Psychopathological Symbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper

However, the most important aspect of this room is the yellow wallpaper. The narrator despises it, loathing the colour and it’s pattern. She writes 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--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.” (Gilman). This description of the wallpaper serves the purpose to show the reader the unjust restrictions of society that the narrator is subjected to; “. . .commentators have seen in this description of the wallpaper a general representation of “the oppressive structures of society in which [the narrator] finds herself” (Madwoman 90), . . .” (Haney-Peritz 116). The statement of “dull enough to confuse the eye” and “constantly irritating and provoking study” are alluding to the narrator’s sense of inferiority and burden while the “lame and uncertain curves” are referencing the absurd suggestions that her husband is providing. Finally the “suicide” is the unfortunate fate that is destined to occur if his counsel is followed. When describing the wallpaper the narrator writes that “The color is repellent, almost

Central to the story is the wallpaper itself. It is within the wallpaper that the narrator finds her hidden self and her eventual damnation/freedom. Her obsession with the paper begins subtly and then consumes both the narrator and the story. Once settled in the long-empty “ancestral estate,” a typical gothic setting, the narrator is dismayed to learn that her husband has chosen the top-floor nursery room for her. The room is papered in horrible yellow wallpaper, the design of which “commit[s] every artistic sin”(426). The design begins to fascinate the narrator and she

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

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.

As the reader is introduced to the main character in the story, she is heard talking about strange things happening around her. She secretly wrote her thought in a journal but her husband was against it and never wanted her to do anything. The nameless narrator in her madness sees a woman in the pattern of the wallpaper. In addition, she sees the woman struggling against the bars of the paper and this is a symbol for the struggle of women who attempt to break out from the infringing rules of the society. The woman the narrator sees caught in the wallpapers also parallels her virtual imprisonment in an isolated estate away from her child by her mean husband.

The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is told she needs to rest constantly to overcome her sickness, so she is forced to stay in the old nursery where there is yellow-orange wallpaper with a busy, obnoxious pattern that she hates. She tries to study the wallpaper to distinguish the pattern, and as time goes on she believes she sees a woman moving around in the background of the pattern. Also, during this period of time the character’s condition is worsening, because her husband is causing her mind to weaken by not allowing her to exert herself at all; he says she is not to think about her condition, walk through the garden or visit family. All she can do is sleep and trace the wallpaper, and being cooped up in the room causes her to begin hallucinating. The narrator sees the woman trying to escape from the wallpaper throughout the night, and she ultimately completely breaks down and believes that she is the woman.

As human beings, we play the cards that are dealt to us in this world. In life, every person goes through their individual ups and downs and occasionally may break down to the extent of not knowing what to do with oneself. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” which takes place in the late 1800s, focuses on the first person narrator who is an infatuated woman. The disheartening story concentrates on a woman who is suffering from postpartum depression, and as well had mental breakdowns. The narrators husband John, moves her into a home isolated in the country where he wants her to “rest” and get better from her illness. During the course of being confined in the room with the wallpaper, she learns new

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a woman descending into psychosis in a creepy tale which depicts the harm of an old therapy called “rest cure.” This therapy was used to treat women who had “slight hysterical tendencies” and depression, and basically it consisted of the inhibition of the mental processes. The label “slight hysterical tendency” indicates that it is not seen as a very important issue, and it is taken rather lightly. It is also ironic because her illness is obviously not “slight” by any means, especially towards the end when the images painted of her are reminiscent of a psychotic, maniacal person, while she aggressively tears off wallpaper and confuses the real world with her alternative world she has

Similarly, “The Yellow Wallpaper” symbolizes the trapped narrator with an urgency to escape from her dwelling. Like Elisa, the narrator finds a task that would keep her boredom away as “life is very much more exciting than it used to be” (443). By staring at the wallpapers pattern constantly all day, she is no longer bored. In addition, the narrator believes that in order to escape she must free the woman behind the wallpaper. The narrator turns insane by visioning a woman in the wallpaper and trying to escape. The narrator is imprisoned, and the bothersome patter of the yellow wallpaper begins to straighten out to her. The narrator finds a channel of hope outside the windows, through the bars, wanting to leave the room and depart into the real world. Both Elisa Allen and the narrator feel a need, a desire for an escape from their current lives.

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

In “The Yellow wallpaper”, the wallpaper is a metaphor that expresses women’s protest against the repression of the society and their personal identity at the rise of feminism. During the Victorian era, women were kept down and kept in line by their married men and other men close to them. "The Yellow Wallpaper", written By Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a tale of a woman, her mental difficulties and her husband’s so called therapeutic treatment ‘rest cure’ of her misery during the late 1800s. The tale starts out in the summer with a young woman and her husband travelling for the healing powers of being out from writing, which only appears to aggravate her condition. His delusion gets Jane (protagonist), trapped in a room, shut up in a bed making her go psychotic. As the tale opens, she begins to imagine a woman inside ‘the yellow wallpaper’.

The yellow wallpaper symbolizes Jane’s depression and her struggle with her overwhelming mental illness. At night, Jane lies awake studying the paper desperately trying to keep watch over the woman behind it (316). Gilman shows that Jane’s depression

In the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, there are many of literary techniques that illustrates the theme to express the story. Irony, imagery and symbolism are some literary devices that is presented among the story.  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of acceptance and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The story appears to take place during a time where women were oppressed. Women were treated as if they were under one’s thumb in society during this period which is approximately the 19th century.

The narrator, who is never named, is depicted as a woman who is confined and repressed based on her gender. During the time Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the feminist movement was going through its second surge and was continuously expanding. Gilman was considered “the idol of radical feminists” (Degler 21) and the “most original and challenging mind, which the women movement produced” (Degler 21). One of the major themes found throughout Gilman’s writings is “to show the disastrous and all-pervasive effects upon women and upon society of the continued suppression of her sex” ( Degler 22). This is seen in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, when the narrator