She reflects her feelings of imprisonment by her husband, onto how she interprets the wallpaper. While she continues to find meaning in it, she becomes more and more insane. Eventually, Jane starts to feel as if the wallpaper is watching her. While she starts to decode it, she discovers a woman trapped in the bars of the pattern. The woman stuck in the wallpaper does circles and is sometimes able to crawl out through the window.
“And She is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern- it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads” (432) The narrator does not understand but the woman in the wall is herself. The narrator is trapped in the room while the wallpaper traps the woman in the wallpaper. The woman in the wallpaper is portrayed as trying to escape through the pattern but can’t because the pattern restricts her. The wallpaper like John is a confine in which neither woman can escape from.
But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” many delusions or actions the narrator does, suggest she is losing her mind. From her fabled beginning of being confined to the ominous room with bared windows, to her enormous excerpt of insanity in the concluding scene. In these few lines of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is consumed by her debilitating fear of being trapped inside the wallpaper, and eventually loses her mind over this constant obsession. From the passage the narrator shows that she has completely been consumed by her infatuation of the wallpaper, so much as to say “I wonder if they came out of that wall-paper as I did?” when the narrator is speaking in this line she sees, “so many of those creeping women,” or figures that she believed were birth from the wallpaper as she believes she was also.
Feminist Criticism of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the nameless protagonist is a woman who is completely isolated and has no say in anything that regards her own life. Her husband John does what he believes to be what’s best for her, but in fact, is the complete opposite. It is this sequestration, brought on to her by her own husband, which led to her insanity. John loves his wife, and she knows it. However, he is quite stubborn and the lack of communication in their relationship is very unhealthy.
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. “I don’t want to leave until I have it out…I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.” This is due to the woman spending increased amounts of time on her own in the confinement of her bedroom. Whilst nearing the verges of madness, her only mental stimulation is her focus on the wallpaper. “But I find I get pretty tired when I try.” The short and blunt structure of this
The Yellow Wallpaper is story from the mind and emotions of a woman suffering from a mental illness. The narrator (Jane) begins to think that another woman is sneaking around the room behind the wallpaper, trying to get out, so she locks herself in the room and begins to tear down pieces of the wallpaper to free the woman she thought was trapped. John unlocks the door with the key and finds Jane almost possessed by the woman behind the wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist background gives a feminist standpoint in The Yellow Wallpaper because the narrator’s husband, John acts superior to the narrator. One can pick out the connections between the author and the narrator in the story fairly easy if there is knowledge of Gilman’s life.
First of all, John handles everything to an extent but he doesn’t solve the problem at hand. He tends to run away from it. For example, when the narrator asks, “why the house had stood so long untenanted,” he just laughs at her and doesn’t even investigate about it, which proves that he just let it go and does nothing about it. And that is what he does throughout the whole story. Also he “scoffs openly at any talk.” This means that he doesn’t talk about his problems and he would prefer to keep things bottled up then to express how he is really feeling.
She goes as far as getting angry with the bed and tries biting the corner to make it budge. The narrator even has the thought of doing something crazy and jumping out of the window, but realizes that the bars won’t move. Plus the narrator states, “I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast
John is a physician and believes that his wife is only suffering from a “temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency” (70) and due to this condition she should obtain plenty of rest, air and exercise but absolutely no work. The narrator is a writer that is forbidden to write because her husband believes that any form of society or stimulus could cause her condition to deteriorate further. As the story continue you beginning to understand the relationship between the narrator and her husband John. John seems to be very controlling and throughout the story berates his wife, while treating her like a small child that needs caring for. Every attempt that is made by the narrator to express her concerns is met with opposition or disregard.
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.