The narrator in the yellow wallpaper creates a second self in order to satisfy her emptiness and desire to regain control of her life. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes something that affects her directly. The wallpaper develops its symbolism throughout the story at first its appearance is unpleasant it's ripped, soiled and a gross unclean yellow. The yellow wallpaper takes place back in a time when men held jobs, knowledge, and society over their heads and when women were looked upon as having no effects on society other than carrying children, maintaining a clean home and dinner on the table. The women in the yellow wallpaper is being controlled and oppressed by her husband John, this story is a woman's struggle to regain control of her life
The wallpaper is a symbol of the domestic life that traps so many women. The narrator is eventually driven mad because of her lack of independence." I did write for a while in spite of them ; but it does exhaust me a good deal having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition" her husband won’t even allow her to write that’s how controlling he is. The narrator studies the wall trying to figure out what the woman is doing. The pattern clearly represents prison bars. Jane's mental health declines throughout the story. The narrator's inability to read or write turns her mind to her surroundings. The woman in the wallpaper is strongly entwined with the narrator. The yellow wallpaper appearance isn't very appealing the paper is dull, repellant and revolting. I feel this represents the way John looks at his wife. The wallpaper begins to stare at the narrator with "bulbous eyes" and it has a "vicious" manner. "I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure" the narrator can be seen as provoking, she's always annoying John talking about her illness. This also represents John he is strange in the way he wants to keep his wife sick and unhappy and, he also provoked her by not allowing her to do anything. John makes the narrator rest, during the daytime the women in the wallpaper is quiet and doesn't appear. The narrator is forced to nap during the day even though she would rather
“ most men’s eyes, when you look at them critically, are not like that. They may look at you very expressively, but when you look at them, just as features, they are not very nice.” This quote was said by the narrator it shows how women are timid and uneasy about men. The multiple faces seen through the wallpaper represents all the women who feel trapped and imprisoned by men. The narrator describes the wallpaper “The color is repellent, almost revolting a smoulder unclean yellow” I feel the way the narrator sees the wallpaper is the way men look and see
The pattern on the wallpaper represents to the narrator and to the reader the male-dominated society that is depriving the narrator of her freedom. For the narrator, on a personal level, the pattern on the wallpaper represents the actions of her husband, doctor and her husband's sister to keep her locked in the room and idle. While these people are ostensibly attempting to aid the narrator, they are in effect imprisoning her i...
All through the story, the yellow wallpaper acts as an antagonist, causing her to become very annoyed and disturbed. There is nothing to do in the secluded room but stare at the wallpaper. The narrator tells of the haphazard pattern having no organization or symmetrical plot. Her constant examination of and reflection on the wallpaper caused her much distress.... ...
In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator weaves a tale of a woman with deep seeded feelings of depression. Her husband, a physician, takes her to a house for a span of three months where he puts her in a room to recuperate. That “recuperation” becomes her nemesis. She is so fixated on the “yellow wallpaper” that it seems to serve as the definition of her bondage. She gradually over time begins to realize what the wallpaper seems to represents and goes about plotting ways to overcome it. In a discussion concerning the wallpaper she states, “If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.” “There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.”
“The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.” The woman had started seeing another female in the wallpaper, imprisoned behind bars and shaking the paper to be freed. The wallpaper began depreciating, and so did the conquering influence that male hierarchy forced on women. Women arose to reason out of line, be conscious of their overthrow, and conflict patriarchal statute. The development of the yellow wallpaper and the narrator, within the story, indicates to a triumph over John.
Ever since she has been entrapped in her room, the narrator’s vivid imagination has crafted fictional explanations for the presence of inconsistencies in the wallpaper. She explains them by saying “The front pattern does move! And no wonder! The woman behind shakes it” (Gilman 9). In the story, the narrator explains the woman mentioned creeps in and about the old house she and her husband reside in. Venturing towards the conclusion, the narrator becomes hysterical when thinking about the wallpaper, explaining to her husband’s sister Jennie how she would very much like to tear the wallpaper down. Jennie offers to do it herself, but the narrator is persistent in her desire-”But I am here, and nobody touches that paper but me-not ALIVE”(Gilman 10)! The narrator has realized the apex of her mental instability as the story
In The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator and her husband John have gone to a secluded estate, which they are renting for the summer. John a Doctor wanted her to rest as much as possible by following Dr. S. Weir Mitchell's “Rest Cure”. He also picked the room, which is an airy room on the top floor; she would have preferred the small pretty room on the ground floor, but he did not take her opinion due to he was the physician and knew best. The narrator does as she is told even if she is not found of the estate and the room she would be staying at. She has to rest all day long and personally disagree with what she has to do; she would rather spend her time writing, but her husband and other family members think it is not a good idea. She also described the house in her journal, as mostly positive, but some disturbing elements such as the wallpaper; she also becomes better at hiding her journal from John to continue writing. She complains about Johns controlling ways and how he discourages her from fantasizing of people walking the walkways. She has a wonderful time during the fourth of July with her family, then here obsession grows with the sub-pattern of the wallpaper; John started to think her conditions is improving, but she is sleeping less and less. The sub-pattern sees a woman creeping around and shaking the bars and sh...
The narrator tears and rips at the wallpaper by day to release the image from behind the pattern that haunts her at night. During the day she refrains from looking out the windows because "there are so many of those creeping women" and she begins to "wonder if they all came out of the wallpaper" as she did (668). She represents the struggle of being so close to freedom from the dominating male society but not able to free her spirit from confines of her own world just yet.
The themes of the story are inferiority of women in marriage, expressing yourself, and the effects of treatment and they are universal. The main theme is the importance of expressing yourself, because if you don’t express yourself, you will lose yourself and then you won’t be who you truly are. An important symbol is the yellow wallpaper, which is in the room the narrator spends all her time in and is forced to stay in. She has nothing to do but stare at the intriguing wallpaper that has a woman trapped behind a pattern like she is trapped in her room. She also refers to the wallpaper as paper; therefore she reads the wallpaper like a text decoding the images like words.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a very unique and odd story. In the first read through of the story, the reader is aware that the narrator is sick and losing her mind. Over the course of the story it becomes apparent that the treatment used to heal the narrator isn’t effective. As she begins to completely lose her mind the reader gets a glimpse into her mind. She believes that she is trapped inside of the wallpaper, and by ripping it off the wall she can escape. There are several topics that seem to occur in this story. These topics include Feminism, the role of women in the 1880’s period, and knowledge and understanding of mentally ill. Although these are some of the main points in the story, The Yellow Wallpaper has several topics that are direct
The Yellow Wallpaper was written as a realism story. It showed how woman felt they had the same opportunities as men in their personal choices. In this story, the woman expressed her worries to her husband who through good intentions, required that his wife stay in bed 24/7, and not do any of the things she would normally do. In effect his wife became worse until she reached the limit. The behavior of the husband at this time was completely normal. Men were the higher power over women and women, like the one in this story, felt that they couldn?t stand count for themselves.
The yellow wallpaper itself is one of the largest symbols in the story. It can be interpreted to symbolize many things about the narrator. The wallpaper symbolizes the mental block mean attempted to place on women during the 1800s. The color yellow is often associated with sickness or weakness, and the narrator’s mysterious illness is an example of the male oppression on the narrator. The wallpaper in fact makes the narrator more “sick” as the story progresses. The yellow wallpaper, of which the writer declares, “I never saw a worse paper in my life,” is a symbol of the mental screen that men attempted to enforce upon women. Gilman writes, “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing” this is a symbolic metaphor for restrictions placed on women. The author is saying subliminally that the denial of equality for women by men is a “hideous” act, and that when men do seem to grant women some measure of that equality, it is often “unreliable.” The use of the words “infuriating” and “torturing” are also descriptions of the feelings of women in 19th century society.
The narrator's detailed description of the wallpaper makes the reader understand the woman is well educated and has a keen eye for detail. The wallpaper evokes an emotional response from her, such as her statement, "It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study . . . " (793).
Although both protagonists in the stories go through a psychological disorder that turns their lives upside down, they find ways to feel content once again. In Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," a nervous wife, an overprotective husband, and a large, damp room covered in musty wallpaper all play important roles in driving the wife insane. Gilman's masterful use of not only the setting, both time and place, but also of first person point of view, allows the reader to process the woman's growing insanity. The narrator develops a very intimate relationship with the yellow wallpaper throughout the story, as it is her constant companion. Her initial reaction to it is a feeling of hatred; she dislikes the color and despises the pattern, but does not attribute anything peculiar to it. Two weeks into their stay she begins to project a sort of personality onto the paper, so she studies the pattern more closely, noticing for the first time “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman). At this point, her madness is vague, but becoming more defined, because although the figure that she sees behind the pattern has no solid shape, she dwells on it and
In the short story, the Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator chooses to write about a married woman in a new home who ultimately falls down into a spiral of insanity. The Yellow Wallpaper centers primarily on the narrator and her discovery in the room she must stay in to rest. There she sees a yellow wallpaper that soon begins to take the form of a woman who is trapped, and is shaking the wallpaper in order to get out. The narrator continues trying to figure out the wallpaper and its pattern until eventually deciding to rip the wallpaper off in an attempt to free the creeping woman trapped inside. Thus, the narrator in the Yellow Wallpaper suffers a mental collapse by going insane in her attempt to understand the wallpaper which can be attributed
"The Yellow Wallpaper" motivated the female mind of creativity and mental strength through a patriarchal order of created gender roles and male power during the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. While John represented characteristics of a typical male of his time, the yellow wallpaper represented a controlling patriarchal society; a sin of inequality that a righteous traitor needed to challenge and win. As the wallpaper deteriorates, so does the suppressing effect that male hierarchy imposed on women. Male belief in their own hierarchy was not deteriorating. Females began to think out of line, be aware of their suppression, and fight patriarchal rule. The progression of the yellow wallpaper and the narrator, through out the story, leads to a small win over John. This clearly represents and motivates the first steps of a feminist movement into the twentieth century.