"The Yellow Wall-Paper": A Classic Piece of Gothic Literature

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Recommended: Interpretations of the yellow wallpaper

According to the definition provided in Literature and the Language Arts: The American Tradition, Gothic fiction is a style of fiction characterized by a murky atmosphere of horror and gloom and grotesque, mysterious, and violent incidents (229). A setting that evokes strong feelings of foreboding or fearful anticipation is also essential to this genre. Based upon these criteria, "The Yellow Wall-paper" is a classic piece of Gothic literature. In it, Charlotte Perkins Gilman utilizes numerous elements of the Gothic tradition to tell the story of one woman's descent into madness.

The physical setting that Gilman creates in "The Yellow Wall-paper" certainly evokes a feeling of foreboding or nervous anticipation. At the beginning, the narrator suggests that there is something "queer" about the ancestral hall that she and her husband are to inhabit for the summer. The term "ancestral hall" itself conjures the image of an older, mysterious structure, so right away readers get the sense that something out of the ordinary is going to happen in this place. To add to the mystery, the narrator imagines that it is haunted and infers this as the reason it had stood untenanted for so long and why they were able to rent it so cheaply. It has a strangeness that is palpable, and its peculiarities become more apparent as the story continues and contribute to the narrator's growing insanity.

The house is isolated from the rest of the world and from other parts of the estate as well, and this isolation is important to Gilman's story. The narrator explains that the place is "quite alone" (Gilman 1684). Not only does it sit off the road a distance; it is three miles or more from the nearest village. On the estate itself, people are separated...

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...anaging Madness in Gilman's 'The Yellow Wall-paper'." Studies in American

Fiction 30.1 (2002): 3-20. NebraskAccess. Web. 25 June 2010.

"Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 1860-1935." Norton Anthology of American Literature: Shorter

Seventh Edition. Ed. Nina Baym et al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. 1682-1683. Print.

"Edgar Allan Poe: 1809-1849." Literature and the Language Arts: The American Tradition.

Ed. Laurie Skiba et al. St. Paul, MN: EMC/Paradigm Publishing, 2001. 228-229. Print.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-Paper." 1892. Norton Anthology of American

Literature: Shorter Seventh Edition. Ed. Nina Baym et al. New York: W.W. Norton,

2008. 1684-1695. Print.

Hume, Beverly. "Managing Madness in Gilman's 'The Yellow Wall-paper'." Studies in American

Fiction 30.1 (2002): 3-20. NebraskAccess. Web. 25 June 2010.

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