Yellow Wallpaper Interpretation

  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a symbolic tale of one woman’s struggle to break free from her mental prison.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the reader how quickly insanity takes hold when a person is taken out of context and completely isolated from the rest of the world.  The narrator is a depressed woman who cannot handle being alone and retreats into her own delusions as opposed to accepting her reality.  This mental prison is a symbol for the actual repression of women’s rights in society and we see the consequences when a woman tries to free herself from this social slavery.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" tells the story of a woman living in the nineteenth century who suffers from postpartum depression. The true meaning implicit in Charlotte's story goes beyond a simple psychological speculation. The story consists of a series of cleverly constructed short paragraphs, in which the author illustrates, through the unnamed protagonist's experiences, the possible outcome of women's acceptance of men's supposed intellectual superiority. The rigid social norms of the nineteenth century, characterized by oppression and discrimination against women, are supposedly among the causes of the protagonist's depression. However, it is her husband's tyrannical attitude what ultimately

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 Yellow Wallpaper" takes a close look at one woman's mental deterioration. The narrator is emotionally isolated from her husband. Due to the lack of interaction with other people the woman befriends the reader by secretively communicating her story in a diary format. Her attitude towards the wallpaper is openly hostile at the beginning, but ends with an intimate and liberating connection. During the gradual change in the relationship between the narrator and the wallpaper, the yellow paper becomes a mirror, reflecting the process the woman is going through in her room.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator uses the psychological gothic genre to present the portrayal of women, women faced in a marriage, within the time frame of the 1890s. Women were seen as the “shadow” as men dominated society. This is presented throughout the book as many readers first interpitation

The description of the house by the woman is positively somehow. However, she is disturbed by some elements such as; “the rings and things” in the walls, and that the bars on the windows keep showing up. In addition, what was disturbing her the most is the yellow wall paper which is creepy with a formless pattern and that leads her to be totally insane. Readers are introduced to the woman’s desperate thoughts and feelings, yet her husband came and interrupted her thoughts and she was forced to stop writing. Furthermore, she always complains that her husband John who is a physician belittles her illness, her own thoughts and that makes her more depressed. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a deep feminist story that shows the unequal relationship between women and men in the 19th century and uses the yellow

‘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 Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, is a great example of early works pertaining to feminism and the disease of insanity. Charlotte Gilman’s own struggles as a woman, mother, and wife shine through in this short story capturing the haunting realism of a mental breakdown.The main character, much like Gilman herself, slips into bouts of depression after the birth of her child and is prescribed a ‘rest cure’ to relieve the young woman of her suffering. Any use of the mind or source of stimulus is strictly prohibited, including the narrator’s favorite hobby of writing. The woman’s husband, a physician, installs into his wife that the rest treatment is correct and will only due harm if not followed through. This type of treatment ultimately drives the woman insane, causing her to envision a woman crawling behind the yellow wallpaper of her room. Powerlessness and repression the main character is subject to creates an even more poignant message through the narrator’s mental breakdown. The ever present theme of subordination of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is advanced throughout the story by the literary devices of symbolism, imagery, and allegory.

In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator’s husband has rented an old mansion in the country for the summer. John is relying on this getaway as time for his wife’s nervous condition to resolve itself with rest and medicines. As the story unfolds for the readers, it becomes apparent her husband, John, is dominating, and controlling. She feels somewhat doomed that she is unable to change her circumstances and she ends up as a victim, thus confirming the dominance of men over women during that period. Between the narrator’s controlling husband and the deterioration of her mind, she snaps and becomes completely delusional.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through

For centuries women in literature have been depicted as weak, subservient, and unthinking characters. Before the 19th century, they usually were not given interesting personalities and were always the proper, perfect and supportive character to the main manly characters. However, one person, in order to defy and mock the norm of woman characterization and the demeaning mindsets about women, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper." This story, through well crafted symbolisms, brought to surface the troubles that real women face. Her character deals with the feeling of being trapped by the expectations of her husband, with the need to do something creative or constructive, and to have a mind and will of her own. These feelings

The Meaning Behind “The Yellow Wallpaper” Using Feminist theory the reader can understand the meaning in “The Yellow Wallpaper” using word choice, and imagery. To begin with multiple times in the story the protagonists husband John is mentioned but the protagonist's name is never mentioned in the text. John never calls her by her name, instead he calls her “my darling” and phrases such as those. It’s as if the main character is not important. Second of all in the story most of the decisions made for the character are made by John.

My perspective of Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is influenced by a great number of different and diverse methods of reading. However, one cannot overlook the feminist theorists’ on this story, for the story is often proclaimed to be a founding work of feminism. Further, the historical and biographical contexts the story was written in can be enlightened by mentioning Gilman’s relationship with S. Weir Mitchell. And I can’t help but read the story and think of Foucault’s concept of Panopticism as a method of social control. Lastly, of course, there’s the psychological perspective on the story, although in my readings of psychology, particularly the psychological knowledge surrounding both women and queers, I find the

Through its uncomfortable setting, the story gives a visual depiction of the narrator’s descent into madness. The story’s setting unfolds on a large estate, three miles from the nearest village, and set well away from any roads. The grounds of the estate are described as being covered with many large hedges and gates to restrict access. The structure of the estate is built to be very private and isolated, much like the narrator’s current state. “It’s separate from the road and therefore separated from society; the house itself is described as a place that binds and restricts.”

Throughout the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” focuses on women’s rights, lack of communication, and freedom to show importance of the short story as a whole. This story shows various examples of how many women were treated during this time, countless women were treated like a child. The author creates a character with an illness and her husband just cares about her mental well-being, rather than her mental emotions. For example, “[John] took [Jane] in his arms and called [her] a blessed little goose”(4). Her husband treats her like a child and is condescending her by calling her childish names.