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The yellow wallpaper yellow symbolism
The yellow wallpaper yellow symbolism
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In the short story, “The Yellow-Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, many readers may only focus on the authors descriptions of how the narrator feels about the yellow wall-paper and interpret it as a depressed, distraught wife complaining about her life and how she does not like the yellow wall-paper. However, while the yellow wall-paper may be portrayed in that way on the surface, Gilman expresses one of her primary focuses as a writer through the symbol of the yellow-wallpaper. Gilman wrote many works about the unequal treatment and expression of women. As readers read deeper into the text, they will notice how the details of the yellow wall- paper actually represents pain and limitations the narrator endures throughout her marriage. …show more content…
Throughout the short story, the narrators husband constantly controlled and demeaned her by calling her “little girl” (491) and by never letting her make decisions for herself or do things “without special direction” (487). This constant abuse finally took a toll on the narrator until one day she decided she had to “try it, little by little” (495) to remove the wall paper that had been eating away at her. As she begins to peel off the yellow wall-paper she states that she “wants to astonish” (496) her husband by doing this. This represents how suppressed the narrator is in her controlling marriage and how she realizes that her husband knows he has control over her and would’ve never thought she would be finally peeling off the wall-paper. Next, she describes how the yellow wall-paper “sticks horribly and the pattern enjoys it” (496). The description of the wall-paper being sticky represents how hard it is to break free from a controlling marriage. Her husband finds her as a weak women and also enjoys watching her suffer from his constant restraints that he causes her to endure. Also while the narrator is having a hard time ripping off the sticky wall-paper she notices women outside her window and wonders “if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did” (496). This statement portrays how the narrator feels trapped by this wall-paper that represents her marriage and wonders if the other women outside had to escape from their own wall-paper. The narrator also makes a reference in this scene that everything outside is “green instead of yellow” (496). The color green to the narrator represents a fresh new life without her controlling husband, while staying inside the room with the yellow colored wall-paper represents her submissive and lack of self-expression
The wallpaper in her bedroom is a hideous yellow. "It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others" (pg 393) The wallpaper is symbolic of the sickness the author has by the end of the story. Yellow is often a color associated with illness. It’s been suggested that she herself was clawing at the paper during moments of insanity. But there are many times when she is sane, and sees the marks on the wallpaper, and she writes about how others who had spent time in this room tried to remove the paper as well.
The pattern on the wallpaper represents to the narrator and to the reader the male-dominated society that is depriving the narrator of her freedom. For the narrator, on a personal level, the pattern on the wallpaper represents the actions of her husband, doctor and her husband's sister to keep her locked in the room and idle. While these people are ostensibly attempting to aid the narrator, they are in effect imprisoning her i...
All through the story, the yellow wallpaper acts as an antagonist, causing her to become very annoyed and disturbed. There is nothing to do in the secluded room but stare at the wallpaper. The narrator tells of the haphazard pattern having no organization or symmetrical plot. Her constant examination of and reflection on the wallpaper caused her much distress.... ...
The windows are barred, symbolizing the restrictive nature of the narrator’s mental condition. She is imprisoned within her mind. Her room was once a nursery, symbolizing that she is helpless and dependent on her husband’s care, similar to how a parent is reliant on the care of it’s parents, “… for the windows are barred for little children,” (Gilman 2). The narrator is not only trapped by her own mind and mental condition, but her husband’s wishes and expectations as well. The most significant symbol within the story is the yellow wallpaper. Initially, the narrator only views the wallpaper as something unpleasant, but over time she becomes fascinated with it’s formless pattern and tries to figure out how it’s organized. She discovers a sub-pattern within in it in which she distinguishes as a barred change with the heads of women that have attempted to escape the wallpaper like the woman she has been “seeing” moving within the wallpaper, “And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads” (Gilman 8). The yellow wallpaper is symbolic of a women’s place in society within the nineteenth century. It was not commonplace, or deemed acceptable, for women to be financially independent and/or engage in intellectual activity. The wallpaper is symbolic of those economic, intellectual, and social restrictions women were held to, as well as the domestic lives they were expected to lead. The narrator is so restricted by these social norms that her proper name is never given within the story, her only identity is “John’s wife”. At the climax of the story, the narrator identifies completely with the woman in the wallpaper and believes that by tearing the wallpaper, both she and the woman would be freed of their domestic prisons, “…there are so many of those
The themes of the story are inferiority of women in marriage, expressing yourself, and the effects of treatment and they are universal. The main theme is the importance of expressing yourself, because if you don’t express yourself, you will lose yourself and then you won’t be who you truly are. An important symbol is the yellow wallpaper, which is in the room the narrator spends all her time in and is forced to stay in. She has nothing to do but stare at the intriguing wallpaper that has a woman trapped behind a pattern like she is trapped in her room. She also refers to the wallpaper as paper; therefore she reads the wallpaper like a text decoding the images like words.
When looking at two nineteenth century works of change for two females in an American society, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Stephen Crane come to mind. A feminist socialist and a realist novelist capture moments that make their readers rethink life and the world surrounding. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published in 1892, about a white middle-class woman who was confined to an upstairs room by her husband and doctor, the room’s wallpaper imprisons her and as well as liberates herself when she tears the wallpaper off at the end of the story. On the other hand, Crane’s 1893 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the realist account of a New York girl and her trials of growing up with an alcoholic mother and slum life world. The imagery in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets uses color in unconventional ways by embedding color in their narratives to symbolize the opposite of their common meanings, allowing these colors to represent unique associations; to support their thematic concerns of emotional, mental and societal challenges throughout their stories; offering their reader's the opportunity to question the conventionality of both gender and social systems.
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.
The yellow wallpaper itself is one of the largest symbols in the story. It can be interpreted to symbolize many things about the narrator. The wallpaper symbolizes the mental block mean attempted to place on women during the 1800s. The color yellow is often associated with sickness or weakness, and the narrator’s mysterious illness is an example of the male oppression on the narrator. The wallpaper in fact makes the narrator more “sick” as the story progresses. The yellow wallpaper, of which the writer declares, “I never saw a worse paper in my life,” is a symbol of the mental screen that men attempted to enforce upon women. Gilman writes, “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing” this is a symbolic metaphor for restrictions placed on women. The author is saying subliminally that the denial of equality for women by men is a “hideous” act, and that when men do seem to grant women some measure of that equality, it is often “unreliable.” The use of the words “infuriating” and “torturing” are also descriptions of the feelings of women in 19th century society.
The paper “sticks” as her husband attempts to cling to her, but she successfully rids herself of the horrid paper. As the speaker has grown progressively senile, she imagines herself as a woman freeing herself from her marriage, by tearing down the atrocious wallpaper that has been bothering
In literature, authors always apply different techniques to better illustrate their arguments or opinions on situations or ideas related to their backgrounds. For Charlotte Gilman, she advocated for women’s identity in society in her works. However, the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” made her distinct from others due to her clever use of symbolism and unique narration that engaged and entertained the fans of horror genre. Despite being a fiction, most of the story correlated with her marriage life and health condition. Through the semi-autobiographical psychological horror “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Gilman defined herself as an artistic yet rebellious feminist author by symbolizing the wallpaper as the social barrier against women and the nervous wife as herself and other women who needed to strike back to regain their rights.
In the “Yellow Wallpaper”, when the wife was finally able to rip the wallpaper apart and escape that room, that is her leaving the confinement of men over what women should be. This is a powerful statement because that is leaving behind her domestic lifestyle, leaving behind her forced life. It represented her being free from all the things she was forced to do. Men fear being overshadowed by people, especially women. Superiority over others is what gives them pleasure.
(489). The act of ripping down the paper was to strip the narrator of all her burdens that caused her to feel so trapped in her life. By clearing the wallpaper off the wall the narrator begins a new chapter in her life as a ‘free woman’. The desperate need to free the woman behind the wall was the narrator trying to break out of her
“John is so queer now, that I don’t want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don’t want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself.”(Gilman) She is now imagining the woman out of the paper and creeping around outside. She wants to catch her even though there is no one to even catch, but she doesn’t know that. Her husband is at work all day which gives her the opportunity to creep around, explore and find this woman. Her husband John would suspect her of something if she left the room at night so she must do it during the day. This quote shows symbolism in relation to the fact that the woman in the paper is symbolizing the narrator wandering around outside. Moreover, she is clearly hallucinating about this woman in wallpaper. Her visibility of insanity is quite clear when the author says, “That was clever, for really I wasn’t alone a bit! 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.” (Gilman) The narrator is imagining interactions that have occurred with the woman she sees in the wall. They begin to peel off all the paper, working together in her mind. She then begins to imagine the wallpaper laughing at her when the sun is out. It can be concluded that her husband should not be taking care of her because he is the sole reason she is insane in the first place. This quote demonstrates symbolism because the woman in the wall represents the psychotic state that the narrator’s husband has driven her to. With this in mind, the narrator becomes connected with the woman in the wall. “I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path. I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anyone come in, till John comes. I want to astonish him. I’ve got a
Gilman incorporates strong imagery throughout "The Yellow Wallpaper" to set the scene for the story and foreshadow the certain madness that is to come of the narrator. As the story progresses, so does the woman's declining mental status. An example of how imagery is used to display the inferiority of women is the fact that the woman in the story is confined to the old nursery room for most of her time. Gilman describes the room as "It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium...windows barred for little children" (Gilman 311). The woman focuses often on the wallpaper of the nursery. It is described as, "flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin..the color is repellent...a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight." The fact that she focuses so meticulously on the yellow wallpaper shows her crazed psyche. Later in the story, the narrator writes, "There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down...up and down and sideways they crawl...those absurd unblinking eyes everywhere" This makes the reader feel uneasy and explicitly details the madness of her neurosis.
Through the narrator’s obsession with the wall, she begins to envision a woman, that is trapped behind the Yellow Wallpaper. “By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still.” (pg. 166) From this line, it is made clear to the reader that the pattern of the wall symbolizes the social constraints women face daily. While the woman behind the wallpaper is just a figment of the narrator’s imagination, she metaphorically represents the speaker and her desperation to break free of the mental and physical oppression that has been placed upon her not only by her husband but also society as well; this is seen in the line “I suppose I shall have to get backs behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard”