The narrator’s obsession with the wallpaper that surrounds her bedroom begins merely as intrigue and climaxes to a point where reality and what she imagines within the wallpaper becomes blurred. This climax represents her journey from rationality to insanity as the wallpaper becomes more twisted and alive around her. This wallpaper ultimately represents the oppression of her mind that is being caused by her post partum depression, as well as her husband’s ineffective healing methods. At first she finds the wallpaper being “one of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 988). This could be a representation of the beginning of her depression which was initially just an annoyance to her which she does not fully understand.
To the narrator, the wallpaper is a nuisance and the pattern makes no sense to her. The ugly color and the formless pattern is revolting to her. She describes it by saying, “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.” Little does she
The narrator describes the wallpaper as such, “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing” (351). The yellow wallpaper itself signifies women being suppressed by the men in their lives and the inability to break their dominance. She also eventually sees a figure behind the wallpaper in the form of a creeping woman. The woman actually portrays the narrator herself. After staring at the wallpaper long enough, she finds that the pattern moves because of the woman behind it trying to get out.
At any rate, the fact that he is not with her has driven her to insanity and forced her to keep him alive in her mind to escape the pain of unfulfilled desire. This poem is a villanelle which uses a number of metaphors, rhythms, and vivid imagery to express deep emotion, depression and a sense of hopelessness. The title could be taken literally to mean madness as in anger or it could be taken figuratively to mean madness as in obsession. The words of the poem suggest madness as in insanity. The author uses alliteration in only two lines of the poem.
Especially when she reminisces in the final stanza about the time she was young and beautiful, illustrating her complete lack of confidence. Nevertheless, she is still presented as a foul character who threatens the reader, with the line ‘Be terrified’. The poem also ends with the line ‘Look at me now’ which has a double entendre (double meaning). It could be read as a cry of despair or, as a threat – if you did look at Medusa you would die! This leaves the reader feeling conflicting emotions for the character, probably similar to how Medusa herself feels in the poem.
Gilman uses symbols to explain the how women are trapped in domestic life. The symbol that Gilman uses the yellow wallpaper in the room she is confined in. At first, the wallpaper is just awful as she says “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow.” She is disgusted by it and understands why children, who have been in this room, would want to tear it down. Then, the wallpaper becomes a point of curiosity as she wants to discover the organization of the pattern. She said, “...and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion,” as if the wallpaper was made with symmetry in mind.
Furthermore, orphans were also often treated with disdain and distrust, due to their reputation as “criminally prone” individuals, and were frequent targets of classic “Victorian contradictions”, that characterized the social conventions of Victorian society. Bessie repeatedly refers to Jane as ‘poor orphan child’ in her hymn early on at Gateshead. The development of Jane’s character is central to the novel. She learns to control her passions, as her integrity is put to the test when she faces so much injustice: ‘why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?’. The bildungs roman of the protagonist, contrasts the attitudes of the mature Jane to her younger self initially shouting: ‘unjust, unjust’, nonetheless coming of age made her reactions and opinions more subtle, ‘what consternation of a soul was mine that dreary afternoon’.
The wallpaper is used characterically to reflect the marriage the narrator finds herself ambushed inside. At the start of the short story, the wallpaper is merely seen as an aberrant bore, but as the narrative progresses, the wallpaper becomes much more baleful and frightening. As a site of symbolism, the symbol has three functions in Charlotte Perkins Gilman s ’, “The Yellow Wallpaper”: it reveals the wallpaper including the imagery, imprisonment and symbolism. The imagery of the wallpaper in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” transitions as the short story is developed in order to emulate the increasing realization of the monopoly the narrator’s marriage has upon herself. The very first descriptions illustrate her initial animus by describing it as “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Perkins 41-42).
Both characters collide with each other over influence of Stella, Blanche’s sister. Eventually, however, Stanley is the victor, raping Blanche and sending her into a completely delusional state. To begin with we can see the way in which the playwright uses the characterisation of Blanche to establish the theme of appearances versus reality in the way in which she struggles to accept the harsh reality of her surroundings. When Blanch first arrives she is shocked by her surroundings: ‘Her expression is one of shocked disbelief. Her appearance is incongruous to this setting.’ When Blanche first is introduced to Stella’s home she is shocked and this establishes Blanche’s strong sense of class, and also that Blanche will be an outsider in this particular setting, never realizing just how harsh it is.
The social norms during this period were for the women to do as their told, to be seen and not heard from. In “The yellow wall paper” this reader’s perspective is she is very depressed and looking for a way out of her locked room. Miss Brill is also very depressed to the point where she doesn’t know how to associate with people evidence is in the way she is very nosey, lonely, and bored. In “The yellow wall paper” it almost seems as if she has become part of the imaginary characters in the wall paper dying to get out a feeling of not being lonely within. For her becoming part of the wall paper is her way of avoiding the feelings of abandonment.