A Critical Analysis Of 'The Yellow Wallpaper'

She also speaks of how the children must have really hated it and that is why is has been peeled off in places (Gilman 957). The wallpaper continues to bother Jane throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”, but Jane also begins to dislike her husband. Jane is often very inconsistent about when she likes her husband, and when she hates him. She seems to constantly battle with the idea that her spouse is actually helping her when he tries to prevent her from doing things such as writing (Hume 6). Jane also seems to be fearful of her husband and even states so “The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John,” (Gilman 963).

The females in the short stories gradually sink into madness due to the isolation and restriction forced into their lives. Due to Jane’s husband enforcing a life in confinement due to her nervous breakdowns, it only takes a little time for the isolation to drive her mad. In the beginning of the story, it is clear that the narrator, Jane, suffers from post-natal depression, which is a common effect after childbirth. The way Jane sees her living quarters is much different than it actually is. She imagines the rings on the walls, the torn up wallpaper, and the bars on the windows as a nursery or a school for boys, when those features actually lead the audience to realize that it is a room for the mentally ill.

“The story examines one woman’s descent into madness due to inactivity.” She also states that it examines the struggles between marriage and career, social expectations and personal goals. The story is about a woman being trapped in her marriage, she’s trying free herself. The narrator ends up going insane because she’s forbidden to write the only thing she can do is rest. The struggle between marriage and career is that John is her husband and her doctor. During the story he’s trying to cure her depression and doesn’t act much like her husband as he does her doctor.

Because her husband, John, does not take her illness seriously and neglects to get her out of the house, her mind cannot take it and she loses her sanity. It should be clear to the reader, since she thinks she and the imaginary woman has worked together to pull the wallpaper down that she believes the women in the yellow wallpaper and she are both trapped and are both working together to escape. (200) Likewise, when she tells John, “I got out at last”, and, “in spite of you and jane! And I pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back”, By her saying this to John tells you she thinks she is free, because she has torn down the yellow wallpaper. She is no longer saying anything about a woman being in the wallpaper, because in her mind, she is now the

The character in the story is Louise Mallard and she has a heart problem and she can`t take things easily. Her husband loved her to death and he still thinks that right after her death. She wanted to start a new life without her husband but later found out and died of the shock of her husband at the front door. Her emotional problems were the new life she was going to start and the freedom that is about to come to her. “Sobbing came up her throat and shook her as a child who has cried itself to sleep and continues to sob in its dreams”.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, was mainly about this women who was suffering from Nervous Condition and Depression. Jane felt unease in the house. Her husband was a Physician and he kept telling her that nothing was wrong with her, but she felt like something was wrong in her mind. She told her husband that the wallpaper was ugly in the house and she wanted to change the wallpaper. He went on to say that she was over reacting.

No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. There comes John, and I must put this away.- he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman 17). Gilman uses dramatic irony extensively throughout the story to leave hints about the growing distress in the narrator’s life. She deduces from bars on the window that her room must formerly have been a nursery for children and that they had been responsible for the large sections torn off the wallpaper.

In everyday day life we go through changes and sometimes we even break down to the point we do not know what to do with ourselves, but in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story” The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator is an obsessive person. The story focuses on a woman who is going through postpartum depression and has had a nervous breakdown. Her husband John moves her into a home where he wants her to rest in isolation to recover from her disorder. Throughout her time in the room the narrator discovers new things and finally understands life. The narrator is trying to get better from her illness but her husband “He laughs at me so about this wallpaper” (515).

In the beginning on the story, the reader could question whether she was really that sick. Her husband, John, restricted her to one room in the house with a ugly mustard yellow wallpaper, which the wife hated. As the days continued, the hatred turn into a weird fascination, which turned into a madness that engulfed the narrator. Since the narrator was restricted only to her room, she didn’t have the luxury of society judging her and her actions; nevertheless, her behavior, if broadcasted to the public, would be harshly criticized. Readers can infer that the wife viewed herself as a confused woman who justed wanted to live a little.

One theme of the book is weakness of character; this is shown by Ethan’s marraige, his inability to stand up to his wife, and his involvement concerning the "accident." The first way weakness of charcter is shown in the book is through the marriage of Ethan and his wife. He married her because she had tried to help his mother recover from an illness, and once his mother died he could not bear the thought of living in the house alone. His wife was seven years his senior and always seemed to have some kind of illness. It seemed all she ever did was complain, and he resented this because it stifled his growing soul.