The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis Essay

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, The Yellow Wallpaper, portrays the life and mind of a woman suffering from post-partum depression in the late eighteenth century. Gilman uses setting to strengthen the impact of her story by allowing the distant country mansion symbolize the loneliness of her narrator, Jane. Gilman also uses flat characters to enhance the depth of Jane’s thoughts; however, Gilman’s use of narrative technique impacts her story the most. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses interior monologue to add impact to Jane’s progression into insanity, to add insight into the relationships in the story, and to increase the depth of Jane’s connection with the yellow wallpaper it self.

Gilman's use of narrative structure is important in depicting the fragmentation of the woman's mind. Through the course of the story sentences become increasingly choppy and paragraphs decrease in length. This concrete element of fiction illustrates the deterioration of that narrator's psychological well-being and mental surmise to the yellow wallpaper.

In Thomas C. Foster’s “How to Read Literature like a Professor”, myth and archetype are thoroughly discussed and analyzed. Some of these themes are exemplified in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s work, The Yellow Wallpaper, in which a nameless narrator experiences her own personal hell, driven into madness by her improper psychiatric treatment. Gilman’s text is not only a story of a woman who is essentially driven into the underground, but also a criticism of society’s view of women and mental illness. She describes the narrator’s descent as a journey, through the use of symbolism and her treatment as a mentally ill woman.

In Thomas C. Foster’s “How to Read Literature like a Professor”, myth and archetype are thoroughly discussed and analyzed. Some of these themes are exemplified in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s work, The Yellow Wallpaper, in which a nameless narrator experiences her own personal hell, driven into madness by her improper psychiatric treatment. Gilman’s text is not only a story of a woman who is essentially driven into the underground, but also a criticism of society’s view of women and mental illness. She describes the narrator’s descent as a journey, through the use of symbolism and her treatment as a mentally ill woman.

The story takes the form of a journal of the main character. Therefore, the reader’s view is limited to the impressions of a single character, Jane. Considering some background information on Gilman, one can easily draw the conclusion that the story is

Did you know that discrimination can take many forms from race, gender, religion and sexuality and that “40% of Canadian workers experience bullying on a weekly basis” (Canadian Bullying Statistics)? One of the biggest example of discrimination is female oppression. Even today, women are perceived and shaped generally as fragile and caring. During the 1900’s, and many years before, women were oppressed; some were even hospitalized for wanting to expand their knowledge. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman, and the author herself, are great examples regarding the oppression of women by a patriarchal power structure during the 1900’s. Throughout the story, Gilman exemplifies the social struggle against male domination that woman faced through her personal experience, the characters in her story and the wallpaper as a symbol of the male authority.

Gilman's female narrator, who either chose not to fight this tradition or was unable to do so, loses her sanity at the hands of an oppressive male-dominated American society. The narrator feels certain that the

The diction Gilman employs relates directly to the lasting role of women in the home to expose the historical adversities endured within the domestic sphere. The intricacy with which Gilman composes the text highlights the inherent

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.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman utilizes her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper to demonstrate the treatment towards women and the mentally ill in the late nineteenth-century. She wrote this short story as a way of sharing her knowledge with other women of the faults in the patriarchal society as well as, to show men the faults in their ways. Likewise, The Yellow Wallpaper demonstrates the effect that women being ostracized from society has on the mental health of these individuals. Gilman criticizes nineteenth-century society for the oppression of women, patriarchy, their treatment of mental illness, and the way people were forced to stay in unhealthy marriages; similarly, Gilman also criticizes the narrator for not standing up for herself,

Within “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman writes about a troubled, young woman in the late 19th century. The author uses setting to show how isolated and separated women were in the world during the 19th century, which is why gilman uses setting to not only show but express how the boundaries put around women drove them to insanity. The story starts off in “a colonial mansion…” that is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village (pg.2)” this shows how the house was very isolated and separate from society and so was the woman. The description given about the house seems to connect with the position of her life not only within the house but in society, which was filled with boundaries and restrictions. As the narrator goes on, she brings up the room itself as a ‘big, airy room… with windows that look all ways (pg.2) which is where the ideas of isolation and restriction becomes more evident.

However, both novels ultimately expose the certainty of madness when identity is lost. The entrapment of the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper is notable from the beginning of the novella as Gilman asserts the male dominance of her husband, John. The controlling nature of her husband in their marriage establishes the narrator’s emotional imprisonment: “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage”. Gilman emphasises the gender inequality between the female protagonist and her husband as the narrator is immediately dismissed of importance - she is worth so little that it is laughable.

Gilman uses her book, Herland, to metaphorically exemplify the societal inequality of women in the 19th century and how they were viewed. The story begins with three men making a journey to a mysterious “women

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a detailed account of the author’s battle with depression and mental illness. Gilman’s state of mental illness and delusion is portrayed in this narrative essay. Through her account of this debilitating illness, the reader is able to relate her behavior and thoughts to that of an insane patient in an asylum. She exhibits the same type of thought processes and behaviors that are characteristic of this kind of person. In addition, she is constantly treated by those surrounding her as if she were actually in some form of mental hospital.

Gilman continues to display the terrible mental illness treatments during the 19th century through John’s ignorance of the narrator’s fears and desires. Before she is taken to the nursery, she is described to be very optimistic as she admires the beauty of the nature. However, this feeling changes when she notices broken greenhouses and a solitary space that has been empty for years. She says “...there is something strange about the house- I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what