Literary Analysis "The Yellow Wallpaper"

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short-story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It was first published in 1892. This short-story is written in the first-person point of view. This helps show a collection of journal entries by a woman who is oppressed, suffering from what we now know as post-partum depression and denied a chance to express herself by her physician husband. This condition frustrates her health in the end, becoming psychotic and paranoid about any human contact, even delusional. She is locked in a solitary room for most of the story. She is only accompanied by old, peeling, yellow wallpaper. At the end of the story, the narrator talks about her freedom, further indicating the position of women at that time. This analysis of the short story focuses on the theme of gender brought forth in the story as well as the position Jane takes in furthering this theme.

In the story, The Yellow Wallpaper the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman brings to life the tale of a woman suffering from post partem depression. Her husband is a physician and makes the mistake of keeping her closed off from the world. (John) thinks that the right thing to do is to keep her alone in an unfamiliar room. In this room, there is a bed that is nailed down to the floor and a yellow wallpaper that at first, she despises. However, she eventually becomes obsessed with it and goes completely insane. How can she differentiate between what is real and what is not? It mostly comes down to her amount of freedom and self-expression. The mental strains placed on the narrator are ultimately what drives her to the point of insanity.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an intricate story that uses the conflict between an “imaginative wife” and her “rational doctor” of a husband to convey underlying motifs (Shumaker n.pag.). The story is told from the narrator’s journal that she keeps hidden from her husband. It is clear throughout the story that the narrator suffers from some sort of mental illness. Her husband/physician, John, uses unethical remedies to try to cure the narrator’s disease. Isolation and complete bed rest are John’s idea of treatment for his

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about a woman who is mentally ill however she cannot grip onto reality because of her husband's disbelief. Gilman expresses how mental illness is portrayed in a time period where women were treated as second rate people in society. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Gilman portrays the struggles of marriage and social expectations through characterization, dialogue, and symbolism.

Her husband keeps wants her to put down her pen and paper, relax and stay in one room as she is stressed. The doctor and her husband agree that this is the best cure for her depression or mental anguish. All though not really on board with this plan, as she wants to live, she goes along with her doctor and husband’s blessing, holding her feelings inside “But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself—before him, at least, and that makes me very tired” (Gilman, par. 26). In her husband holding her to this room, which has torn yellow wallpaper, she fades more and more into the faded torn walls “I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wall-paper. It dwells in my mind so” (Gilman, 94). She wants to get to any other room for the longest time, then subsides into blending into the wallpaper and what it possesses in its designs. Eventually, her husband went checking on her, found her creeping around on the floor, and was so astonished that she actually digressed that he

Early on in the story, the narrator sounds pleasant and positive, but the impression that it sparks in the mind of the reader is oppressive. The reason for this is that the narrator wants to present the husband in the beginning as loving and caring about his wife’s health, but the rest cure suggested by him emphasizes his dominance in the story. By saying “John laughs at me, of course, one expects that in marriage” (Gilman 792). The narrator reveals her anxious tone toward her husband and her dissatisfaction with the way the treatment is prescribed. The narrator becomes nervous toward her husband and projects her anger on the wallpaper. Gilman presents her characters in an ironic way. The husband, who is a doctor, is presented as being in conflict with her husband and portrays a true version of society. He is someone, despite his career, unable to understand his wife’s needs. The yellow color of the wallpaper can refer to the mental illness caused by women’s inferior status in society. The irony is obvious just from the way her husband prescribes the cure, which makes the situation even worse and brings the opposite

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a unique story as it appeals to readers through the use of irony. There are several types of literary irony present throughout this story, such as situational, dramatic, and verbal. Irony can influence the portrayal of a character in a story. Irony can also add intrigue and excitement to the plot of the story. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, the author uses the literary element of irony to capture the reader’s attention and influence how the characters are portrayed throughout the story.

In the “The Yellow Wall-paper,” the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, writes about a struggling mentally ill woman, named Jane, trying to work through her individuality and her own depression. This story is centered around her bedroom, her mental state, and the yellow wall-paper on the walls in her room. The reader can easily feel the pain, anguish, despair, and struggles of a woman going through a depressive state. Gilman writes about the individual succession of the woman’s mental state through the disarray of the patterned yellow wall-paper. The theme of feminism is exposed by the main characters use of language, her feelings of inferiority, mental struggles, and anger.

Stories can have a person feel like they can relate to the characters and have ways to express their emotions. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story written in the late nineteenth century, 1890 's a time period where women were oppressed. This is the time of era, where women have no voice, they stayed home and did wifely duties. The story is written in first person, however we never learn the woman 's name in the story. She stays anonymous, but we learn a lot about this woman. However, the narrators name may be Jane. Gilman may have slipped the narrators name at the end of the story when she is free, but then again, It is not a complete known fact. She is however the protagonist in the story. We learn that she has a mental illness or possibly some sort of post-partum depression and she is not able to get proper treatment, due to the lack of her husband who seems in denial as a physician. Charlotte Perkins Gilman lets us know that she is in a summer vacation house and is mesmerized by this yellow wallpaper in this room. She becomes fixated. The pattern of the wallpaper is not together and crazy and torn, ugly and, a pointless pattern but has hidden expression, which she is using the wall paper to symbolize her life. The wallpaper has the sense of entrapment, and a distraction that becomes an obsession and slowly trajectory towards madness. We will discover many elements of this story along with the story being in the American Feminist time period of women

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells a semi-autobiographical story of an upper, middle class Victorian woman and her experiences with the resting cure. Throughout the story, the character is faced with external and internal conflicts, that mirror Gilman’s experiences after being diagnosed with the resting cure. Jane’s against the limitations as a woman in Victorian society, combined with a history of mental fragility make her vulnerable to her husband John’s dominance. A major external conflict that Jane is faced with is woman vs society.

In 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”; a short story that addresses the sensitive topic of inequality between men and women during the nineteenth century. The courageous feminist discusses an issue that many were afraid to talk about, the inhumane treatment of women diagnosed with hysteria. She was the voice for the helpless women who didn’t know how to speak up during this revolting oppression. Gilman created the striking novel by using powerful images to speak up against the injustice. The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, highlights the central theme of men being superior to women. Gilman expresses theme through usage of symbolism within the yellow wallpaper;

After the arguments about the wallpaper and how much she despises it the narrator soon becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper. At times she becomes independent she feels that she is her own person, so sometimes she would write because that would calm her down, but that didn’t last for long. Since she was already losing it she starts to think that there is a woman stuck in the wallpaper and wants to break free, but can’t. So she starts to peel down the wallpaper. Since she was slowly losing everything she couldn’t even notice that the woman that she was trying to set free from the wallpaper was actually her own shadow.

As she stays in the room, she starts imagining a women figure that is stuck in the wallpaper trying to escape,“The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out”(Gilman 652).The author demonstrates how women try to escape from dealing with inequality, but society keeps them in a certain place. Gilman comes to a major realization about the wallpaper becoming symbolic. She sees a woman in the wallpaper, who is quiet at daytime and trying to escape at night time, “By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still”(Gilman 653).

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is on the surface a mysterious story about a woman suffering from depression to mad, but actually, it reveals the oppression of women from their patriarchal families. In the late 19th century, women couldn’t enjoy the freedom they do today, and most of them suffered from hysteria. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a typical example of those women who live with low social status. In my opinion, the reason resulting in her lower social situation is the narrator’s retreat from the reality, and the narrator must break the tradition of patriarchy if she wants more rights and free. In this story, the narrator’s

“I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window . . . But John would not hear of it." It was also one of the reason why she fell deeper into mental illness/madness. The idea of spending weeks isolated in a room without stimulation sounds like spending an eternity in the abyss. Without the stimulus of anything productive, the boredom can cloud out a person’s consciousness and perception. So writing in the diary was one thing that delayed the narrator’s descent into madness, it gave a way to express her thoughts instead of keeping it locked inside like herself being caged in the room. Most of the narrator’s depiction of the house, in particular the wallpaper was a contradiction between the differences of her inner life and outward appearance. Her need to express the details of the mysterious figure in the yellow wallpaper mirrors her interpretation of her own physiological conditions. At one point of the story, ". . . Really dear you are better!" her husband said. "Better in body perhaps -" I stopped short, for he sat up straight at me with a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word. This was another evidence that showed her husband had complete control over her. If she was to even hint at the idea that the rest cure wasn’t working, she knew that wouldn’t end well as a more severe treatment could be in store for her. Even thought she was liberated at the end of the story, it was actually more that her inner self broke free and escape into being. So in the end, she was still confined away in exchange for the freedom of her inner