The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis Essay

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.

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.

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.

She has found purpose in this paper. Indeed she cannot be understood by anyone except the woman in the yellow wallpaper. Her creeping about is symbolic of her hiding, sometimes in broad daylight, from a world that looks at her as an outcast because she doesn’t want to be a typical domestic ornament. Perhaps the yellow wallpaper acted as a mirror for our narrator. As she peered into the wall’s secrets night after night her vanity gradually became insanity. She knew she could not free herself in the world she lived in.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the idea of “true womanhood” is challenged. The white woman portrayed in the story is prescribed what is known as the “rest cure” due to the overwhelming pressure of being the perfect woman, wife, and mother. Driven mad by the smothering of her husband and her inability to do anything for herself, the woman in this story goes crazy attempting to free herself from the constraints. In stark contrast to the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Sojourner Truth, a former slave, delivers a speech titled, “Ain’t I a Woman,” in 1851 that shakes people to their very core. A little before “The Yellow Wallpaper” was released, Truth shares a message that is astoundingly different from the

The protagonist describes her changing perception of the wallpaper; “At night, in any kind of light…it becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be” (Gilman 82). Through the expository level of reading, it can be assumed that the woman is an image that the protagonist created for herself. Her attempts at freeing the woman from behind the wallpaper could symbolize her desire to free herself from the situation she is in, and the marriage that she is trapped in. However, the effectiveness of this is dulled as it is only a

As I started reading this short story, it clearly introduced who the characters are and where it took place. The narrator is a woman; she has no name, remains anonymous throughout the story. She lives with her husband John in a house. This house is isolated from society, since the short story indicates that it is far from village, roads or any means of communication. It also contains locks and gates throughout. The woman is ill and this illness has placed her in a weak position with her husband and everything around her. We know that she likes to write, but her husband doesn’t let her, so she does it in secret. Although this type of writing is mainly to show mild personality disorder in dealing with life,

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story that exemplifies the common belief during the 1800’s. During then women were never held accountable for any duties other than being house bidden due to the weakness of handling stress. In the 1800s society was known to look past women who did anything besides house chores and raising children. Majority of women were then meant to be housewives and mothers and seen as the trophy wife and nothing more. It was extremely uncommon for the average women to want to further herself in life; this caused many nervous breakdowns and was assumed to be Hysteria. The ideals and ideas of conventions for these women did not always sit well with certain people, and in the reexamination, others were far too comfortable with them; this left demographics of humans that did not end up getting along. The only believable cure to Hysteria was to shutting the women inside a “get away” home for days on end. The idea of redemption was deemed noble, inspiring and turbulent; though many women refused to go against these forbidden acts but saw others as strong and encouraging. The pursuit in redemption is one that often came with high cost, what many forget is that there was a slim line between redemption and its equivalents. The Yellow Wallpaper is written from a characters point of view in a journal style which gave the reader descriptions of the home and those involved. The house was deemed as an old mansion and the yellow wallpaper in the narrator bedroom put an

She started looking at the room as if it was a mental prison and there were no escape “There are things in the wallpaper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern 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 me away from here!” (Schilb and Clifford 238). The author began seeing an image in the wallpaper of a woman trying to escape from the wallpaper and be free “The front pattern does move- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” (Schilb and Clifford 241). The quotes are showing that the narrator has completely lost her mind as she is unstable mentally to realize what real or not. Another quote shows how stable her conditions are “I’m feeling ever so much better! I don’t sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments (Schilb and Clifford 240). This is psychologically unhealthy for the protagonist, showing how she went from being a well stable lady to an insane

The cult of true womanhood defined women as “ladies”(pure, diligent). When we talk about American woman, we have to specify their religion, sexual orientation, race, social class (it is therefore essentialist to talk about “women” in general. Depending on the group which they are in, certain coordinates are applicable.

Later she explains that there is something off about the house; “That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid; but I don't care—there is something strange about the house—I can feel it.” I feel this house is metaphor for her life. From the outside it seems rather beautiful but there is something odd and strange about her life. There is also the fact of where the house is located. Three miles outside the village, a part of the village but at the same time, not a part of the village. She refers to it as “quite alone” and “standing well back from the road”. This is the way she is living her life, behind mental hedges and walls, the wife of the village physician so she is part of the village but she doesn’t allow herself to truly fit in, she keeps herself removed.

The queering of gender roles in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman discussed through the destabilization of the gender roles of the 19th century commonly attributed to women and how the narrator threatened those through writing as a profession. The narrator is in direct opposition to the separate sphere mentality which is implemented by her husband and his sister, Jennie. Jennie is the angel of the house and the narrator is shunned to the yellow wallpaper and trapped. Her masculinity disallows her from being a woman and there is no other place for her in the society. Because of the imprisonment meant to ‘cure’ her the narrator escapes these roles through madness.

The woman has a bad vibe about the house they’re renting. The wallpaper symbolizes how she’s feeling trapped by her husband because he’s controlling. Against her will, the woman must sleep in a separate room from her husband. The woman feels trapped by her husband because she not allowed thinking freely. John, who is a physician, disapproves of her writing her thoughts in a journal because he thinks it will make her worse.

This yellow wallpaper is described by the narrator as grotesque and irritating, which mirrors her own self image and confusion on what she is feeling. As this narrator begins to study the patterns, Gilman first personifies the wallpaper through dark and gruesome actions the character is seeing within it, revealing the fragile mental state of this woman. The narrator sees what is characterized as “...lame uncertain curves…[that] suddenly commit suicide — plunge off at outrageous angles, destroying themselves in unheard of contradictions,” (Gilman 648). Later as the narrator becomes more consumed within the wallpaper that confines her, she starts to see human features “...where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at [her] upside down,” (Gilman 649). This counterpart of herself does not show the delicate and ethereal woman she is expected to be; it shows an opposite and somewhat appalling image of what she is beginning to come to terms with.

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