The Yellow Wallpaper

896 Words2 Pages

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

How Does The Yellow Wallpaper Reveal About A Woman's Gradual Descent Into Insanity
1013 Words | 3 Pages
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.
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Metamorphosis of Woman in The Yellow Wallpaper and If I Were a Man by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
768 Words | 2 Pages
In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator weaves a tale of a woman with deep seeded feelings of depression. Her husband, a physician, takes her to a house for a span of three months where he puts her in a room to recuperate. That “recuperation” becomes her nemesis. She is so fixated on the “yellow wallpaper” that it seems to serve as the definition of her bondage. She gradually over time begins to realize what the wallpaper seems to represents and goes about plotting ways to overcome it. In a discussion concerning the wallpaper she states, “If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.” “There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.”
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The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis Essay
862 Words | 2 Pages
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
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Figurative Language In The Yellow Wallpaper
701 Words | 2 Pages
As the narrator’s mental state changes so does the way she perceives things around the house. The most prominent example of this is the imagery of the wallpaper and the way the narrator’s opinion on the wallpaper slowly changes throughout the story; this directly reflects what is happening within the narrator’s mind. At the beginning of the story the narrator describes the wallpaper as “Repellent...revolting... a smoldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 377). As the story continues the narrator starts to become obsessed with the wallpaper and her opinion of it has completely changed than that of hers from the beginning. Symbolism plays a big part in “The Yellow Wallpaper” too. This short story has a multitude of symbols hidden in it but there are specific ones that stand out the most. The recurrence of the wallpaper definitely makes it a symbol. An interesting interpretation is that the wallpaper represents women, in the sense that the 18th century woman was considered almost decorative and that is exactly what the purpose of wallpaper is. Another prominent symbol that runs parallel with the wallpaper, are the women the narrator would see in the wallpaper. The women appear trapped behind bars in the paper and one could argue that the women the narrator sees represents all women of her time, continuously trapped in their gender
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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.
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The Yellow Wallpaper Compare And Contrast Essay
713 Words | 2 Pages
Although both protagonists in the stories go through a psychological disorder that turns their lives upside down, they find ways to feel content once again. In Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," a nervous wife, an overprotective husband, and a large, damp room covered in musty wallpaper all play important roles in driving the wife insane. Gilman's masterful use of not only the setting, both time and place, but also of first person point of view, allows the reader to process the woman's growing insanity. The narrator develops a very intimate relationship with the yellow wallpaper throughout the story, as it is her constant companion. Her initial reaction to it is a feeling of hatred; she dislikes the color and despises the pattern, but does not attribute anything peculiar to it. Two weeks into their stay she begins to project a sort of personality onto the paper, so she studies the pattern more closely, noticing for the first time “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman). At this point, her madness is vague, but becoming more defined, because although the figure that she sees behind the pattern has no solid shape, she dwells on it and
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Internal Conflict In 'The Yellow Wallpaper'
781 Words | 2 Pages
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.
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The Yellow Wallpaper
1475 Words | 3 Pages
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.
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Realism In The Yellow Wallpaper
1462 Words | 3 Pages
“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
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The Narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper
832 Words | 2 Pages
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.... ...
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Symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper
1293 Words | 3 Pages
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.
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Yellow Wallpaper Woman
890 Words | 2 Pages
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
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The Yellow Wallpaper Research Paper
931 Words | 2 Pages
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.
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The Yellow Wallpaper Woman
895 Words | 2 Pages
(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
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Women In The Yellow Wallpaper
796 Words | 2 Pages
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.
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The Yellow Wallpaper

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

Metamorphosis of Woman in The Yellow Wallpaper and If I Were a Man by Charlotte Perkins Gilman