The Yellow Wallpaper Setting Analysis

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In The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses setting as the basis for the resolution and actions of the narrator and main character. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story of a sick woman, with details of the building, weather, smell, and objects in the story allowing for an effective vision of the story. Along with Charlotte Gilman’s advanced diction setting is used as an effective expression of the intended atmosphere. The expansion of setting can be seen in details about mansion the family moves to and the environment surrounding them. Being part of setting, the location in which the family moved to is made very important and an evident focal point for how the story results. Charlotte Gilman uses the man character, who is also …show more content…

Charlotte Gilman uses objects in the room to help with the setting and the picture of this creepy mansion. The use of the bolted down bed and the torn up wallpaper give us a more in-depth detail of the setting. Near the middle of the story the narrator says “I lie here on this immovable bed—it is nailed down, I believe—and follow that pattern about by hour” (Gilman 383). Through this description we are shown that, symbolically, just as she is to stay in the room and mansion the bed is also nailed down. Charlotte Gilman uses this description of setting to show irony and slip an image into the readers mind. The narrator also states in the middle of the story “The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother—they must have had perseverance as well as hatred” (Gilman 382). The torn up wallpaper, just as the bolted down bed, shows how strange and creepy the mansion really is and how it may drive someone crazy. Charlotte Gilman adding these specific descriptions brings a physical image to the bedroom in the mansion. Charlotte Gilman uses setting as the main description theme in The Yellow Wallpaper to give the most in-depth description possible. As a result of Charlotte Gilman using these setting descriptions they are the backbone of the story allowing the reader to intemperate the story as intended. The many details give an expansion to the setting and allow a foreshadow of the resolution at the end of the story. The diverse use of setting in The Yellow Wallpaper creates an captivating

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