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Commentary on Charlotte Perkin Gilman´s The Yellow Room Essay

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Trapped in the upstairs of an old mansion with barred windows and disturbing yellow colored wallpaper, the main character is ordered by her husband, a physician, to stay in bed and isolate her mind from any outside wandering thoughts. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, describes the digression of the narrator’s mental state as she suffers from a form of depression. As the story progresses, the hatred she gains for the wallpaper amplifies and her thoughts begin to alter her perception of the room around her. The wallpaper serves as a symbol that mimics the narrator’s trapped and suffering mental state while she slips away from sanity reinforcing the argument that something as simple as wallpaper can completely …show more content…

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. The seclusion endured by the narrator causes a dramatic change in her mental state. Her surroundings are now coming alive within the walls around her. “I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (736). Initially, the figure witnessed around the walls was merely just the shadow projected from the narrator creeping around the paper. Now this shadow is taking on not just any life form but ironically the form of a woman. Just like the narrator is trapped within the barred windows of the mansion, the woman is trapped within the patterns of the paper. This parallel view is transforming the narrator’s identity within the walls of the paper. However, this obsession begins to heighten. She begins to see the woman through every window in the bedroom. She appears to be creeping not only around the walls but now outside in the garden and along the

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