“I never saw a worse paper in my life.” As the narrative develops, her later feelings start to contradict her initial emotions and her behaviour becomes more irrational. “...It is like the colour of the paper! A yellow smell.” The suggestion of the wallpaper having a smell indicates a lingering odour which is perhaps metaphoric of the woman having the wallpaper consistently on her mind. She has become so entirely absorbed by the wallpaper that she is now letting it dictate her senses. As the story develops the woman’s descent into madness can start to be seen more clearly as she reveals her obsessive and protective nature over the wallpaper.
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.
Tracey Holloway English Literature 2328 Professor Solak October 5, 2013 Who is That Woman inside the Wallpaper? Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” takes place in the late 1890’s. Her protagonist appears to be suffering from postpartum depression and slowly losing her mind while in the home she has been sent to for treatment. Yet upon further investigation into the character of our nameless narrator, the reader learns that the story is essentially focused on her struggle to maintain her own identity and sanity within the limitations of her setting. The central character’s analysis of a fictional woman trapped behind the bars of the horrid yellow wallpaper that encased the room she was confined to, severed her identity as she suppressed the anxieties of her experiences and ultimately led to the demise of the boundaries between herself and the imagined woman.
Response to The Yellow Wallpaper Imagine yourself being locked in a room alone, scared, and mistreated. Imagine that room not being a part of your own home. Imagine having all of your friends and family members plotting against you. These are the emotions the narrator felt in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s literary masterpiece, The Yellow Wallpaper. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story about a woman who is suffering from what is modernly known as post partrum depression.
After the original release of “The Yellow Wallpaper” in The New England Magazine in 1891, her intent and purpose for writing this story was called into question. Several physicians protested it and claimed that it would drive people mad just from reading it. Gilman set out to explain her reasoning by describing her own experience with a doctor during her treatment for a nervous disorder. The doctor told her to life a domestic life in which she had some sort of mental stimulation two hours a day but “to never touch pen, brush or pencil ever again.” (Qtd. In Gilman.
Examine how Charlotte Perkins Gilman challenges attitudes towards the role of women in society through her use of form, structure and language in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman challenges attitudes towards the role of women in society through her use of form, structure and language in numerous ways. The story is a fictionalized autobiographical account that illustrates the emotional and intellectual deterioration of the female narrator who is a wife as well as a mother. The woman, who seemingly is suffering from post-partum depression, searches for some sort of peace in her male dominated world. She is given a “cure” from her husband (a doctor) that requires strict bed rest and an enforced lack of any form of metal stimulation. As a result of her husbands control, the woman develops and obsessive attachment to the wallpaper which masks the walls of her bedroom.
The Significance of Voice in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator’s dynamic voice exemplifies the her struggle with insanity as she becomes infatuated with the wallpaper in the attic room where she holds herself prisoner. With instruction of her physician and approval from her husband, the narrator is to only rest while staying in the summerhouse recovering from “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 2). As the story plays out, the narrator begins to lose touch with reality and we witness her collapse from beginning to end through her own storytelling. From the start, the narrator confesses to not liking the attic room where she is staying at all and immediately explains that the “windows are barred”, “there are rings and things in the walls”, and that the wallpaper is “stripped off in great patches all around the head of my bead” (Gilman 4). At this point, the narrator appears normal and healthy, as anyone would be aware and curious of his or her surroundings in a new environment.
Zoë Wickham May 5th 2008 6th Period The Woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist writer and in her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” she creates a women going crazy because of her husband’s firm hold on her. The woman trapped in the wallpaper is a symbol of how women are trapped by men. Written in first person, this short story contains a series of entries the woman writes in secret. The husband controls every move his wife takes, every hour planned with the pills she needs. Once the woman character in this short story develops her own sense of control apart from her husband she can plan her flight to freedom.
In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and Trifles by Susan Glaspell, the audience can further understand how terrible life for women was. After reading both texts it is simple to compare the lives, the relationship with their husbands, and the society both women lived in. These two women live similar lives mentally and emotionally. Women lived very differently before they had equal rights. There was a limit to what they could do or own.
The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Paved the Way for Later Generations Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a partial autobiography. Appropriately, this short story is about a mentally disturbed woman and her husband's attempts to help her get well. He does so by convincing her that solitude and constant bed rest is the best way to cure her problem. Atrocious yellow wallpaper covers this room and it aids in her insanity. The woman is writing the story to express her insane thoughts against her husband's will.