The Wallpaper

A Critical Analysis of Formal Elements in the Short Story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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 Yellow Wallpaper" takes a close look at one woman's mental deterioration. The narrator is emotionally isolated from her husband. Due to the lack of interaction with other people the woman befriends the reader by secretively communicating her story in a diary format. Her attitude towards the wallpaper is openly hostile at the beginning, but ends with an intimate and liberating connection. During the gradual change in the relationship between the narrator and the wallpaper, the yellow paper becomes a mirror, reflecting the process the woman is going through in her room.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman takes the form of journal entries of a woman undergoing treatment for postpartum depression. Her form of treatment is the “resting cure,” in which a person is isolated and put on bed rest. Her only social interaction is with her sister-in-law Jennie and her husband, John, who is also her doctor. Besides small interactions with them, most of the time she is left alone. Society believes all she needs is a break from the stresses of everyday life, while she believes that “society and stimulus” (pg 347, paragraph 16) will make

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.

Due to their behavior, both men lead their wives to rebel. John’s controlling behavior causes the narrator to abandon him by going completely mad. First, she questions John’s pronouncements. The narrator believes that congenial work, with excitement and change would do her good (p.297). Next, she focuses on the wallpaper. She describes its negative features noting that patches are gone as if school boys wore it out (p.298). Upset by her husband’s actions, the narrator decides to begin writing in secret. . It reaches the point where the narrator has to hide her writings from him, because he gets upset if she even writes a word (p.298). -After time passes, we see her obsession grow. John seems to be oblivious to the narrator’s conditions, telling her “you know the place is doing you good” (p.299). She notices that the pattern is torturing (p.303). Finally, she begins to see a woman hiding behind the pattern (p.304). Looking for the woman in the pattern gives her something to look forward to (p.305). Ultimately she comes to believe that she is the woman in the wallpaper and wants to free herself. She begins peeling off the paper through the night, and by morning removes all the paper she could while standing (p.307). The narrator even begins to contemplate jumping out of the window, but does not

The narrator’s obsession with the wallpaper eventually makes her story spin so far out of control, her grasp on reality is completely lost and to every observer it is obvious. She believes people are living in the wallpaper and they come and go

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.

"There comes John, and I must put this away -- he hates to have me write a

Megan Skolmen  31/05/2015  The Yellow Wallpaper  Short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman  Published 1892    I read a short story called ‘The Yellow Wallpaper” written by a well-known feminist intellectual author from the late 1800’s, Charlotte Perkins.  This story follows a female narrator – her name never mentioned – and her spiral into insanity. The said insanity is caused by an assumed nervous depression in which she suffers with, and the constant belittling of her illness and her general thoughts/ concerns that her physician of a husband imposes.

There is an underlying connection between the frontal pattern of the wallpaper trapping the woman and the physical, mental and emotional limitations set on the narrator. Anxiety and depression are difficult to verbally describe, so Gilman purposely describes the evolution of the wallpaper to symbolize what is mentally happening in the narrator’s head. Originally the narrator may have felt confused and disturbed, similar to the “sprawling flamboyant patterns… dull enough to confuse the eye… pronounced enough to constantly irritate” that is originally projected by the wallpaper (Gilman 793). As her depression and insanity increase, the wallpaper gains movement and takes a human form. Once the narrator reveals that the moving form behind the paper is a woman, the reader establishes a parallel between the two

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.

When looking at two nineteenth century works of change for two females in an American society, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Stephen Crane come to mind. A feminist socialist and a realist novelist capture moments that make their readers rethink life and the world surrounding. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published in 1892, about a white middle-class woman who was confined to an upstairs room by her husband and doctor, the room’s wallpaper imprisons her and as well as liberates herself when she tears the wallpaper off at the end of the story. On the other hand, Crane’s 1893 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the realist account of a New York girl and her trials of growing up with an alcoholic mother and slum life world. The

The narrator’s feelings of inferiority and powerlessness parallels the female figure she sees trapped behind the pattern in the wall-paper adorning her room. She gradually withdraws from both John and reality by locking herself in the room and ultimately merging with the figure. Through the changing image of the pattern from a “fait figure” (Gilman 46) to a “woman stooping” (Gilman 46) behind the paper and “shaking the bars” (Gilman 46) as if she wanted “to get out” (Gilman 46), we can see her becoming one with the figure: “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.”(51) Her collapse into madness as reflected in her behavior with the “bedstead [that] is fairly gnawed” (Gilman 51) and her “creeping all around” (Gilman 50) is a direct result of her passive submissiveness to John’s control of her life.

The wallpaper serves as a paradox; as the narrator loses sight with what goes on in the outer world, she gains a greater understanding of her own reality.13 Gilman cleverly uses the aspects of psychological horror to criticise the position of women within society, and more narrowly, the institution of marriage. Through the narrator Gilman emphasises how the mental constraints put on respectable women of the time can drive women to insanity. She uses the idea of madness and solitary confinement to demonstrate how women are often portrayed in a position that has them dominated by men. Many women of the nineteenth century were often repressed and controlled by men, and the protagonist represents this oppression. This is achieved through the use of symbols; the house and room itself, the barred windows and the wallpaper.