The Yellow Wallpaper

713 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The symbolism in the yellow wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is an observation on the male oppression of women in a patriarchal society. The story itself presents an interesting look at one woman's struggle to deal with both mental and physical confinement. Through Gilman's writing the reader becomes aware of the mental and physical confinement, which the narrator endures, and the overall effect and reaction to this confinement.
The story begins with the narrator’s description of the physically confining elements surrounding her. The setting is cast in an isolated colonial mansion, set back from the road and three miles from the village (674). The property contains hedges that surround the garden, walls that surround the mansion, and locked gates that guarantee seclusion. Even the connected garden represents confinement, with box-bordered paths and grape covered arbors. This image of isolation continues in the mansion. Although she prefers the downstairs room with roses all over the windows that opened on the piazza the narrator finds herself consigned to an out of the way dungeon-like nursery on the second floor. "The windows in the nursery provide views of the garden, arbors, bushes, and trees”(674). These views reinforce isolationism since, the beauty can be seen from the room but not touched or experienced. There is a gate at the head of the stairs, presumably to keep children contained in their play area of the upstairs with the nursery. Additionally, the bed is immoveable " I lie here on this great immovable bed- it is nailed down, I believe-and follow that pattern about by the hour" (678). It is here in this position of physical confinement that the narrator secretly describes her descent into madness.
Although the physical confinement drains the narrators strength and will, the mental and emotional confinement symbolized in the story play an important role in her ultimate fall into dementia. By being forced to be her own company she is confined within her mind. Likewise part of the narrators mental confinement stems from her recognition of her physical confinement. The depression the narrator has experienced associated with child bearing is mentally confining as well. "It is fortunate Mary is good with the baby. Such a dear Baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous"(675). Specifically, she cannot control her emotion or manage her guilt over her inability to care for her child. These structures of confinement contribute to the rapid degeneration of her state of mind.

Show More
Related

  • How Does The Yellow Wallpaper Reveal About A Woman's Gradual Descent Into Insanity

    1013 Words  | 3 Pages

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about a woman’s gradual descent into insanity, after the birth of her child. The story was written in 1892 after the author herself suffered from a nervous breakdown, soon after the birth of her daughter in 1885. Gilman did spend a month in a sanitarium with the urging of her physician husband. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about herself, during the timeframe of when Gilman was in the asylum.

    Read More

  • The Narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Short Story, The Yellow Wallpaper

    565 Words  | 2 Pages

    The narrator is trying to get better from her illness but her husband “He laughs at me so about this wallpaper” (515). He puts her down and her insecurities do not make it any better. She is treated like a child. John says to his wife “What is it little girl” (518)? Since he is taking care of her she must obey him “There comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word”. The narrator thinks John is the reason why she cannot get better because he wants her to stay in a room instead of communicating with the world and working outside the house.

    Read More

  • Control in The Yellow Wallpaper

    993 Words  | 2 Pages

    To initiate on the theme of control I will proceed to speak about the narrators husband, who has complete control over her. Her husband John has told her time and time again that she is sick; this can be viewed as control for she cannot tell him otherwise for he is a physician and he knows better, as does the narrator’s brother who is also a physician. At the beginning of the story she can be viewed as an obedient child taking orders from a professor, and whatever these male doctors say is true. The narrator goes on to say, “personally, I disagree with their ideas” (557), that goes without saying that she is not very accepting of their diagnosis yet has no option to overturn her “treatment” the bed rest and isolation. Another example of her husband’s control would be the choice in room in which she must stay in. Her opinion is about the room she stays in is of no value. She is forced to stay in a room she feels uneasy about, but John has trapped her in this particular room, where the windows have bars and the bed is bolted to the floor, and of course the dreadful wall paper, “I never worse paper in my life.” (558) she says. Although she wishes to switch rooms and be in one of the downstairs rooms one that, “opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window. ...” (558). However, she knows that, “John would not hear of it.”(558) to change the rooms.

    Read More

  • A Feminist in Action in The Yellow Wallpaper

    1794 Words  | 4 Pages

    The narrator makes comments and observations that demonstrate her will to overcome the oppression of the male dominant society. The conflict between her views and those of the society can be seen in the way she interacts physically, mentally, and emotionally with the three most prominent aspects of her life: her husband, John, the yellow wallpaper in her room, and her illness, "temporary nervous depression. " In the end, her illness becomes a method of coping with the injustices forced upon her as a woman. As the reader delves into the narrative, a progression can be seen from the normality the narrator displays early in the passage, to the insanity she demonstrates near the conclusion.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis Essay

    862 Words  | 2 Pages

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, is a first-person narrative written in the style of a journal. It takes place during the nineteenth century and depicts the narrator’s time in a temporary home her husband has taken her to in hopes of providing a place to rest and recover from her “nervous depression”. Throughout the story, the narrator’s “nervous condition” worsens. She begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper in her room to the point of insanity. She imagines a woman trapped within the patterns of the paper and spends her time watching and trying to free her. Gilman uses various literary elements throughout this piece, such as irony and symbolism, to portray it’s central themes of restrictive social norms

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper

    339 Words  | 1 Pages

    In a female oppressive story about a woman driven from postpartum depression to insanity, Charlotte Gilman uses great elements of literature in her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. Her use of feminism and realism demonstrates how woman's thoughts and opinions were considered in the early 1900?s.

    Read More

  • Symbols and Symbolism Essay - Imagery and Symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper

    734 Words  | 2 Pages

    The story begins when she and her husband have just moved into a colonial mansion to relieve her chronic nervousness.  An ailment her husband has conveniently diagnosed.  The husband is a physician and in the beginning of her writing she has nothing but good things to say about him, which is very obedient of her.  She speaks of her husband as if he is a father figure and nothing like an equal, which is so important in a relationship.  She writes, "He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction."  It is in this manner that she first delicately speaks of his total control over her without meaning to and how she has no choices whatsoever.  This control is perhaps so imbedded in our main character that it is even seen in her secret writing; "John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition...so I will let it alone and talk about the house."  Her husband suggests enormous amounts of bed rest and no human interaction at all.  He chooses a "prison-like" room for them to reside in that he anticipates will calm our main character even more into a comma like life but instead awakens her and slowly but surely opens her eyes to a woman tearing the walls down to freedom.

    Read More

  • The Nightmare of The Yellow Wallpaper

    842 Words  | 2 Pages

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" was one of the first works to chronicle the process of going insane. Its harrowing quality derives from the fact that the author knows whereof she speaks. But even though it is based on Gilman's own breakdown, the story is crafted as a work of art, because the nightmarish motif of the yellow wallpaper itself serves as a metaphor for the disintegration of the protagonist's mind.

    Read More

  • A Unique Perspective of The Yellow Wallpaper

    2856 Words  | 6 Pages

    My perspective of Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is influenced by a great number of different and diverse methods of reading. However, one cannot overlook the feminist theorists’ on this story, for the story is often proclaimed to be a founding work of feminism. Further, the historical and biographical contexts the story was written in can be enlightened by mentioning Gilman’s relationship with S. Weir Mitchell. And I can’t help but read the story and think of Foucault’s concept of Panopticism as a method of social control. Lastly, of course, there’s the psychological perspective on the story, although in my readings of psychology, particularly the psychological knowledge surrounding both women and queers, I find the discipline incredibly tainted with patriarchy and heterosexism.

    Read More

  • Importance of Setting and Wallpaper in The Yellow Wallpaper

    1463 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Room itself represents the author’s unconscious protective cell that has encased her mind, represented by the woman, for a very long time. This cell is slowly deteriorating and losing control of her thoughts. I believe that this room is set up as a self-defense mechanism when the author herself is put into the asylum. She sets this false wall up to protect her from actually becoming insane and the longer she is in there the more the wall paper begins to deteriorate. This finally leads to her defense weakening until she is left with just madness and insanity. All of the characters throughout the story represent real life people with altered roles in her mind. While she is in the mental institute she blends reality with her subconscious, forming this story from events that are happening all around here in the real world.

    Read More

  • Suppression of Women in The Yellow Wallpaper

    1807 Words  | 4 Pages

    "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tells the story of a woman's descent into madness as a result of the "rest and ignore the problem cure" that is frequently prescribed to cure hysteria and nervous conditions in women.  More importantly, the story is about control and attacks the role of women in society.  The narrator of the story is symbolic for all women in the late 1800s, a prisoner of a confining society.  Women are expected to bear children, keep house and do only as they are told.  Since men are privileged enough to have education, they hold jobs and make all the decisions.  Thus, women are cast into the prison of acquiescence because they live in a world dominated by men.  Since men suppress women, John, the narrator's husband, is presumed to have control over the protagonist.  Gilman, however, suggests otherwise.  She implies that it is a combination of society's control as well as the woman's personal weakness that contribute to the suppression of women.  These two factors result in the woman's inability to make her own decisions and voice opposition to men.

    Read More

  • Yellow Wallpaper: Beyond The Wall

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman was analyzed by many perspective readers and writers. In my research paper I analyzed work by Ann Oakley and Karen Ford. These two authors had similar but yet different arguments. During my review process on both articles, I found that there can be many interpretations of any literary work. When you typically see topics written about women, you tend to see biased explanations. Reading these from a female standpoint you would go on to assume the writer will only defend what is morally right.

    Read More

  • Literary Criticism of Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper'

    842 Words  | 2 Pages

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" first appeared in 1892 and became a notary piece of literature for it' s historical and influential context. Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" was a first hand account of the oppression faced toward females and the mentally ill,whom were both shunned in society in the late 1890's. It is the story of an unnamed woman confined by her doctor-husband to an attic nursery with barred windows and a bolted down bed. Forbidden to write, the narrator-protagonist becomes obsessed with the room's wallpaper, which she finds first hideous and then fascinating; on it she eventually deciphers an imprisoned woman whom she attempts to liberate by peeling the paper off the wall. The narrators' condition weakens at the end of the story, as she is driven mad by numerous influences who tried controlling her for what they believed to be assisting her. The images the character makes in her mind are related to her husband and the confinement she is forced to endure and because of the continuing pressure, until she finally cracks.

    Read More

  • Response to The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    809 Words  | 2 Pages

    The woman behind this work of literature portrays the role of women in the society during that period of time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a well written story describing a woman who suffers from insanity and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The author uses her own experience to criticize male domination of women during the nineteenth century. Although the story was written fifty years ago, "The Yellow Wallpaper" still brings a clear message how powerless women were during that time.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis

    1149 Words  | 3 Pages

    As her obsession grew, she began to write. She believed that it helped her cope with her situation by calming down her nerves, but John was correct though; her writing was only further developing her illness. Since her mind was exploring her thoughts more, she was unable to distract her mind from the obsession of the wallpaper. Now what the narrator “weights” she carried were at its peak. Her obsession was at its highest and she began to lose sight of reality. She did not have physical pain but her mental pain was tremendous. Her illness reached a point that was

    Read More

More about The Yellow Wallpaper

Open Document