Examples Of Madness In The Yellow Wallpaper

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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 …show more content…

As the narrator makes this discovery, the reader can observe how the wallpaper is now central to the plot. “You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you across the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream”(The Yellow Wallpaper, Page 81, Paragraph 4). In the following paragraph, it is apparent that her mind is now consumed by the yellow wallpaper and perplexing patterns, thus becoming essential within the plot. An indication that the crawling women is the narrator herself, is evident when John’s sister, Jennie spoke, “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 being trapped within her own life. An example of this can be seen observed in the following line, “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper” ( The Yellow Wallpaper, Page 85, Paragraph 2-3). The narrator’s suffering from the degree she is at, getting worse and worse within her deliria shes find the truth. The contrast between the unknown narrator and questionable women helps to reveal the significance and development of the yellow wallpaper throughout the story. From John’s constant constraints, the horrid wallpaper, and not being able to write, the narrator becomes creative through her hysteria envisioning a woman, who self subconsciously

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