Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

As the protagonist suffers from her “nervous condition”, the isolated environment causes her to only get worse. Being trapped in the bedroom with yellow wallpaper contributes her emotional distress to become overpowering. The inability to verbally express her feelings of loneliness causes her to write in a more creative way about her relationships with objects in the room, specifically the yellow wallpaper. She begins to write about the yellow wallpaper as if it is suppose to have some sort of significance, in which it does. In the beginning of the narrator’s isolation, her attention is focused on the details of the yellow wallpaper’s pattern that are “dull enough to confused the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study” (438). The wallpaper’s characteristics become hard to

As her madness develops, she shifts her own desire for escape from the limitations of her husband's expectations onto the figure behind the undulating bars of the wallpaper, the figure of a woman, "stooping down and creeping about" behind the pattern as she herself creeps behind her restricted life. The rescue of that woman becomes her one object, and the wallpaper becomes at once the symbol of her confinement and of her freedom (MacPike 5).

The yellow wallpaper is the most obvious symbol found in the story. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes how women were portrayed in the nineteenth century. In the story the narrator describes the wallpaper as "One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns, pronounced enough sin. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide - plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contraindications" (Gilman 545). The narrator basically feels that her life is dull and boring which can lead to her committing suicide. Later on in the story the wallpaper was described as “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream” (Gilman 548). The pattern in the wallpaper basically represents the narrator’s mindset. The narrator calls herself “hideous” and “unreliable.” Women during this time period were often view as “unreliable”

Jane is often irritated from the wallpaper in her room. The wallpaper above her bed is stripped off and this bothers her immensely. She claims, " I never saw a worse paper in my life"(4). In fact, she hates it with great passion by saying "no wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long"(4). She refers back to the children from her imagination, the children that were living in the so-called nursery before her. Towards the end of the story, Jane learns to hate the room as a result of spending so much of her time in there. She is really disturbed from the patterns of the wallpaper. Jane comments on the patterns, as "a constant irritant to a normal mind"(12) because she thinks that she has a normal mind. The color is "repellent," that is, "almost revolting." She says that "it is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide" (4).

Throughout the text, it is clear to see several disturbing symptoms of this woman throughout the writing. She shows signs of anxiety, depression, and paranoia as she becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in her room, believing that there are women trapped behind the patterns and that the wallpaper is alive in a way. She experiences hallucinations that get worse over time. “I get unreasonably angry sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive.”

The vivid descriptions in “The Yellow Wallpaper” help to bring the reader along in the narrators decent into a kind of psychosis. It starts mildly, with her describing the color of wallpaper as “repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 528). As more time passes she begins to see more things in the paper such as “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes start at you,” and for it have “so much expression in an inanimate thing” (Gilman 592). As the pattern and descriptions get more twisted, we get visual clues of the madness that is slowly consuming the narrator. The color of the paper even begins to become a physical thing she can smell descried as, “creep[ing] all over the house...sulking...hiding...lying in wait for me…It gets into my hair” (Gilman 534). In the end we get a graphic visual representation of her full psychosis

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper” we are introduced to a woman who enjoys writing. Gilman does not give the reader the name of the women who narrates the story through her stream of consciousness. She shares that she has a nervous depression condition. John, the narrator’s husband feels it is “a slight hysterical tendency” (266). She has been treated for some nervous habits that she feels are legitimately causing harm to her way of life. However she feels her husband, a physician, and her doctor believe that she is embellishing her condition. The woman shares with the reader early in the story that she is defensive of how others around her perceive her emotional state. This causes a small abrasion of animosity that

In the story, the narrator feels as though the wallpaper symbolizes her own self, her feelings of inadequacy, shortcomings and anxiety. Just like the peculiar pattern of the wallpaper, she feels that her life mimics the endless ups and downs of the lines and

She is diagnosed with this illness and shows her symptoms throughout the story. For example, the way she obsesses over the wallpaper is not in any way normal, “…when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (239), since her mind has nothing else in the world to focus on, she is driven to an obsession with the wallpaper. Here she is still in her normal mind but her brain soon fixates on the wallpaper to an unhealthy degree to where she believes there is a woman inside the

When her focus eventually settles on the wallpaper in the bedroom and she states, "I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin" (Gilman 260). As the narrator resigns herself to her intellectual confinement, she begins to see more details in the wallpaper pattern. This can be seen as the slow shift from the connection to her family, friends and colleagues to her focus inward as she sinks deeper into depression. She describes that "—I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design" (Gilman 262). As she focuses inward, sinking deeper into her depression the figure in the wallpaper takes shape and she states that, "There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will" (Gilman 264). And she begins to describe the form of a woman behind the wallpaper pattern, "Sometimes I think there are a

The color is hideous enough, but the pattern is torturing. ”(123) The word ‘torturing’, along with the vivid visual imagery of the wallpaper, which represents her struggle during this period of

She makes the last section a little easier to dissect, because of the lack of barriers that were present in the first section. The elements that made her writings so powerful and personal, are no longer prevalent. The lack of her usage of her literary forms and languages subject her to be in a “one in all”

An example of this is in the beginning of the story when she states “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes.” (Perkins-Gilman, 1899). This shows that the narrator does not know why she feels or thinks the way she does sometimes. This may indicate to the reader that she is not the most reliable person. The reader can know this also by seeing how her feelings towards things change so rapidly. First, she hates the yellow wallpaper. She says “The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother- they must have had perseverance as well as hatred,” “But I don’t mind it a bit- only the paper.” (Perkins-Gilman, 1899). She shows complete opposition but as time goes by, it changes. Later on, she states, “I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper, perhaps because of the wallpaper.” (Perkins-Gilman, 1899). According to the narrator, she is starting to feel better due to the wallpaper and she is fascinated by finding new things about the patterns she likes about the

The wallpaper is beginning to take on the role of controlling her life. As the days proceed on and she continues to sit in this isolated room, she begins to notice objects incorporated throughout the patterns. Every day the shapes become significantly clearer to her until one moment it appears to be a figure trapped within the walls (734). This aversion to the color completely shifts at this point toward hallucination. The wallpaper now has complete control of the narrator’s mind and sanity.