Research Papers On 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

The narrator has a natural creativity that when left idol drives he insane. She is forced to hide he anxieties and fears which ultimately drives her to insanity. Even though she keeps a journal writing is in particularly off limits. Creativity was forbidden to her, John constantly reminds her to keep it contained. She even writes: “He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.” She longs for an outlet for her repressed mind, going as far as to keep the journal, the one the audience is now privy to. She often refers to the journal as her only source of solace. As her sanity deteriorates, her mind starts to imagine things. The wallpaper becomes her outlet for this creativity. She begins describing the mansion as haunted and starts seeing a woman in the walls. She describes this saying: “The dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder-I be­gin to think - I wish John would take we away from here!” Her natural eventually becomes so repressed it drives her

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

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.

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.

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

Forced to lie in bed all day and take it easy, the narrator becomes obsessed by the wallpaper and is drawn into trying to interpret it. She imagines a woman trapped within the paper. The narrator decides to strip off all of the wallpaper in her room, this is the moment of ultimate rebellion for the protagonist, and she is taking action towards independence. When John comes home to find the door locked, he begins freaking out. When he finally gets into the bedroom the narrator’s actions are so extraordinary and shocking that her husband faints. Through everything that is going on the narrator keeps creeping around the room in circles stripping all of the wallpaper off to free the woman that is trapped within.

The woman’s attitude towards the room and the wallpaper, changes. The wallpaper, ironically the one thing that she despised in the room before, is now the reason that she doesn’t mind being alone. She has yet again successfully fabricated a character out of herself into someone else that she has grown attached to. She becomes infatuated with the paper, and, more disturbingly so, it is all in her mind. “It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight….

The Yellow Wall-Paper:” Sans Everything Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” is a deeply disturbing work of the Gothic Romantic genre. “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is not only a psychologically perturbed story, but a biting social critique of the gender standards of its time. The author, Charlotte P. Gilman, suffered from Postpartum Depression and as a result of her diagnosis, she wrote, “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to stress the ineffectiveness of the “rest cure.” The narrator of Gilman’s story, like most women of the time, has no say in regards to her own mental health, and is ignored and infantilized by her physician husband.

As the story progresses, it is clear of the narrator’s unstable mental condition which becomes apparent when she begins to see people within the wallpaper, “it’s like a woman stooping down and creeping behind the pattern” (Gilman 612). This could be a result of the narrator seeing herself within the wallpaper because she feels trapped and oppressed by her husband and marriage. This becomes more apparent when she says “the faint figure behind the wallpaper seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 612). This disturbers the narrator into trying to talk to her husband about what is going on but he will not listen. He treats her like a child and patronizes her by calling her “little girl” and after she tells him how she feels and that she wants to leave he says “bless her little heart, she shall be as sick as she pleases” (Gilman 612). She gives up on trying to talk to her husband and returns to her room where she now sees a woman behind bars in the wallpaper, saying “the worst of all, by moonlight it becomes bars!” (Gilman 612). This further supports the idea that the woman symbolizes her oppression by her husband because she feels like she is trapped behind bars and cannot escape it.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow-Wall Paper” is, on the surface, a story about a woman driven mad due to a combination of post-partum depression and the potentially devastating effects of the treatment methods employed at the time. However, the story is also, in a deeper sense, about the fundamental identity of women in the 19th century. Gilman gives voice to this issue by painting a picture of the life of Jane, the protagonist in the story. She gives us an intimate look into the character’s psyche as she skids down the slope towards madness due to her virtual imprisonment and blatant disregard for her thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Not only does she give us a sense of a woman’s identity and place in this time but we also get a unique insight into the character’s own feeling of self-identity through the imaginary woman - who the protagonists discovers trapped in the wall paper of the room she herself is trapped in.

When she first shared her opinion on the wallpaper, she despised the “sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” that it had (548). However, as she studied the patterns more, she realized behind the wallpaper was a woman who could “shake” the patterns and “crawl around fast” (556). The chain of increasingly bizarre thoughts indicated that the woman was losing her mind. The room, instead of healing her, turned into a claustrophobic space that slowly maddened and stimulated her imagination more. This instability and depression created a strange, eerie, and intense atmosphere that attracted readers even more because they desired to figure out the meaning of the wallpaper just as much as the character did. Gilman could only tell such a psychological and fascinating story because she had to endure the mental torture the same way the wife did. By drawing the picture of a depressed wife inside a room that reflected herself, Gilman effortlessly captivated her audiences into the chaotic mind of an ordinary woman.

In the story, the narrator is shown to be always locked up in a room, the isolation potentially causes problems because her mind is desperate for stimulation, for instance the wallpaper itself. The narrator experiences physical, mental, and expressive captivity at the hands of her John and Jennie. Throughout the story, her room is represented as a prison and the bars are revealed throughout the story, emphasizing the idea that the narrator is confined and desires to be free. The narrator thinks of a woman imprisoned behind the wallpaper, this is evident when the narrator states, “At night in any kind of light ... it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it as plain as can be” The narrator, who is imprisoned by the

The wallpaper design and color in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, have multiple extraordinarily complex meanings. Essentially, the wall represented the societal barrier, regarding gender, between the character and her husband and the difficulty of overcoming the obstacle. There was no escape from the patterns of the wall paper; she would start in one place and continue on, never reaching her satisfaction. The patterns, whether they be the patterns in her life or on the wall paper, taunted the character to her despair, and she was moved to make a desperate attempt for an escape. It is discernible by the end of the story that the character herself is the shadow she had been so captivated by. Confined by her husband and

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story told from the perspective of a woman who’s believed to be “crazy”. The narrator believes that she is sick while her husband, John, believes her to just be suffering from a temporary nervous depression. The narrator’s condition worsens and she begins to see a woman moving from behind the yellow wallpaper in their bedroom. The wallpaper captures the narrator’s attention and initial drives her mad. Charlotte Gilman uses a lot of personal pieces into her short story, from her feministic views to her personal attributes. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written from a feminist and autobiographical standpoint and includes elements, like symbols and perspective that the reader can analyze in different ways.