The Yellow Wallpaper

Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, which is also her doctor, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness. Everyday she keeps looking at the torn yellow wallpaper. While there, she is forbidden to write in her journal, as it indulges her imagination, which is not in accordance with her husband's wishes. Despite this, the narrator makes entries in the journal whenever she has the opportunity. Through these entries we learn of her obsession with the wallpaper in her bedroom. She is enthralled with it and studies the paper for hours. She thinks she sees a woman trapped behind the pattern in the paper. The story reaches its climax when her husband must force his way into the bedroom, only to find that his wife has pulled the paper off the wall and is crawling around the perimeter of the room.

In the short story, the reader gets the sense that the narrator feels like the wallpaper is a text she must interpret, that it symbolizes something that affects her directly. Its symbolism progresses throughout the story. At first, it is just ugly and unappealing to look at because it is ripped, soiled, and an “unclean yellow.” It eventually captivates the narrator as she tries to figure out the seemingly formless pattern. The narrator eventually begins to hallucinate an eerie sub-pattern behind the main pattern. Ultimately, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a frantic woman, continually crawling and hunched,

The vivid descriptions in “The Yellow Wallpaper” help to bring the reader along in the narrators decent into a kind of psychosis. It starts mildly, with her describing the color of wallpaper as “repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 528). As more time passes she begins to see more things in the paper such as “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes start at you,” and for it have “so much expression in an inanimate thing” (Gilman 592). As the pattern and descriptions get more twisted, we get visual clues of the madness that is slowly consuming the narrator. The color of the paper even begins to become a physical thing she can smell descried as, “creep[ing] all over the house...sulking...hiding...lying in wait for me…It gets into my hair” (Gilman 534). In the end we get a graphic visual representation of her full psychosis

She has been trained to trust in her husband blindly and sees no other way. He calls her “little girl” (352) and “little goose” (349) and states “She will be as sick as she pleases!” (352) whenever she tries to express her issues. Instead of fighting for what she thinks will make her better she accepts it and keeps pushing her feelings aside, while he treats her like a child. We get an instant feel for her problem in the first page when she says, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that” (pg 346). A woman shouldn’t expect her husband to laugh at her concerns. Even after briefly writing about her condition she remembers her husband telling her the very worst thing she can do is think about it and follows his instructions. This is when she begins to focus on the house instead of her problems and the obsession with the wallpaper starts. She has nothing else to think about alone in the home; they don’t even allow her to write, which she has to do in secret.

The narrator identify with the woman in the yellow wallpaper because she represent the the internal pain that she suffers from. The “nervous depression” is pain she has with neglect, depression, and the insanity increase the problem. The neglect show her mind beginning to crack under the pressure. While depression and insanity represented her mind giving in to the madness of what is happening when she is looking at the wallpaper. Overall, narrator identify with the woman because they share similar pain of being stuck in one place without anywhere to

The protagonist begins the story with her sanity slowly becoming her insanity along with the symbolism of the wallpaper. Captivating the confinement of the narrator, she begins to see that the room has “horrid paper” and begins to think “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!” As her sanity is consumed by her insanity, the condition of the wallpaper then deteriorates into a parallel with her sickness, being “Up down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes everywhere.” Foreshadowing her beginning to see her reflections of her own insanity mirroring in the wallpaper Surrounded by confinement, she increasingly becomes aware of the oppressive presence of the wallpaper. As the story progresses, the protagonist becomes further into insanity, making her illness keep her locked into oppression by the confinement of her domestic lifestyle.

In her reality, she feels alone and trapped; in her fantasy, she can be the accomplice to set the woman in the wallpaper—herself—free. “I pulled and she shook. I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper” (217). Here, she is working together with the self that she has

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper," the main character, Jane encounters a mental illness that would take control of her entire life. The progression of Jane's mental illness is demonstrated through the environment and how her surroundings depict her mental state. The house Jane lives in is a physical representation of her mental state. As the story progresses Jane has completely become isolated from her family and the rest of society. Jane is a prisoner in her own home.

The pattern of the wallpaper starts becoming clearer to her. She says it resembles a woman “stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern”

When her focus eventually settles on the wallpaper in the bedroom and she states, "I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin" (Gilman 260). As the narrator resigns herself to her intellectual confinement, she begins to see more details in the wallpaper pattern. This can be seen as the slow shift from the connection to her family, friends and colleagues to her focus inward as she sinks deeper into depression. She describes that "—I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design" (Gilman 262). As she focuses inward, sinking deeper into her depression the figure in the wallpaper takes shape and she states that, "There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will" (Gilman 264). And she begins to describe the form of a woman behind the wallpaper pattern, "Sometimes I think there are a

She started by explaining the wallpaper as something nice to look at, just a nice yellow color, then later went on to say, “The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.” (Gilman 305) As time went by, and she had to stay locked in the room for longer periods of time, she started to become a little more insane, and she began to see patterns moving in the wallpaper. Growing worse she began to see other images, like a woman in the wallpaper. In one part of the story she goes to say, “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.”

I never saw a worse paper in my life.” (648) Her hate of the wallpaper seems comical at first, but when she starts describing the pattern it turns disturbing, “when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide- plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.” (648) She further fixates on the wallpaper as she is stuck in the bedroom during the day and her descriptions become more

She describes the wallpaper as revolting and “the color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (Gilman 356). She hates the wallpaper so much because she actually hates the reality that she will be confined in this room until her rest cure is finished. The woman’s disorder starts to worsen the longer she is confined in the room, she starts to see things in the wallpaper. She sees another woman trapped behind the wallpaper. She watches the woman in the wallpaper as “the front pattern does move… the woman behind shakes it… she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard” (Gilman 363).

     Through given belittling comments, often disguised as cute nick-names, John was able to settle any doubts, yet maintain his suppression over her. Such examples are “Bless her little heart! She shall be as sick as she pleases! And talk about it in the morning!” Unfortunately, because she was so depressed and vulnerable John was easily able to dominate and suppress her. Also, throughout the story John would commonly mistake her kindness for weakness and in coalition, abuse her trust.

The wallpaper is beginning to take on the role of controlling her life. As the days proceed on and she continues to sit in this isolated room, she begins to notice objects incorporated throughout the patterns. Every day the shapes become significantly clearer to her until one moment it appears to be a figure trapped within the walls (734). This aversion to the color completely shifts at this point toward hallucination. The wallpaper now has complete control of the narrator’s mind and sanity.