The Yellow Wallpaper Reflection

It is difficult to discuss the meaning in this story without first examining the author’s own personal experience. “The Yellow Wallpaper” gives an account of a woman driven to madness as a result of the

The vivid descriptions in “The Yellow Wallpaper” help to bring the reader along in the narrators decent into a kind of psychosis. It starts mildly, with her describing the color of wallpaper as “repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 528). As more time passes she begins to see more things in the paper such as “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes start at you,” and for it have “so much expression in an inanimate thing” (Gilman 592). As the pattern and descriptions get more twisted, we get visual clues of the madness that is slowly consuming the narrator. The color of the paper even begins to become a physical thing she can smell descried as, “creep[ing] all over the house...sulking...hiding...lying in wait for me…It gets into my hair” (Gilman 534). In the end we get a graphic visual representation of her full psychosis

The wallpaper is beginning to take on the role of controlling her life. As the days proceed on and she continues to sit in this isolated room, she begins to notice objects incorporated throughout the patterns. Every day the shapes become significantly clearer to her until one moment it appears to be a figure trapped within the walls (734). This aversion to the color completely shifts at this point toward hallucination. The wallpaper now has complete control of the narrator’s mind and sanity.

The purpose of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is to tell the reader that you can have negative effect on someone’s mental health if they are denied their freedom of expression. This is because the narrator (Jane) was kept in a room that had yellow wallpaper, which she did not like. Soon after being unable to work or write Jane began to see creepy figures in the wallpaper and everyday it got worse, she soon began to see a women trapped in the wallpaper. This began to feed her hallucinations and paranoia that someone else is going to find out about this women, and help her escape the yellow wallpaper. This made Jane insane, she would see women walking around outside, and she soon became addicted to the room and writing about the wall in her journal.

The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is told she needs to rest constantly to overcome her sickness, so she is forced to stay in the old nursery where there is yellow-orange wallpaper with a busy, obnoxious pattern that she hates. She tries to study the wallpaper to distinguish the pattern, and as time goes on she believes she sees a woman moving around in the background of the pattern. Also, during this period of time the character’s condition is worsening, because her husband is causing her mind to weaken by not allowing her to exert herself at all; he says she is not to think about her condition, walk through the garden or visit family. All she can do is sleep and trace the wallpaper, and being cooped up in the room causes her to begin hallucinating. The narrator sees the woman trying to escape from the wallpaper throughout the night, and she ultimately completely breaks down and believes that she is the woman.

The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and

When her focus eventually settles on the wallpaper in the bedroom and she states, "I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin" (Gilman 260). As the narrator resigns herself to her intellectual confinement, she begins to see more details in the wallpaper pattern. This can be seen as the slow shift from the connection to her family, friends and colleagues to her focus inward as she sinks deeper into depression. She describes that "—I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design" (Gilman 262). As she focuses inward, sinking deeper into her depression the figure in the wallpaper takes shape and she states that, "There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will" (Gilman 264). And she begins to describe the form of a woman behind the wallpaper pattern, "Sometimes I think there are a

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a woman descending into psychosis in a creepy tale which depicts the harm of an old therapy called “rest cure.” This therapy was used to treat women who had “slight hysterical tendencies” and depression, and basically it consisted of the inhibition of the mental processes. The label “slight hysterical tendency” indicates that it is not seen as a very important issue, and it is taken rather lightly. It is also ironic because her illness is obviously not “slight” by any means, especially towards the end when the images painted of her are reminiscent of a psychotic, maniacal person, while she aggressively tears off wallpaper and confuses the real world with her alternative world she has

“The Yellow Wallpaper” tells of the journey into insanity (brought on by postpartum depression?) of a physician’s wife. Persuaded by her husband that there is nothing wrong with her, only temporary nervous depression, a diagnosis that is confirmed by her brother( Gilman, 647). What is telling is that she suspects perhaps her husband John is the reason she does not get well faster. She and/or we are led to believe that they have rented a colonial mansion for the summer for her to get well. She is however isolated in a home three miles from the village and on an island. (Gilman, 648). She wants to stay in the downstairs room with roses and pretty things, but her husband insists on the room at the top of the house ostensibly because it has room for two beds. But the room’s description of barred windows and walls with rings and things in them (Gilman, 648) could leads the reader one to conclude that this is his own private asylum, and not “a nursery first and then a playroom and gymnasium” (Gilman, 648) as the woman believes. It is this room, and more precisely the wallpaper in the room

The main character and other major characters receive very little help from men, which depicts their independence. The men have vacated from their lives, leaving an obstacle, which debates the women’s response to the inconvenience. Instead, they invigoratingly maneuver their mentality, verifying their capabilities. One character, specifically,

The trails and tribulations of life can cause a person to go down a road they could have never imagined. Some people are able to rise above the issues that come their way and while others become consumed by their problems. In a male dominated society, the issues of women are often pushed to the side and they are left to deal with them alone. Therefore, some women become abused by their thoughts and problems due to the fact that they do not have the ability to tackle them alone. It becomes an internal and external battle for the scorned woman to please herself, husband (or father) and the society at the same time. In the short stories, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by

“The Yellow Wallpaper” provides an insight into the life of the narrator- a woman suppressed and unable to express herself because of her controlling husband- leading the reader down her fall to insanity, allowing for her inner conflict to be clearly expressed. The first person point of the view the author artfully uses and the symbolism present with the wallpaper cleverly depicts the inner conflict of the narrator, losing her own sanity due to the constraints of her current life. However, while it seems that the narrator in “ The Yellow Wallpaper” succumbed to her own insanity, the endless conflict within herself and her downward spiral to insanity is seen through a different light, as an inevitable path rather than a choice taken as the story develops.

She has been told she may do no work of any kind. She must not read, write, sew, or tire herself with daily chores. Over her objections her husband has insisted she take her ease in the top-floor nursery of the house, a large room with barred windows. In her boredom she has taken to studying the wallpaper in the nursery. It is a ghastly yellow color with an intriguing and intricate pattern. In the paper she discovers the ghosts that are haunting her desolation.

These two stories exemplify the epitome of women’s repression in the male-dominated society of the late nineteenth century by conveying the feelings of

From a feminist critical perspective, it is clear to perceive that her husband’s death was a release of freedom from her marriage. The text describes that at times, she did and did not love her husband. However, love had not mattered anymore because she was now free. Whether they loved each other or not, she would have still been his property. This restriction of freedom was no longer her cross to bear. The death of her husband would pave her a path for a new life.