The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis

Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to show how women undergo oppression by gender roles. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman’s changes in mental state. The narrator in this story becomes so oppressed by her husband that she actually goes insane. The act of oppression is very obvious within the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and shows how it changes one’s life forever.

Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” both tell us that some women have a lack of independence because of being told what to do, having limitations put on their abilities, and having a family member being an authoritarian figure in their life. Both stories are very similar when discussing the lack of independence that women may have. Women are always being belittled or controlled somewhere.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman creates a narrator who rents out a mansion in the summer with her husband. The main reason for their summer retreat is because the narrator is “ill” and suffering from what her husband calls “a slight hysterical tendency.” The narrator’s husband places her in a big airy sunlit room with hideous yellow wallpaper asserting she be confined to bed rest. As time goes by, the woman becomes infatuated with the yellow wallpaper claiming that there’s a woman enclosed in the pattern. I’m arguing that the wallpaper plays a role in symbolism. In my opinion, it represents how the narrator suffers from the oppression of her husband and the feeling of being trapped.

The word mental illness implies different things to various individuals, yet collectively, our society’s thoughts come down to what can be bluntly put as "shun it". Charlotte Perkins Gilman, however, addresses this perception with a different approach through her short story. It revolves around the narrator, who is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression and is consequently prescribed a treatment that forbids her from doing the one thing she could do all day – write, but instead spend all her time imprisoned in a room with a disturbing wallpaper. Gilman gathered inspiration from a personal encounter with a similar mental illness due to which he was prescribed rest cure, which she found very ineffective (Gilman 669). Similar to some of today’s psychiatric hospitals’ treatment methods, Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” depicts the society’s undeveloped negative approach towards psychological sickness.

There are a variety of reasons why a person might feel trapped and suffocated, and how they might be trying to change their lives by escaping an oppressive society. During one’s everyday life it is not easy to understand what might be putting others down, but when reading a story, an author can leave subtle hints that reveal the feeling of being trapped of a character or characters, and how they could be trying to escape from an oppressive society. In Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the reader follows the narrator's story by reading her diary, written in the first point of view. The narrator is a woman living in the late 1800’s, who is wrongfully diagnosed

Throughout history and cultures today, women have been beaten, verbally abused, and taught to believe they have no purpose in life other than pleasing a man. Charlotte Perkins Gillam uses her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a weapon to help break down the walls surrounding women, society has put up. This story depicts the life of a young woman struggling with postpartum depression, whose serious illness is overlooked, by her physician husband, because of her gender. Gillman 's writing expresses the feelings of isolation, disregarded, and unworthiness the main character Jane feels regularly. This analysis will dive into the daily struggles women face through oppression, neglect, and physical distinction; by investigating each section

In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman highlights the issues that come with sexism as well as the issues in healthcare at the time by writing the story of a mentally ill woman’s experience with the rest cure. She is able to effectively shed light on these topics through the clever use of the first person perspective in order to give the reader a better grasp of the narrator’s experience, the storyline progression as the narrator responds to her difficult position, and the masterful use diction to evoke imagery that supports a greater understanding of the narrator’s feelings.

“The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was written during a time of great change for women in 1892. She narrates her own life. A young, upper middle class woman, newly married and a mother, as she loses touch with the outer world. The main character is always left alone in the story.

The narration determines the entire environment of a story. Things can change from the plot, setting, feeling, etc. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gilman’s use of the first point of view plays a vital role in the story. Jane, a mother and wife, unfortunately has a mental illness, but her husband believes that she is completely fine. She emphasizes her solitude in trying to escape from her room. Regardless of how many times she cries for help, she is denied every ounce of it. The narration from her point of view allows the reader to have a new lens that gives the experience and thought of only the protagonist.

While “[suffering] from a profound melancholic depression”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman was prescribed the “rest cure”; out of this horrid experience, “The Yellow Wallpaper” was born (Martin 736). The short story is a first-person account of a woman that is afflicted by a similar fate suffered by Gilman. Due to the lack of understanding psychological illnesses at the time, the nameless narrator’s physician/husband John, applies the rest cure on her, eventually causing her insanity. The narrator, thus, fulfills the unhealable wound archetype because she has a psychological wound that cannot be fully healed, consequently her wound drives her to extreme or desperate measures.

Through the use of its first person narrative, Charlotte Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” explores the power of human imagination, the horror of the diseased mind while also illuminating the fault of man’s ego; the unwillingness to consider an opinion due to the egotistical notion of superiority.

The story “The Yellow Wallpaper”  is written and told in the first person and is in the form of a journal. The story itself is told from a narrator who remains nameless, and her husband John that have come to vacation in a large house after the birth of their daughter. It seems as though john believes that this getaway would be good for our  narrator, as she has been suffering from hysterical postpartum behaviors. This attitude has led to the result of an unusual treatment given to her by her doctor. John feels as though the best room for our narrator to stay in is a room upstairs, believed to be a former nursery.  However, there were few setbacks of the

How is Gilman trying to represent the wallpaper, the husband and time period into story? In the story a couple rent a mansion off in the country .The husband, John, is a doctor while the narrator or the wife is suffering from a severe mental illness, her husband believes that being in this isolated mansion will be good for her. The husband tells her that all she needs is some rest and that she will feel better. The husband locks the narrator in the attic of the mansion surrounded by yellow wallpaper. The windows in the room are present, yet all the windows are barred. As time goes by the narrator becomes crazier , she beings to see women behind the yellow wallpaper. When the husband tells her that they have to leave the wife refuses to leave

Robbie Batson explores how “it is unusual to say the least to open a book and the first line is about the main character waking up as a large insect. “Quite relatable to Gilman’s story-based upon her own experience- which is a “rest cure” to mental illnesses according to the New England Magazine. Both texts explore absurdity; a philosophy based on the belief that the universe is irrational and meaningless, including that the search for order brings the individual into conflict with the universe. Absurd is the recurring theme along with isolation, being a significant purpose of the stories portraying the characters of Gregor Samsa and Jane as being locked away from the outside world making them feel diverse to the normalcy in society.