The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Adventure

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Adventure

of the Speckled Band by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as they are the two

stories that have appealed to me the most.

How does the writer create the sense of:

· Setting and atmosphere

· Tension

· An understanding of the central character’s dilemma?

There are a number of stories in the collection of Nineteenth Century

Short Stories which create the sense of setting, tension and the

character’s dilemma. However, I have decided to focus on ‘The Yellow

Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and ‘The Adventure of the

Speckled Band’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as they are the two stories

that have appealed to me the most.

These stories appealed to me the most as both writers have created a

strong sense of dilemma and growing tension. The setting and the style

is also appealing as the writers add to tension and atmosphere by the

places they set their story.

In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, the room in which the narrator is put, in

order to rest and recover from her illness is the nursery which is

very much like she is imprisoned. She describes it as “barred windows”

and the bed as “iron”, “heavy” and “nailed to the ground”. It is quite

ironic that the room was first a nursery as firstly, the woman has had

no contact with her own baby and also because she has been treated

like a baby by her husband, John:

“He took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose…”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman drops clues to indicate the room was

previously used to perhaps house the insane and not as a nursery. The

bars on the window are to prevent someone from escaping and the

immovable bed is “fairly gnawed.”

In ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’, there are various places in

which the story is set, but it is mainly focused on the mansion in

Stoke Moron, the home of Dr. Grimesby Roylott. The setting of Stoke

Moron creates tension in the story as it provides the setting for

horror and imprisonment. It is a large house with a number of empty

rooms. The surroundings in which it is located creates tension, as it

is quite isolated and separated by trees and bushes. The building is

described as:

“…two curving wings, like the claws of a crab.”

This has a sense of someone or something out to grab you.

In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, Charlotte Perkins Gilman creates the sense

of setting and atmosphere by varying the length of paragraphs and the

tone in which they are described.