss women 's confinement in society in the late 1800s. Moreover, while these two stories focus on social status based on gender, in doing so, they bring out the effects of gender roles and gender stereotypes that end in affliction. In the story "The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman paints a picture for the reader starting off with the narrator a housewife who feels detached from society due to her husband’s controlling nature.

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In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the emotional state of the narrator and feelings toward her husband are reflected in her description of the setting through the use of first person narration, imagery to portray feelings of oppression and figurative language to create a consistent tone of isolation and cynical irony. The narrator uses symbolism to portray her connection with her observations and the yellow wallpaper. From the moment they moved into their house, the narrator felt like her husband treated her like a child which was shown when he forces her stay in a nursery. John forces the narrator to repress her imagination. While her "habit of story-making" might have found a healthy outlet in writing,

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1846 Words | 8 Pages

In most interpretations of Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, it is usually deduced that John, the unnamed narrator’s husband in the short story, is a flat character that is used solely for plot advancement. This is most likely due to the combination of indirect discourse, an unreliable narrator, and the ambiguous ending that negatively impacts the reader’s opinion of him. But, if the reader views the short story as a tragedy, John plays a more impactful role in the story. By analyzing the story from an Aristotelian perspective of tragedy, John becomes Gilman’s unintentional tragic hero.

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The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story. It’s clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator’s point of view greatly differs from that of her husband’s and other family in her life.

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The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story told through diary entries of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, becomes obsessed with the ugly yellow wallpaper in the summer home her husband rented for them. While at the home the Narrator studies the wallpaper and starts to believe there is a woman in the wallpaper. Her obsession with the wallpaper slowly makes her mental state deteriorate. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary devices such as symbolism, personification and imagery to help convey her message and get it across to the reader.

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931 Words | 4 Pages

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”.

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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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