Use Of Storyteller's Madness In The Yellow Wallpaper

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 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 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

Insanity manifests itself within society in two unsettling scenarios: one being when the true darkness lurking in the inner recesses of one’s mind takes control, and the other being when society attempts to oppress certain peculiar individuals by ascribing mental instability upon the public’s perception of them. Throughout Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," it is rather ambiguous to which of these two nightmarish scenarios the narrator is enduring. From the beginning of the story, the narrator contends that a mental affliction is plaguing her, and later cites this as the primary reasoning behind the decision for her and her husband John, a well respected physician, to move into a seemingly calm colonial mansion for the summer. Once inside, she cannot help but feel uneasy; both intrigued and repulsed by the mysterious yellow wallpaper encompassing her new sleeping quarters. As this once harmless curiosity deteriorates into full blown obsession, our protagonist begins to perceive the ominous wallpaper as the cruel prison to a helpless, enigmatic woman, and by the story’s climax, she attempts to liberate the woman by stripping every last sliver of wallpaper from the room. Externally, it would appear that the narrator has devolved into utter madness by the conclusion, but upon closer examination, it is evident that her mind has in fact attained a newfound sense of clarity. All along, it was her husband, John, that had been her true epicenter of

The yellow wallpaper is symbolized by being an imprisonment to the narrator. She asked if it could be taken down, but is told no and is stuck in the room with it. Throughout the story the narrator's opinions and feelings of the wallpaper start to change. At the beginning she describes it as unpleasant, and is ripped, soiled, and an “unclean yellow.” The pattern of the wallpaper is what draws the most attention to her. She tries to figure out how the pattern is organized and the meaning it represents. After staring at the paper for many hours she starts to see a ghostly figure behind the pattern, but only in certain light. The wallpaper eventually starts to resemble a desperate woman who is looking for freedom because she is trapped. The narrator realizes that her husband's treatment is not working for her and sees the wallpaper as a prison she is stuck in. The story describes it saying “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be (Gilman).” She eventually becomes obsessed with the wallpaper and realizes that she is the woman behind bars in the wallpaper who can not

In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Gilman, the main character seems to be trapped in a controlling relationship. Jane, the wife, distraught with a mental illness while her husband dismisses her claims. John, Jane’s husband, controls Janes every move and refuses to let her write or do any physical activity. For Jane, writing is a stress reliever, a way to escape from reality. Since Jane’s husband wants her to stop expressing herself, so Jane creeps around her husband, and this makes her exhausted. Jane’s new escape is studying the wallpaper. Soon, the wallpaper haunts Jane, making her obsess over it. This obsession becomes unhealthy and contributes to Jane going insane.

he yellow wallpaper in the short story “ The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Is a symbol for whom the unknown narrator actually is and how she truly feels. The wallpaper represents the barrier that the male dominated society has constructed against women. When the wallpaper starts to reveal bars, it shows that she truly feels trapped and hidden and she is very attached to it that she watches it at daylight and night . Also as the wallpaper becomes more twisted, she starts to see this woman behind it which shows that she has become more mentally unstable. “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over (Gilman 9).”

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Gilman writes about a woman who suffers from temporary nervous depression as diagnosed by her overbearing husband who becomes her doctor. The husband, John, is condescending towards his wife when she questions his diagnosis. Therefore, to get away from the confinement of not being able to speak for herself, the woman secretly writes in her journal as a sense of relief. The woman then becomes fascinated and engrossed with the yellow wallpaper that hangs in her bedroom as a result of her isolation. She comes to the realization that a woman was trapped inside the wallpaper, so she must tear it down to set the woman free. The act of tearing down the wallpaper alludes to the fact that the narrator feels she

In The Yellow Wallpaper, the story is narrated by a woman with a mental illness who seems trapped in her own mind as well as trapped in her room. As the story proceeds and her condition worsens, the images she portrays in the wallpaper become more disturbing. The woman is fixated on her hate of the wallpaper and it drives her insane.

Not the yellow wallpaper, no, im talking about what’s beneath the wallpaper of course. The bedroom the woman stays in for most her days is the room with the all important and famous yellow wallpaper. In fact, the MOST important part of this room, was the wallpaper. It wasn’t very interesting, no, it was actually quite ugly...Revolting. It was a nasty, unclean yellow. The pattern on the wallpaper wasn’t any better than the color. The woman actually described it as “One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns, committing every artistic sin”. It was this pattern on this very unclean yellow tinted wallpaper that fueled the narrator’s creativity...well, that, and the intense

The yellow wallpaper symbolizes the narrator’s declining mental state due to her husband’s male power and domesticity over her, a female. Gilman is not able to convince her husband to change the wallpaper, and this is able to help show how women in society are not considered to be equal to men and to be able to do the same chores and work as men do. The yellow color of the paper that the narrator describes as being hideous is also a direct representation of the narrator’s own illness – her own depression. The wallpaper “becomes not only the symbol of the narrator’s imprisonment, through the rubric of her insane mind it actually becomes the thing imprisoning her”; her doctor and husband’s belief that she just needs rest and that she does not have a mental illness is what has her trapped. The “ugly” wallpaper that surrounds the narrator every day is symbolic of the doctor and her husband’s prescribed “rest” that comes to affect her body and mind, and leads to her almost going

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses symbols to portray recovery from the depth of mental illness. The main character, Jane, struggles throughout the story with severe depression. She is constantly haunted by the room she has to occupy during her stay. Yet despite it all, Jane sets herself free from her illness’s grasp. Gilman employs the symbols of the yellow wallpaper, the ripping of the yellow wallpaper, and the beautiful door to depict Jane’s journey out of her depression.

Author Charlotte P. Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a complex short story that discusses the thoughts and feelings of a woman who is kept confined in a small upstairs bedroom by her husband. The woman suffers from depression and anxiety, yet her spouse whom is a physician claims that she is not terribly ill. Despite all the strange thoughts she acquires, she continues to force herself to accept her new life style and awkward place of living. As she comes to find herself overwhelmed with her personal bedroom, we soon discover that the room’s yellow wallpaper is what affects her directly and is the reason for her many interpretations. The symbols in the story take a great part in the overall plot and

In the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, there are many of literary techniques that illustrates the theme to express the story. Irony, imagery and symbolism are some literary devices that is presented among the story.  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of acceptance and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The story appears to take place during a time where women were oppressed. Women were treated as if they were under one’s thumb in society during this period which is approximately the 19th century.

The narrator implies she is living within a prison as she is cooped up all day with “the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs” (Gilman 3). Having to look at the disgusting yellow wallpaper brings her a sense of obsession to her insanity. To have a moment of self-enjoyment means that it would, “ relieve the press of ideas and rest [her]” to calm her spirits (Gilman 3). However, Gilman symbolizes a lost soul as the woman in the wall is ready to break free. Not being able to take the obsession any longer, she peels the paper, saying, ‘"I've got out at last,"’ comparing the wallpaper to prison (Gilman 12). Her symbolic liberation to freedom is shown as she has, “pulled off most of the paper, so [she] can't [be] put/back” (Gilman 12). Within her own madness and tone shift, she has full belief that she is the woman in the wall, thereby completing the her collapsing