The Yellow-Wallpaper Analysis

Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded.

First, the writings of her journal show that the narrator is not convinced with her “rest cure” treatment. Her writings depict that her husband, John, continuously belittles her condition and concerns while she knows that her illness is real and more severe than he

At first, the protagonist talks about the house that she and her husband were to stay at for a short while. She does not hesitate to describe what her first impressions were on the house because she states that it was rather strange building that had a haunted effect from looking at it. Not only this, but she also introduces her husband and physician, John. John is described as a person with “no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures” (Gilman 364). Not only is the narrator consciously observant of her circumstances, but she is able to think for herself and formulate logical claims. For example, Gilman writes about how the narrator is frequently seen as a schizophrenic, possessed, and absolutely insane individual whose mind only continues to deteriorate rather than an individual who understands the situation and can conscientiously create questions and thoughts about what she is experiencing. Greg Johnson writes, “Her experience should finally be viewed not as a catastrophe but as a terrifying, necessary stage in her

Analysis: The above quotations clearly display the similarity between John and the Narrator’s relationship to that of a father and a daughter. John controls the majority of the Narrator’s behavior to the point she feels an overwhelming sense of guilt for her incapacity as John’s wife. The Narrator is restricted in her actions and is therefore unable to fulfil her wifely duties, forcing her to consider herself as a burden. When is reality, John treats the Narrator as his daughter and does not permit her to complete her duty. For instance, the Narrator dislikes the yellow wallpaper and wishes to have it removed; however, John does not allow her to do so and acts as if it would feed into a child’s stubbornness. His continued belief in his superiority disregards the Narrator as is wife and instead infantilizes her. He believes her identity exists only through him, which merely encourages his paternalistic

In Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” focuses on a woman who feels trapped in her own home due to male oppression. The story itself represents how patriarchal society affects one woman’s struggle to deal with both mental and emotional confinement. Mental and emotional confinement can play games with how a person falls into depression or insanity due to male dominance. “The Yellow Wallpaper” argues how male dominance can affect a woman’s mindset to feel a mental, emotional, and “solitary” confinement within her new home.

John doesn’t respect his wife sickness. John is just caring for himself instead of wife: "'It is apparent that John's self-reported concern for Jane's welfare is not much more than a selfish desire to maintain the order/order of own life'"(Suess). John doesn't really care about his wife because if he really did care for his wife, he could've gotten her the help that she needs. "In the Yellow Wallpaper" John laughs at his wife; when she talks to him about her feelings. Jane doesn't feel comfortable inside the house:"'I thought it was good time to talk so, I told home that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me'"(Gilman 93). The narrator doesn't want to be in creepy house. Her husband seem not care about how feels about the house.

In Gilman’s story The Yellow Wall-paper, we have a narrator, who is nameless who is telling us how she is brought to a house by her husband John, who is a doctor because he is trying to treat her insanity and depression. John leaves his wife in the house all day, in this room with the yellow wall-paper; he never lets her go outside. The narrator in her journal is writing down what the house is like, and what the room is like and she describes the room as having a bad smell to it, almost like a yellow smell. The narrator describes to us how she sees a woman in the yellow wall paper moving around and the narrator says, When the narrator says this it makes you really wonder if she is going insane because how can there be a person trapped inside

The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman wasn’t as popular at the time it was written in January 1892. It wasn’t until nearly a century later that it was regarded for what it truly was: a gothic classic in feminist literature. Some of the first readers of Gilman’s short story indulged in it simply for the creepiness and wonder of the story. These readers didn’t entirely realize that “ The Yellow Wallpaper” also gives the reader an inside look at how women were treated and thought of during this time period as well as giving the reader a glimpse into how women who had fallen mentally ill were treated and taken care of. The way that “The Yellow Wallpaper” reads closely resembles a diary for our narrator. There are many different

“The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was written during a time of great change for women in 1892. She narrates her own life. A young, upper middle class woman, newly married and a mother, as she loses touch with the outer world. The main character is always left alone in the story.

Jane is the name of the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Jane is on the “rest cure” that was assigned by her husband and Doctor. Jane is confined in a room for the summer until she gets better. The nursery room has many different elements that makes it sound like a prison, but the main one that Jane talks about the most is the yellow wallpaper. Jane’s opinion changes through out the book on this wallpaper.

I now pronounce you husband and wife! This will then inevitably be followed by the phrase, “…and they lived happily ever after!” The truth is, everyone wants to know how a story begins, what happens throughout, and if final closure is made. But, what if only a few details are described in their entirety and the rest are left for a reader to guess? Life is full of contributing struggles and, endless tests of faith, but, in the end, a resolution always becomes clear enough for a conclusion.

At first, she disliked it, but as she kept staring at it she began to see a woman trapped inside. In some other occasions she sees the woman creeping outside. “It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight” (318). At this point the reader begins to wonder if perhaps the narrator is telling the truth or it’s just a product of the narrator’s imagination. The women that creeps out during the day might symbolize the narrators daily life, when her husband is not at home she can escape and wonder around the house. However, when the husband is at home and she tries to talk to him she might feel trapped just like the women in the wallpaper. The yellow wallpaper was a clear symbol of her repression and perhaps she sees reflected her own life in it. It can also be interpreted in different ways since it is clear that at this point she has become an unreliable source. The idea of a woman trapped in wallpaper was a clear sign that there was something wrong with the narrator and that perhaps she was using this to try to express her

She does what John says so that he does not suspect anything of what she is doing. She does get caught a couple of times but she is able to play it off so that John does not get a strange feeling about her. John makes her take pills to control her condition and limits her human interaction to only two people. She evidently lands in a judgeful atmosphere and therefore keeps everything to herself, including the her journal that is the story. Being so trapped, so limited, she needed something to do, and that was examining the wallpaper. So much thought, so much time with it made her over think everything about it. She was obsessed with it. She could not do anything else and consequently, she went crazy over the wall. Over the “woman trapped in it” and what way it flowed in. She went completely nuts over it and led to the events in the end of the story. She was tied around rope and crawling around her room. Before that, she even contemplated suicide but did not because the bars around her window were too strong to move. “I am getting angry enough to do something desperate” she stated because she could not find out what way the pattern flowed on the wall. Even before that she bit off a piece of her bed because it would not move and hurt herself because she could not reach a part of the wallpaper to rip off. These events plus more are what led to the end consequence. Of

Robbie Batson explores how “it is unusual to say the least to open a book and the first line is about the main character waking up as a large insect. “Quite relatable to Gilman’s story-based upon her own experience- which is a “rest cure” to mental illnesses according to the New England Magazine. Both texts explore absurdity; a philosophy based on the belief that the universe is irrational and meaningless, including that the search for order brings the individual into conflict with the universe. Absurd is the recurring theme along with isolation, being a significant purpose of the stories portraying the characters of Gregor Samsa and Jane as being locked away from the outside world making them feel diverse to the normalcy in society.

Mental health is an important aspect of health, which was once treated by either reducing the patient’s burden or preventing him or her from work entirely to prevent any strain, fearing it may worsen the patient’s condition. The story, “The Yellow Wall-paper,” according to a physician who read it wrote it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen and even asked the author how she able to depict it so accurately. It turns out that the author was also prescribed a treatment similar the story for her condition (“Why I Wrote”). Over the course of the story, the author depicts the protagonist’s condition progress substantially.She goes from experiencing incipient insanity to staying immersed in her full-fledged hallucination. The protagonist is a woman who simply needed something to work on and required some flexibility from the people around her. She is shown to have an evident change in mental state after all her pleas were turned down by her husband, John. She had progressed to a state of madness, creeping over her husband who fell unconscious after seeing his wife in such a state and had not at any point realized how bad his wife’s condition was (“The Yellow Wallpaper” 656