The Popularism of Wallpaper

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream (Gilman 12). The narrator strongly resists the wallpaper because it constantly forces its ugliness upon her mind. The paper serves as an unattractive, unresolved and complex symbol throughout the story. “The female lineage that the wallpaper represents is thick, with life, expression, and suffering (Treichler 193).

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

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.

In the short story, the reader gets the sense that the narrator feels like the wallpaper is a text she must interpret, that it symbolizes something that affects her directly. Its symbolism progresses throughout the story. At first, it is just ugly and unappealing to look at because it is ripped, soiled, and an “unclean yellow.” It eventually captivates the narrator as she tries to figure out the seemingly formless pattern. The narrator eventually begins to hallucinate an eerie sub-pattern behind the main pattern. Ultimately, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a frantic woman, continually crawling and hunched,

Unfortunately the discomfort for the narrator and myself did not stop here. The narrator’s obsession with the yellow wallpaper lead her to analyze and really observe the aspects of the wallpaper. She states “I never saw a worse paper in my life” (book pg 153). She goes into a further description saying the wallpaper is dull, constantly irritate, and provokes study (book pg 153). The color yellow is an important element because after all it is the color of the wallpaper. When I think of yellow I think a radiant warm sun, also as a joyful happy

From the beginning of their tenure in the summer home, the narrator’s fixation on the wallpaper in her quarters is ever present. She states that it is the worst paper she had ever seen. It is dull with a vague pattern that follows no rules of how it is laid out. The color is “almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight’” (Gilman)

The wallpaper is "repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight" (132). To add to the grotesqueness of the color, the paper was unkept and peeled "in great patches all around the head of [her] bed" (131). It had a pattern that was a flamboyant and through the progression of the story, the protagonist starts to see a woman that seems to be trapped behind

In the grips of depression and the restrictions prescribed by her physician husband a woman struggles with maintaining her sanity and purpose. As a new mother and a writer, and she is denied the responsibility and intellectual stimulation of these elements in her life as part of her rest cure. Her world is reduced to prison-like enforcement on her diet, exercise, sleep and intellectual activities until she is "well again". As she gives in to the restrictions and falls deeper into depression, she focuses on the wallpaper and slides towards insanity. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story written from a first-person perspective about a young woman's mental deterioration during the 1800's and

In the story, the wall was completely covered in yellow wallpaper, but it can be inferred that imagery was used by the author to explain that the wallpaper represents women in the late 19th century that they were under controlled by men having no rights of freedom. The wallpaper in the story was described in patterns seen by the wife throughout the story. It described that the wife saw a woman trapped behind bars, which this is a form of imagery since it is trying to show readers that the women in bars is the wife being held in

When Jane describes the wallpaper, she is first repulsed by its color and the mere sight of it. Later, she describes that the sunlight reveals a “pointless pattern”

The yellow wallpaper is a symbol of oppression in a woman who felt her duties were limited as a wife and mother. The wallpaper shows a sign of female imprisonment. Since the wallpaper is always near her, the narrator begins to analyze the reasoning behind it. Over time, she begins to realize someone is behind the

Not the yellow wallpaper, no, im talking about what’s beneath the wallpaper of course. The bedroom the woman stays in for most her days is the room with the all important and famous yellow wallpaper. In fact, the MOST important part of this room, was the wallpaper. It wasn’t very interesting, no, it was actually quite ugly...Revolting. It was a nasty, unclean yellow. The pattern on the wallpaper wasn’t any better than the color. The woman actually described it as “One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns, committing every artistic sin”. It was this pattern on this very unclean yellow tinted wallpaper that fueled the narrator’s creativity...well, that, and the intense

My perspective of Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is influenced by a great number of different and diverse methods of reading. However, one cannot overlook the feminist theorists’ on this story, for the story is often proclaimed to be a founding work of feminism. Further, the historical and biographical contexts the story was written in can be enlightened by mentioning Gilman’s relationship with S. Weir Mitchell. And I can’t help but read the story and think of Foucault’s concept of Panopticism as a method of social control. Lastly, of course, there’s the psychological perspective on the story, although in my readings of psychology, particularly the psychological knowledge surrounding both women and queers, I find the

The woman in the wallpaper is the major symbolical character of the story. She symbolizes the narrator, but in a different light. The short story states on page fourteen, “I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did? But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope--you don't get

First published in 1982, The yellow wallpaper is an engaging narrative , written in first person in which the narrator suffers from some type of nervous disorder . Her husband who prefers to refer to her condition as a temporary nervous depression or a slight hysterical tendency recommends that the narrator seeks solitude so as to recuperate . The short story mimics the form of secret and private entries on journals by the author. The haunting short story chronicles that descent of the narrator and protagonist into maddened and paranormal activities. Some people however interpret it as her chronicles to freedom .The author effectively employs the use of literary