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Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism

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Sidra Bedir Professor Raithel ENG 102 May 2024 The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis Paper The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is written in the secret journal of a woman who suffers from a mental illness that is unknown throughout the story but is predicted to be postpartum depression. The woman’s husband is a physician and forces her to do things, claiming that they would treat her illness. He made her stay in a house far away from the world she used to live in, with nothing to do and nothing to feel. He also forced her to stay in a room that she hated because of its ugly yellow wallpaper. Eventually, due to all of the pressure to follow the rules and the anxiety that came along with it, she was driven into complete madness. …show more content…

Because of the child-like behavior she is receiving from everyone around her, she starts to think and act like a child as well. Since the yellow wallpaper seems to be the only thing she can control, she researches and discovers things about the wallpaper at an intellectual level to replace the work that has been forbidden to her. In the literary analysis “Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper',” Loralee MacPike states: “Slowly, the wallpaper becomes something more than an object for the narrator. She begins to see in it a movement and a purpose she has been unable to realize in her own life.” (MacPike 7). Proving that the yellow wallpaper is occupying the narrator’s mind completely, leaving her no space to think logically like an adult. Connecting these symptoms to the symbol only leads to the conclusion that the narrator’s mental state has worsened. Her out-of-control behavior that can be compared to a child’s behavior; her obsession with the yellow wallpaper on a crazy level; and her loneliness that she attempts to cure using her toxic imagination are all proof of her worsened

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