Importance of Symbolism and Setting in The Yellow Wallpaper

     Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is as a wonderful example of the gothic horror genre. It was not until the rediscovery of the story in the early 1970’s that “The Yellow Wallpaper” was recognized as a feminist indictment of a male dominated society. The story contains many typical gothic trappings, but beneath the conventional façade hides a tale of repression and freedom told in intricate symbolism as seen through the eyes of a mad narrator.

A Feminist Reading of Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar dives headfirst into The Yellow Wallpaper and presents their interpretation of the short story. The three main points that this article covers are the symbolism of the room the narrator was confined to, the degradation of the narrator’s mental state, and the real world impact that this story had. While I agree for the most part with these authors, I have my own personal interpretation of the story.

Gilman's use of narrative structure is important in depicting the fragmentation of the woman's mind. Through the course of the story sentences become increasingly choppy and paragraphs decrease in length. This concrete element of fiction illustrates the deterioration of that narrator's psychological well-being and mental surmise to the yellow wallpaper.

It is noticed from the plot of the story, the images and metaphors used in it that the author wants to draw readers’ attention to feminism especially to the female character who is trying to practice her hobby which is writing. Moreover, Gilman shows that the woman is trying to overcome the oppression she was suffering from, in order to free herself from it and find equality in the society. In the story, readers are exposed to the levels of women’s oppression, and the author expressed that greatly by using the yellow wallpaper as a symbol of that ugly

In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author presents a controversial story about a woman’s mental conditions and her life within her current home. Throughout the story symbols arise to express how the woman progressively gets worse when it comes to her mental condition. This is shown through the animation of the wallpaper that is in her bedroom and the reasons she feels like she has to express her feelings through writing instead of verbally. The different symbols used in the story by Gilman reveals changes in the narrator by expressing the pressure felt by women from their significant other during the early to mid 1900’s.

            “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an example of how stories and the symbolism to which they are related can influence the perspective of its readers and alternate their point of view. In the “Yellow Wall-Paper”, the unknown narrator gets so influenced by her surroundings that she starts showing signs of mental disorder, creating through many years several controversies on trying to find the real causes of her decease.

As human beings, we play the cards that are dealt to us in this world. In life, every person goes through their individual ups and downs and occasionally may break down to the extent of not knowing what to do with oneself. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” which takes place in the late 1800s, focuses on the first person narrator who is an infatuated woman. The disheartening story concentrates on a woman who is suffering from postpartum depression, and as well had mental breakdowns. The narrators husband John, moves her into a home isolated in the country where he wants her to “rest” and get better from her illness. During the course of being confined in the room with the wallpaper, she learns new

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the setting is very symbolic when analyzing the different the meanings of this book. The main character in the story is sick with nervous depression. In the story, John, her husband, and also a physician, takes his wife to a house in the middle of the summer and confines her to one room in hopes of perfect rest for her. As the story progresses, it is made clear that confinement, sanity, insanity, and freedom are all tied together and used to make the setting of the story symbolic.

The Room itself represents the author’s unconscious protective cell that has encased her mind, represented by the woman, for a very long time. This cell is slowly deteriorating and losing control of her thoughts. I believe that this room is set up as a self-defense mechanism when the author herself is put into the asylum. She sets this false wall up to protect her from actually becoming insane and the longer she is in there the more the wall paper begins to deteriorate. This finally leads to her defense weakening until she is left with just madness and insanity. All of the characters throughout the story represent real life people with altered roles in her mind.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through

A review of the house itself suggests that an architectural hierarchy of privacy increases level by level. At first, the house seems to foster romantic sensibilities; intrigued by its architectural connotations, the narrator embarks upon its description immediately--it is the house that she wants to "talk about" (Gilman 11). Together with its landscape, the house is a "most beautiful place" that stands "quite alone . . . well back from the road, quite three miles from the village" (Gilman 11). The estate's grounds, moreover, consist of "hedges and walls and gates that lock" (Gilman 11). As such, the house and its grounds are markedly depicted as mechanisms of confinement--ancestral places situated within a legacy of control and

After being crushed with deep sorrow over the death of his beloved Ligeia, the narrator moves into a decaying abbey to leave behind his lonesome house. Although he leaves the exterior of the house untouched, the narrator decorates the interior with strange but lavish furniture. “The furnishings take on the shapes and colors of his fantastic dreams” as he attempts to cope with his loss (Kincheloe). This supports the idea that the narrator would rather live in his own colorful fantasy (like the inside of his house), than engage in the dark reality (as represented by the outside of the house). Losing Ligeia meant the narrator lost his fulfillment in life; which is why his reality is now gloomy and undesirable. Not only does is the furniture an example of dream imagery, the walls of the desolate house also have a dream effect. The moving images on the walls cause the house itself to seem restless and alive. The narrator imagines this because it represents himself; always on the edge of monstrosity with each changing mood. As he hallucinates on opium, his sense of reality and fantasy is put together as one. With each furnishing, a looming memory of Ligeia haunts him as he reminances her during his opium dreams.

For centuries women in literature have been depicted as weak, subservient, and unthinking characters. Before the 19th century, they usually were not given interesting personalities and were always the proper, perfect and supportive character to the main manly characters. However, one person, in order to defy and mock the norm of woman characterization and the demeaning mindsets about women, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper." This story, through well crafted symbolisms, brought to surface the troubles that real women face. Her character deals with the feeling of being trapped by the expectations of her husband, with the need to do something creative or constructive, and to have a mind and will of her own. These feelings

In the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, there are many of literary techniques that illustrates the theme to express the story. Irony, imagery and symbolism are some literary devices that is presented among the story.  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of acceptance and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The story appears to take place during a time where women were oppressed. Women were treated as if they were under one’s thumb in society during this period which is approximately the 19th century.

Gilman, Frost, and Edson use setting to demonstrate the strain that can exist between people in times of conflict. In Gilman 's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" the relationship between a man and a women displayed distressed. Gilman 's use of setting allows the reader to demonstrate how women were meant to be seen, not