Essay On Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

After securing herself in the room the narrator says, “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard”! She has began to believe that the women behind the wallpaper is herself and that she must return to her rightful place come night fall, proving that she has gone completely mad. The character’s illness develops form her paranoia and curiosity about the ‘trapped women’ within the wallpaper to

This gothic horror tale of nineteenth century fiction, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892; during a time that women writers were starting to come out and write about key issues in their treatment. She craftily sets up or spins the story with a setting of isolation and a character who feels trapped, by a husband who chooses not to know her; yet does not listen to her and keeps her trapped on an island, all in her best interest. The tone is filled with desperation, sarcasm, anger, and shows that though she is mentally unstable there is intelligence behind her instability that is kept unseen. The main symbol is the wallpaper which is a constant bane to her.

The Woman suffers from a severe psychotic illness, most evident by her peculiar obsession with the harshly bright yellow, flamboyant wallpaper in her room. As she's mostly alone in her room with her thoughts and delusions, she begins to scrutinize the wallpaper, as if it's keeping a secret from her. This holds truth, at least to herself: “There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.” (The Yellow Wallpaper). Her illness continues to worsen throughout the short story, until all her delusions revolve around it, and she grows defensive of it, because in her mind, only she can discover the secret.

The relationship between the narrator and the woman lurking in the wallpaper is the means of obsession. In a way the narrator could been seen to have symptoms of postpartum depression or even postpartum psychosis. As she imagines the color of the wall spot change into colors and smells and even more at night. The narrator clearly has an dominating husband that him as a physician should be trusted at all times. The mentioning of her trying to leave the home was a warning sign that was taken too lightly.

Furthermore it becomes increasingly difficult for the reader to discern what the truth actually is because as the story progresses it becomes apparent that the narrator is an unreliable one. Throughout the story one of the biggest causes for the woman’s frustration and unease is the yellow wallpaper in her room. She becomes obsessed with the wallpaper and slowly allows it to drive her closer to insanity because of other people’s reluctance to acknowledge her opinions and mental illness. At the beginning the young woman simply harbours a strong dislike for the wallpaper as shown by her portrayal of it when she first sees it. The young woman describes it as being “repellant, almost revolting”(649) and mentions that she “never saw a worse paper in [her] life” (648). However, after a while, the young woman begins to refer to the wallpaper as almost a living, breathing entity and allows it to consume her thoughts without ever letting her husband know what is happening. This disturbing behaviour is evident once she begins to see shapes and eyes moving about inside the paper “up and down and sideways” (650) and feels as though she cannot escape because “those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere” (650). Finally it all becomes too much for the woman to handle and she begins to experience full fledged hallucinations. “The front pattern

She begins hallucinating more vividly and becomes trapped in her fantasy, failing to return to her normal self and what was once a behavioral crisis had become a full psychiatric ailment. “I don’t like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of the wallpaper as I did?” (Page 107) is evidence of her altered mentality; it also shows her symbolism of the creeping women. From a timely depression to a whole new psychiatric dilemma, the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” changed rapidly with a sudden downfall at the end;

The woman has a bad vibe about the house they’re renting. The wallpaper symbolizes how she’s feeling trapped by her husband because he’s controlling. Against her will, the woman must sleep in a separate room from her husband. The woman feels trapped by her husband because she not allowed thinking freely. John, who is a physician, disapproves of her writing her thoughts in a journal because he thinks it will make her worse.

“I don 't like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?” the woman behind the pattern was an image of herself. She has been the one “stooping and creeping.” The Yellow Wallpaper was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In the story, three characters are introduced, Jane (the narrator), John, and Jennie. The Yellow Wallpaper is an ironic story that takes us inside the mind and emotions of a woman suffering a slow mental breakdown. The narrator begins to think that another woman is creeping around the room behind the wallpaper, attempting to "break free", so she locks herself in the room and begins to tear down pieces of the wallpaper to rescue this trapped woman. To end the story, John unlocks the door 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.

Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is centered on the deteriorating psychological condition of the female narrator. As a woman in a male dominating society in the 19th century, the narrator has no control over her life. This persistence eventually evolves into her madness. The insanity is triggered by her change in attitude towards her husband, the emergent obsession with the wallpaper and the projection of herself as the women behind the wallpaper. The “rest cure” which was prescribed by her physician husband, created the ideal environment for her madness to extend because, it was in her imagination that she had some freedom and control.

However, she has to put up with it and live in the place where she feels uncomfortable. Her husband John refuses to change the wallpaper because she does not want to disturb her neurosis. Indeed, the behavior of the man is illustrative of the essence of their relationship: everything he does is for her sake; however she cannot have her own wishes. The woman feels that her husband chokes her with his own hands, and staying in the room with the yellow wallpaper is another symbol of her imprisonment. Her permanent studying of the patterns on the wallpaper is like staring at the grate of her

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a famous social worker and a leading author of women’s issues. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's relating to views of women 's rights and her demands for economic and social reform of gender inequities are very famous for the foundations of American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In critics Gilman ignored by people of color in the United States and attitudes towards non-northern European immigrants (Ceplair, non-fiction, 7). “Gilman developed controversial conception of womanhood”, by Deborah M. De Simone in “Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the feminization of education”. Gilman’s relation to reading deserves more attention than it has received (“The reading habit and The yellow wallpaper”). Her work about Women and Economics was considered her highest achievement by critics.

Her passion is to write and by doing so we are able to follow her on a

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 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