The Role Of The Narrator In The Yellow Wallpaper

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In the short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” the narrator initially feels stable and realistic, but further into the story, the narrator begins to feel puzzled, and finally, she experiences a mental breakdown. Throughout the story, the narrator is so intensely captivated by yellow wallpaper that she eventually gives the paper realistic features hoping to overcome her inner struggles. Ultimately, the narrator effectively takes control of herself. Using the wallpaper as a symbol, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, in “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” describes the narrator’s feelings of confinement and her inferiority because of her marriage during the 19th century. When the narrator and her husband settle into a temporary house, she is uneasy about the home and feels it is haunted. As her husband laughs at her thoughts, she does not mind as she comments, “but one expects that in marriage” (Gillman 647). In the home, she is bothered by the bars on the windows, but more troubling to the narrator is the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom. The narrator believes the yellow wallpaper is affecting
She begins to peel the wallpaper off the wall to free the mysterious woman and tries to ignore her increasing anger about her marriage. As the narrator continues to tear the wallpaper, she forgets about her sense of individuality and gradually joins with the woman behind the wallpaper. When the narrator identifies herself with the trapped woman in the wallpaper, she realizes that other females are required to sneak behind various difficulties in their lives and that she is in need of freedom. This action represents her struggle to retain or regain her sanity. The narrator is trying to free herself from the pattern of the wallpaper and the imprisonment of her room and marriage. She wants to release the woman, who is herself, behind the paper because she is struggling from

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