The yellowish color is affiliated with the weakness, and the powerlessness that she is feeling. The actual pattern of the wallpaper at first symbolizes the twists and winds of society and the difficulties of fitting in and following the rules. Eventually, once Jane studies the pattern and finds the order, she believes she understands it’s meaning. As the nights go on and she continues to study the paper, she finds that the pattern is like a prison, trapping everything inside it. She reflects her feelings of imprisonment by her husband, onto how she interprets the wallpaper.
At this point she starts seeing various things in the wallpaper, but she still dislikes it, however later on we can see how her madness progresses and becomes a serious issue. She starts talking about how the wallpaper smells. “It creeps all over the house… it gets into my hair…”(p.11) I find it hard to believe that a wallpaper can smell like this, and I would rather say that this smell is a smell created by her mind rather than reality. And when she says that it even got into her hair, the reason for that would be how she saw some funny marks on the wall, low down. “A streak that runs round the room…as if it had been rubbed over and over.”(p.11).
In The Yellow Wallpaper, a short story by Charlotte Gilman, the symbol of the yellow wallpaper itself portrays a role into the main characters spiral into madness. To the main character, Jane, the wallpaper is at first a nuisance, then an obsession, and finally salvation. Jane becomes overwhelmed from the confided space with the wallpaper and begins to spiral into a deeper depression than what she started with and eventually loses her mind. The material of the paper itself represents Jane's everyday life, the illogical pattern that comes about in it, reflects the absence of logic in her mind and the very colour of the paper depicts the illness that yellows her sight and imprisons her within an unpredictable life, these things all playing a role in Jane's insanity. The wallpaper is at first a great annoyance to Jane as she claims that it is confusing and contradicting.
In the novel, Zeena tells Ethan about her pain; "[Zeena] got [her] shooting pains so bad that [she went] over to Bettsbridge to spend the night…”(78). If Zeena’s sickness were only in her mind, to get attention, it would not be logical for her to leave to find help. However, the first thing Ethan thinks of when he hears of her pain is not his sympathy for her, but the financial burden the the trip to a new a doctor will cost him. Furthermore, when Ethan goes into their bedroom, the narrator states that Ethan found “[Zeena’s] mouth slightly open, her false teeth in a tumbler by the bed…” (88). While the reason is not known, it is not normal for a healthy middle-aged woman to lose her teeth, therefore it must have been her sickness.
The Yellow Wallpaper The final lines for “The Yellow Wallpaper” make me believe that the narrator has finally slipped into insanity. I think Jane is actually the narrator, and when she slips into insanity she feels that she has finally escaped from the torments of her own mind. The longer the narrator stays in the bedroom with the yellow wallpaper, the more she feels she is in prison, and the woman she sees imprisoned behind the wallpaper symbolizes her and how she feels. The narrator becomes desperate to free the woman behind the wallpaper before their rental is up, because she thinks that freeing the woman in the wallpaper will be freeing herself from her prison. At the end, the narrator briefly considers committing suicide with the rope
Were they trapped within their homes as if they were prisons? By asking herself these questions we see how great the effect of her being treated like a child was to her. She had to ability to think or do for herself, all she was allowed to do was sit there, her body was well but her mind and soul were dying. In the story, The Yellow Wallpaper, evidence of the subordination of women to a childlike state is clear in the lack of power, control over her own mind and body, and he inability to make her on decisions and be heard. The lack of choice in her treatment is what made is lose mental stability and caused her go crazy.
The Yellow Wallpaper By the end of the “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator lets her surroundings, the wallpaper, and her husband John, get the best of her. John treats the narrator as if she were a child and takes away her right to choose and decide how she feels; this eventually leads to her defeat. After being treated like a child and put in a room that is barred up, she develops problems which eventually lead to paranoia and insanity. Both paranoia and insanity eventually lead her to believe that she is the woman who has escaped from the yellow wallpaper. From the very beginning of the story, problems are brought up that hint toward the defeat of Jane.
For the author of A Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, surrounds this very mysterious character with the issue of a wallpaper that is consuming the characters life. Gilman describes the characters dementia without directness to an "insanity". Jane, the main character knows that she has a mental issue and uses this journal to describe how she slowly loses her sanity. The curtness of how she lost her way made the story a little creepier, and more mysterious. In a novel the author could describe her past life for chapters and chapters, but knowing her life for such a short period of time made the story
As her insanity gradually deepens, she is preoccupied with one woman behind the wallpaper and identifies completely with this woman, believing that she is also trapped within the bar-like pattern of the wallpaper. She feels an mysterious connection to the woman and shakes the pattern as she tries to break
Later on in the story the images start to become clearer she says “it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” (Gilman 614). Towards the end of the story she says, “sometimes I think there are a great many of women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast and her crawling shakes it all over” (Gilman 616). This could symbolize that at first when she sees just eyes in the wallpaper. She believes that people are watching her in the situation of not being able to be her own person and do what she wants to do instead of being told; then she realizes that she not the only woman in that situation, yet most of the time she feels alone and that no one is there to help her out. Gretchen Greene points out Gilman’s own life by stating this, “Specifically, Gilman and the narrator are trying to escape the function society has