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The Yellow Wallpaper Mood

Decent Essays

The Yellow Wallpaper Analyzed
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.
Gilman’s style of writing employs many stylistic features that include anaphora and irony that play a role in conveying the theme. Anaphora is used throughout the story, for example, when the narrator uses the word “personally” in both the consecutive sentences “personally, I disagree with their ideas” and “personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Gilman 658). The reiteration of “personally” emphasizes the depth narrator’s disappointment with her husband’s decision of confining her to a room. This

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