Isolation In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

To begin, the theme that appears throughout the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is the power of isolation and how it can do more harm than good. The theme helps us understand the message the author is trying to convey. The theme can be figured out by identifying the tone, style, characterization, and symbols used throughout the story and piecing them together.
The narrator’s tone varied throughout the story, giving you a sense that she is kind of bipolar. For example, in one of the sections starting from paragraph 170, she discusses how she feels better and cannot wait to leave, but then she starts getting anxious talking about the new stench that is circulating around the house. Moreover, her tone changes

from anxious to intimate when she is discussing her true feelings about her sickness (paragraphs 13 & 14). Also, there are many times where she is very passive with John; in paragraphs 54-57, she asks him to change the wallpaper, he says no, and she agrees. There are moments when she is sarcastic and quite witty in paragraph 7, as she is talking about how John is a physician and that is the reason she has not gotten better. Towards the end of the reading, you sense the tone of desperation and paranoia. When she has her discussions with John about her true feelings, you can hear the way she is pleading for John to take her away (paragraph 133). I feel that the different tones throughout the story help the reader take notice of the shifts of her mannerisms and how she is changing throughout the story.
Furthermore, the style of the story makes you feel like you are reading diary entries where you get the highlights of the narrator’s day and her true thoughts and feelings. She takes a narrative approach when she starts her writing. She would start off with the amount of time has passed (paragraph 40), then discuss interactions she has with John or other people, how she is feeling, and either ends with the wallpaper and how everything about it makes her irritable/infatuated or the entry ends in a fearful tone of getting caught by John or Jennie. The style that it was written helps the reader understand why Jane is the way she is and what goes through her mind as she is isolated from doing anything and is only permitted to sleep.
Lastly, the symbol throughout the story is the wallpaper and everything embedded into it.

The narrator first shares her thoughts with us that, “I never saw a worse paper in my life”, (paragraph 33), by sharing her distaste in it and how it gave her an eerie feeling. Over time, the narrator became obsessed, somewhat possessive of the wallpaper and what it entailed. She started off by just starting at its’ patterns and it would infuriate her. Then, she starts to see a figure of a woman, (paragraph 124). In paragraph 130, she sees the faint figure shake the pattern as if it wants to get out. The figure is Jane’s psychotic persona wanting to escape. She starts getting possessive of the wallpaper when she catches John and Jennie either looking at it or touching it (paragraphs 162-165). She also starts to turn against them as if they are trying to steal the wallpaper from her. At the end of the story, starting from paragraph 194, she claims she had seen the woman only during the daytime and never at night. During the next entry, she wants to free the woman figure and she starts ripping off the paper and starts to creep. The wallpaper overall represented her insanity and what was going on in her head as she remained in the house. Towards the end of the story she just became

insane.
Overall, the elements presented in this story help the reader understand the theme as a whole. The message that isolation is not the cure as it causes more harm than good as we had a character who went from wanting to get better as soon as possible, to a character who just became completely insane.