Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman

The wallpaper symbolizes the dominating effect that men had on women in the late 1800’s. The symbol of the wallpaper grows throughout the story, from the moment the narrator describes the wallpaper as “The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smouldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 474). As she begins to stare and find the meaning of the wallpaper, she begins to find patterns, and particular marking, and because of this she finds a woman trapped behind bars. As she notices as the women tries to escape and the narrator “peeled off yards of the paper” (Gilman 482). The wallpaper represents how women are trapped by the dominating society of men.

It makes me think of Eng... ... middle of paper ... ...chniques that Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses in "The Yellow Wallpaper" to suggest that a type of loneliness (in women) caused by imprisoning oppression can lead to the deadliest form of insanity. By using setting, Gilman shows how the barred windows intensifies the young woman's imprisoning oppression, the isolated summer home represents the loneliness the young woman feels, and her hallucinations of the wallpaper pattern indicates her transition to insanity. Wallpaper symbolism is used throughout the story the pattern representing the strangling nature of the imprisoning oppression, the fading yellow color showing the fading away of the young woman, and the hovering smell representing the deadly insanity to which she succumbs. Like the darkness that quickly consumes, the imprisoning loneliness of oppression swallows its victim down into the abyss of insanity.

Quawas offers honest insight and advice on “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and its symbolic significance that is portrayed throughout the short story. In the process, Quawas offers a deeper interpretation of the main character decline into madness and how the direct identification of the narrator with the wallpaper brings many underlying symbols that lie within the story. “The narrator is torn asunder between her own personal feelings, which are indeed healthy and positive, and the patriarchal society's view of what is proper and decent behaviour for women. Since she has internalized society's expectations of women, this conflict is felt as a schizoid within herself” (Quawas, 44). This supporting evidence helps give bigger insight of a deeper meaning to the correlation of insanity and symbols in the actual

Her use of sensory words to describe the wallpaper and how is she is seeing things within the paper show she is not in her rational mind. The woman claims the wallpaper smells yellow (Gilman); a color cannot be smelled. Her senses are heightened because of this wallpaper. In her depiction of the wallpaper’s design, the narrator writes in great detail the images she is discovering. The curves of it “commit suicide”, the patterns “crawl” and “creep”, and there are “unblinking eyes are everywhere” (Gilman).

In the following paragraph, it is apparent that her mind now consumed by the yellow wallpaper and perplexing patterns, thus becoming essential within the plot. An indication that the narrator is the crawling women is evident when John’s sister spoke the next line. “Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched and that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes, and John’s, and she wished we would be more careful”( The Yellow Wallpaper, Page 82, Paragraph 3). The pattern within the yellow wallpaper has now become the narrator's main objective. She becomes insane trying to release the woman stuck inside, which resembles herself trapped within her own life.

The Truth Hidden Behind Madness Throughout the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman the reader can identify how the narrator’s interpretation of the yellow wallpapers changes as she becomes mad and fixated on the pattern hidden within. As the story progresses, the viewer can discover how the wallpaper becomes significant to the narrator, through her fascination with the ostensibly formless pattern, and urge to figure out what it means. The pattern within the unsettling yellow wallpaper is a vital symbol within the text because as the narrator’s interpretation of the pattern changes, the wallpaper figuratively begins to reflect how she feels trapped. The narrator’s obsession with the patterned wallpaper is compelled

The idea she gives in her article based on Gilman not having the same view as the novel “Jasmine”. There is depression in one and freedom in another, but the comparison that they both have are merely on women trying gain there freedom back. Women equality had was a great issue to women back then, especially, when a situation explained in “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator does not understand that she is the one trapped behind the wallpaper behind those bars. Nadkarni explains, “the story charts the narrator 's growing madness and preoccupation with the wallpaper of her sickroom and ends with her identification with the woman she sees "crawling" (55) behind the "bars" (52) of the prisonlike pattern” (219). She discovers the narrator as an insane woman who does not understand that who she discovers behind the wallpaper is she on reflection; she is the one escaping from her own miserable life.

She writes that both of the texts are feminist and at the same time one ends the story in madness while the other has a happy ending. She thinks “The Yellow Wallpaper” depends on race and class specific account of the patriarchal society. Nadkarni writes, “The story charts the narrator 's growing madness and preoccupation with the wallpaper of her sickroom and ends with her identification with the woman she sees "crawling" (55) behind the "bars" (52) of the prison- like pattern” (219). Gilman trying to free the woman trapped in the wallpaper made her go crazy and she ends up her madness by tearing the wallpaper. This clearly states that women at that had to suffer a lot due to male dominance.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a woman suffering from postpartum depression is prescribed a “rest cure”. She is forced to stay in a room with yellow wallpaper which She says is “committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 419). The woman convinces herself that there is a woman trapped in the yellow wallpaper, and it is her job to free and catch her. She begins to mix reality with fantasy and she unknowingly becomes suicidal and drives herself mad. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” uses dialogue, narration, and symbolism to show that women are not taken seriously when it comes to mental health.

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist symbolizes the effect of the oppression of women in society in the Nineteenth Century. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the author reveals the narrator is torn between hate and love, but emotion is difficult to determine. The effects are produced by the use of complex themes used in the story, which assisted her oppression and reflected on her self-expression. The yellow wallpaper is a symbol of oppression in a woman who felt her duties were limited as a wife and mother. The wallpaper shows a sign of female imprisonment.