preview

Yellow Wallpaper Barriers

Decent Essays

Examine the symbolic significance of barriers in The Yellow Wallpaper. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story based on the mental deterioration of a young woman, trapped by the controlling persona of her antagonist husband who believes it is in her best interests to be cured by resting after the birth of their child. The narrator speaks through many journal entries to describe the room and the wallpaper with its “yellow smell” and “breakneck pattern” this suggests that there are other, darker twists that contribute adding a gothic, mysterious feel. With nothing other than the wallpaper patterns and colour and the barred windows, the patterns become increasingly intriguing to the narrator and therefore, the audience; Gilman skillfully uses this …show more content…

It becomes part of the characters daily routine to examine the wallpaper, noticing things she perhaps has not noticed before “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down”, gaining the attention of the reader with language like this “There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me..” encouraging them to discover the secret of the story. Gilman then goes on to explain how the narrator starts see things behind the wallpaper “The faint figure behind seems to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” again highlighting the sense of imprisonment. The bars that appear in the wallpaper continue to show a connection between the narrator and the figure trapped behind the pattern – earlier in the story, the character notices the barred windows of the nursery were possibly there to protect the children from falling out of the windows, yet the woman behind the wallpaper is also imprisoned behind bars revealing that the narrator is as well supposed to be imprisoned in the same way. This then conjures up the idea that perhaps the bars did not even belong to the nursery, but were installed particularly for the narrator’s visit therefore giving the explanation as to why her husband won’t allow her to change

Get Access