"The Yellow Wallpaper"

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is centred in the writer’s narration, by setting the narrator to be not entirely reliable and an oppressed woman. The character are showed to be feeling trapped and unhappy with

The woman behind this work of literature portrays the role of women in the society during that period of time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a well written story describing a woman who suffers from insanity and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The author uses her own experience to criticize male domination of women during the nineteenth century. Although the story was written fifty years ago, "The Yellow Wallpaper" still brings a clear message how powerless women were during that time.

     The plot of “The Yellow Wallpaper” comes from a moderation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s personal experience. In 1887, just two years after the birth of her first child, Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell diagnosed Gilman with neurasthenia, an emotional disorder characterized by fatigue and depression. Mitchell decided that the best prescription would be a “rest cure”. Mitchell encouraged Gilman to “Live a domestic life as far as possible,” to “have two hours’ intellectual life each day,” and to “never touch a pen, brush or pencil again,”(Gilman 20) as long as she lived. After three months of isolation, abiding by Dr. Mitchell’s orders, Gilman realized she was becoming insane. She abandoned Dr. Mitchell’s advice and,

Within the story, Gilman represents the domestic sphere as a prison(Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism). The narrator is considered to be in prison but in a nursery because she cannot handle her duties as a mother to watch her children or a wife to clean(Delashmit). The windows in the room symbolize the windows in a prison cell. She feels as though, since someone is behind the wallpaper, she is being watched(MacPike).

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

In the grips of depression and the restrictions prescribed by her physician husband a woman struggles with maintaining her sanity and purpose. As a new mother and a writer, and she is denied the responsibility and intellectual stimulation of these elements in her life as part of her rest cure. Her world is reduced to prison-like enforcement on her diet, exercise, sleep and intellectual activities until she is "well again". As she gives in to the restrictions and falls deeper into depression, she focuses on the wallpaper and slides towards insanity. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story written from a first-person perspective about a young woman's mental deterioration during the 1800's and

Kessler emphasizes the point that this one short story seemed parallel and mirror the views of Gilman in regards to the oppression of women in her society. Comparing the two, Kessler writes, “This once she was able to join her public and private expressions in a work of devastating impact” (Kessler 1991 p.159). Gilman, who was a leader and crusader in the women’s rights movement, tried to expel away the gender bias that plague women, just as the narrator in her story tries to pull off the wallpaper in her room to free the trapped women behind it. The patriarchal society at that time period was Gilman’s wallpaper. She had to work hard at trying to force through societal changes. Just like the resistant old wallpaper in her story, ridged and yellow with age, Gilman and her counterparts had much difficulty in pushing through the wallpaper of tradition.

Gilman emphasizes the wife's isolation by describing to the reader where the story is set. The retreat John takes his wife to in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a large, dilapidated Victorian mansion "quite three miles from the village" (470). It is surrounded by extensive

“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

The Yellow Paper is a symbolic story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is a disheartening tale of a woman struggling to free herself from postpartum depression. This story gives an account of an emotionally and intellectual deteriorated woman who is a wife and a mother who is struggling to break free from her metal prison and find peace. The post-partum depression forced her to look for a neurologist doctor who gives a rest cure. She was supposed to have a strict bed rest. The woman lived in a male dominated society and wanted indictment from it as she had been driven crazy by as a result of the Victorian “rest-cure.” Her husband made sure that she had a strict bed rest by separating her from her child by taking her to recuperate in

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story The Yellow Wallpaper depicts the tale of a woman confined to the old nursery in her family's colonial mansion (Gilman 1997: 1f.). She was diagnosed with " a slight hysterical tendency", a popular diagnosis in women towards the end of the 19th century, and now recounts her experiences during her condition's treatment in the form of journal entries (Teichler 1984: 61, Gilman 1997: 1f.). Over time, the treatment's strict limitations and lack of contact with the outside world begin to influence the woman's sanity negatively, continuously accelerating her deterioration until the situation escalates violently at the end of the story (Gilman 1997: 1f., Teichler 1984: 61). The progress of the

"The story was wrenched out of Gilman 's own life, and is unique in the

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

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.

Within a few pages of the story, it becomes quite clear that Gilman is concealing something; the narrator has a secret that she is not sharing with anyone. This secret is her own identity. Her namelessness fits both within the Gothic tradition of concealed objects and is also quite a telling clue that points to the loss of personal identity in women that occurs when they are locked into the unfortunate