Entrapment In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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The main character in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” narrates her own life; however, the reader never learns her name. Gilman has skillfully taken the reader into the inner-most thoughts of a woman’s mind and experiences, yet the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” remains unnamed, a likeness of her status in society. Narration, of course, is an important piece of any story or novel, and as readers, we are always assessing whether the narrator of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” appears believable and trustworthy. The narrator of the story is believable as the story opens, but as her mental state diminishes, does her narrative jump on the bandwagon? As you read this story, consider the part that narration plays in the development …show more content…

The descriptions of the wallpaper get more and more elaborate and she begins to see a woman in the pattern. She feels that the woman seems trapped in the wall paper for example: “And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” (398). As seen in the earlier quote, the protagonist becomes so fixated with the idea of the woman in the wallpaper that it consumes her, and she starts to connect with the woman. By the narrator beginning as a reliable source and writing about her summer house, and her husband, she creates a trust with the audience. As a result, the role of the unreliable narrator allows the author to force the reader to believe the story through the main character’s point of view, therefore the audience connects with her, not against her. The narration creates this insinuation of John being in control of her, when really everyone and everything in the story is all about the protagonist’s illness. Therefore, creating the illusion that she is a victim allows John to be the offender, and begins creating the feeling of entrapment. The protagonist feels trapped by John, trapped by her illness, and finally, trapped by the wallpaper. However, because of the narrator’s mental condition you question when her journal entries are sane and when they are twisted. For example;” Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind and sometimes only one”, this exert sounds as though she is metaphorically speaking to the reader like she knows the woman do not exist (401). The protagonist seems both unhinged and sane in this quote, the confusion is done purposely by the author to bewilder the audience. Many critics wonder whether this story is meant as one’s own documentation about Gilman or a mirror image of a women’s place in society in 1892. However, due to her design of this unreliable narrator, it produces the allusion that this story has many

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