Deconstructive Analysis: The Yellow Wall Paper

Her loving husband, John, never takes her illness seriously. The reader has a front row seat of the narrator’s insanity voluminously growing. He has shown great patience with the recovery of his wife’s condition. However, the narrator is clear to the reader that she cannot be her true self with him. In the narrator’s eyes she feels he is completely oblivious to how she feels and could never understand her. If she did tell him that the yellow wallpaper vexed her as it does he would insist that she leave. She could not have this.

She has been trained to trust in her husband blindly and sees no other way. He calls her “little girl” (352) and “little goose” (349) and states “She will be as sick as she pleases!” (352) whenever she tries to express her issues. Instead of fighting for what she thinks will make her better she accepts it and keeps pushing her feelings aside, while he treats her like a child. We get an instant feel for her problem in the first page when she says, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that” (pg 346). A woman shouldn’t expect her husband to laugh at her concerns. Even after briefly writing about her condition she remembers her husband telling her the very worst thing she can do is think about it and follows his instructions. This is when she begins to focus on the house instead of her problems and the obsession with the wallpaper starts. She has nothing else to think about alone in the home; they don’t even allow her to write, which she has to do in secret.

In the second part of the sentence, it seems as though the woman doesn't want to believe what her husband is telling her thus setting the stage for her rebellion. All her husband wants her to do is rest and sleep: he even suppresses her creative talent by not allowing her to write. She is in constant fear of being caught by her husband; "I must put this away, -he hates to have me write a word." It seems as though John is being more of a father than a husband and because of this, she feels that she should be a "good girl" and appreciate what he is doing for her even though she knows that his diagnosis is killing her. "He takes all care from me, and I feel so basely ungrateful not to value it more...He took me in his arms and called me blessed little goose..." This is a clear indication of someone trying to run another person's life. By him not allowing her to write he is causing her depression to worsen. If she had been "allowed" to come and go as she pleased, her depression may have lifted: "I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve, the press of ideas and rest me." Her husband is suppressing the one major outlet that will help her get better in her seclusion, "writing." By absolutely forbidding her to work until she is well again he is imprisoning her and causing her depression. John has made her a prisoner not only in their home but also in

The narrator feels very imprisoned in the house and tries to find a way to escape it. During the narrator’s rest cure treatment, she has attached herself to the wallpaper: She would “lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately”(260-261). This was the narrator’s way of escaping the oppression she was in. The wallpaper often seemed confusing to her, but she was determined to figure it out: “I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself”(301-302), everytime John takes of her illness lightly, her interest in the wallpaper grows. This is a direct reflection of her loneliness and isolation from her treatment. The speaker’s rest cure treatment directed her not to do any activities that would make her think intellectually or imaginatively, so she is forced to stay isolated from people, books, and chores. However, as her loneliness grows intensely, she finds relief in writing, something she was told not to do. The narrator would often have to hide the fact that she writes when nobody's around, and when someone comes while she is writing she records “I must not let [them] find me writing”(141-142). The oppression the narrator has been put through has made her stronger mentally, she starts to become more and more possessive of the wallpaper and tries

Analysis: The above quotations clearly display the similarity between John and the Narrator’s relationship to that of a father and a daughter. John controls the majority of the Narrator’s behavior to the point she feels an overwhelming sense of guilt for her incapacity as John’s wife. The Narrator is restricted in her actions and is therefore unable to fulfil her wifely duties, forcing her to consider herself as a burden. When is reality, John treats the Narrator as his daughter and does not permit her to complete her duty. For instance, the Narrator dislikes the yellow wallpaper and wishes to have it removed; however, John does not allow her to do so and acts as if it would feed into a child’s stubbornness. His continued belief in his superiority disregards the Narrator as is wife and instead infantilizes her. He believes her identity exists only through him, which merely encourages his paternalistic

Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, which is also her doctor, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness. Everyday she keeps looking at the torn yellow wallpaper. While there, she is forbidden to write in her journal, as it indulges her imagination, which is not in accordance with her husband's wishes. Despite this, the narrator makes entries in the journal whenever she has the opportunity. Through these entries we learn of her obsession with the wallpaper in her bedroom. She is enthralled with it and studies the paper for hours. She thinks she sees a woman trapped behind the pattern in the paper. The story reaches its climax when her husband must force his way into the bedroom, only to find that his wife has pulled the paper off the wall and is crawling around the perimeter of the room.

John is an antagonist of the story. He feels he is doing his wife good; by locking her away in this mansion. However, the reader soon realizes, this treatment is only worsening her mental state. He is never home with her; he always has patients to see in town, leaving her locked in this house; alone with her thoughts. He ensures that she gets rest and fresh air to get well. To him, it may seem as though he is doing his wife good; by locking her away in this mansion. However, this seclusion she experiences causes serious damage to her mental state. Her husband has control over her that women

Depression, Loneliness, and confusion engulfed the narrator of the wallpaper, confinement broke her. During the time of Charlotte Gilman, Postpartum depression was said to be “…temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency”(Gilman). With her illness, she was unable to perform her role as a mother nurturing her child or as wife tending to her husband needs, rendering her useless. Set in these roles, women at the time were seen as domestic and unable perform any other task. The yellow wallpaper clearly evinces the oppression by her husband, “I am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again… Personally, I disagree with [his] ideas . . .”, although she disagrees with the treatment, she has no say whatsoever when it comes to the matter of her illness, John does what he thinks is right for her.(Gilman) John decided that the best cure was the “rest cure”, meaning no brain stimulating activities while lying in a

The mood of the story shifted from nervous, anxious, hesitant even, to tense and secretive, and shifts again to paranoid and determination. Her anxiousness is evident whenever she talks to John. She always seems to think for lengthy time when attempting to express her concerns about her condition to him. The mood shift from anxious to secretive is clear when she writes “I had no intention of telling him it was BECAUSE of the wall-paper.” (9). She wants no one to figure out the affect the wallpaper has on her and she wants to be the only one to figure out its pattern. The final mood shift to determination is obvious when she writes “But I am here, and no person must touch this paper but me – not ALIVE!” (11). She is steadfast in attempting to free the woman from the wallpaper. She even goes as far as to lock herself in the room to make sure that she is not interrupted. The major conflicts of this story are the narrator versus John over the nature of her illness and its treatment and the narrator’s internal struggle to express herself and claim independence. During the entire story her and John’s views about her treatment conflict with each other, especially when it comes to her writing. He even makes her stay in the room upstairs instead of in a prettier room downstairs that she would prefer. She often keeps her views to herself or writes them down in

John, the narrator’s controlling, but loving, husband represents the atypical man of the time. He wants his wife to get better and to be able to fill the role of the perfect wife that society expected from her. John, being a doctor, did not quite believe that her mental illness was out of her control and insisted on

The recurring conflict in the short story, leading to the narrator losing her insanity, can be seen in the beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, with the narrator’s point of view illustrating her restricted, mundane life and the misunderstanding of her condition that causes her mental health to deteriorate. The narrator clearly depicts the heavy constraints limiting her from expressing herself through her very first diary entry, in which she says “John is a physician, and perhaps-- (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)--perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? Personally, I disagree with

Their differences created the conflicts between them. John, as a physician, is very practical and rationalistic. He disregards the existence of anything that cannot be seen or felt and therefore does not believe that his wife was ill even though through reading her thoughts and emotions it was clear that she was suffering severely. The woman on the other hand, is very imaginative and sensitive. John believes that all his wife needs is rest and therefore her treatment is that she does no work and especially no writing. He felt that her condition would be made worst if she does any form of work or writing. The woman strongly disagrees with John on the type of treatment that he has suggested. She thinks that having daily activities, freedom, and interesting work would help her condition and so she starts to create secret journal in an attempt to alleviate her mind and to prevent her illness from getting the best of her. John continuously suppresses her thoughts, feelings and concerns about her illness which portrays him in a sense as a “villain”. He does not provide her with the space or opportunity to try other alternatives other than the “rest cure” so that she might overcome her illness. The woman wants to write about her feelings and her conditions but she is not allowed and so she has to struggle to hide her writings from John and his sister. The fact that she cannot freely write and openly express her feelings to John strains her and drains

As the story begins, the narrator’s relationship with John is already erupting. She does not agree that extensive rest is the best thing for her and feels that “congenial work, with excitement and change,” would be more suitable for her needs. However, she does feel that he knows best and seems consciously guilty of overlooking it. She informs the reader that “I have a scheduled prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more” (Gilman 239). These conflicting emotions cause the narrator to have stress. There are times when she wishes she could write in her journal freely, but she knows that John would disapprove and condemn her for it. Writing is her way of expressing feelings and thoughts, but keeps it hidden from John which is tiring. As

Prior to deconstruction, new critics, reader-response theorists, structuralists —regardless of the title they chose—subscribed to the theory that all texts are defined within themselves with minimal extratextual consideration. In the 1960s, a paradigmatic shift occurred in the literary world when deconstruction—which questioned the previously set rules—increased in popularity (Bressler 95). With the advent of this post structuralist theory, all the previously subscribed-to theories were challenged, thereby instituting a new set of beliefs for guiding and understanding humanity. This new set of beliefs incorporated the idea that there is more than one correct meaning to a work of literature, poetry, or art. It also applied the notion that outside help, reference material and personal data, could be used to find a meaning to any work. The terms poststructuralism and postmodernism are used synonymously with deconstruction, denoting that both take place after structuralism and modernism (Bressler 95).

What is literary deconstructionism? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary deconstructionism is the “literary analysis that questions the fundamental conceptual distinctions, or “oppositions”, in Western philosophy through a close examination of the language and logic of philosophical and literary texts”. In other words it means that the reader makes the text what they want it to be, they cannot assume that the writer is implying anything by the words he has written; the text can have a different meaning to each person that reads it. Deconstructionism has been closely related to the postmodernism era as they both tend to resist definition or classification. According to Clark Morrow in the July 2007 The Vocabula Review, most people consider the theory that “words are very indistinct tokens of meaning; and can yield any number of meanings” as deconstructionism, while others call it postmodernism; as stated previously these two literary eras’ are closely linked. Deconstructionism theory states that can be no misinterpretation of what you read, the writer may intend to have one meaning of the text but each person that reads it can all take away different meanings from it.