The Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism Essay

946 Words2 Pages

As human beings, we play the cards that are dealt to us in this world. In life, every person goes through their individual ups and downs and occasionally may break down to the extent of not knowing what to do with oneself. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” which takes place in the late 1800s, focuses on the first person narrator who is an infatuated woman. The disheartening story concentrates on a woman who is suffering from postpartum depression, and as well had mental breakdowns. The narrators husband John, moves her into a home isolated in the country where he wants her to “rest” and get better from her illness. During the course of being confined in the room with the wallpaper, she learns new things and finally may have an understanding …show more content…

It represents the psychological block that society attempts to place on women during the 1800’s. The color distinct color yellow is connected with sickness and weakness which displays the gender differences of how society sees women as weak and men inferior. The wallpaper in fact makes the main character feel “sick” as the short story develops. As a matter of fact, the wallpaper draws a line between insanity and sanity that the narrator faces. Quawas offers honest insight and advice on “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and its symbolic significance that is portrayed throughout the short story. In the process, Quawas offers a deeper interpretation of the main character decline into madness and how the direct identification of the narrator with the wallpaper brings many underlying symbols that lie within the story. “The narrator is torn asunder between her own personal feelings, which are indeed healthy and positive, and the patriarchal society's view of what is proper and decent behaviour for women. Since she has internalized society's expectations of women, this conflict is felt as a schizoid within herself” (Quawas, 44). This supporting evidence helps give bigger insight of a deeper meaning to the correlation of insanity and symbols in the actual …show more content…

The yellow wallpaper being the most significant and obvious symbol which underlie societies attempts regarding women in the late 19th century, gives the reader an eye opening view to the repression women were under and still are in todays society. The main character writing in her notebook symbolizes a sense of stability in an oppressed life. Lastly, the isolated room, gave sense of symbolizing a safe haven for the narrator or even imprisonment. The symbols exposed in "The Yellow Wallpaper" give the short story a stronger essential meaning and a sense that the narrator was not entirely insane, however a women who found her individuality in something as horrid as the yellow wallpaper. In short, the yellow wallpaper mirrors the makeover of a woman’s identity which is triggered by a corrupt social structure that stops woman from being their true

Show More
Related

  • Gender And Pathology In The Yellow Wallpaper By John Gilman

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Yellow Wallpaper is a very unique and odd story. In the first read through of the story, the reader is aware that the narrator is sick and losing her mind. Over the course of the story it becomes apparent that the treatment used to heal the narrator isn’t effective. As she begins to completely lose her mind the reader gets a glimpse into her mind. She believes that she is trapped inside of the wallpaper, and by ripping it off the wall she can escape. There are several topics that seem to occur in this story. These topics include Feminism, the role of women in the 1880’s period, and knowledge and understanding of mentally ill. Although these are some of the main points in the story, The Yellow Wallpaper has several topics that are direct

    Read More

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

    565 Words  | 2 Pages

    In everyday day life we go through changes and sometimes we even break down to the point we do not know what to do with ourselves, but in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story” The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator is an obsessive person. The story focuses on a woman who is going through postpartum depression and has had a nervous breakdown. Her husband John moves her into a home where he wants her to rest in isolation to recover from her disorder. Throughout her time in the room the narrator discovers new things and finally understands life.

    Read More

  • A Feminist in Action in The Yellow Wallpaper

    1794 Words  | 4 Pages

    "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a woman in isolation, struggling to cope with mental illness, which has been diagnosed by her husband, a physician.   Going beyond this surface level, the reader sees the narrator as a developing feminist, struggling with the societal values of the time.  As a woman writer in the late nineteenth century, Gilman herself felt the adverse effects of the male-centric society, and consequently, placed many allusions to her own personal struggles as a feminist in her writing.  Throughout the story, the narrator undergoes a psychological journey that correlates with the advancement of her mental condition.  The restrictions which society places on her as a woman have a worsening effect on her until illness progresses into hysteria.  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

  • 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

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper

    339 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Yellow Wallpaper was written as a realism story. It showed how woman felt they had the same opportunities as men in their personal choices. In this story, the woman expressed her worries to her husband who through good intentions, required that his wife stay in bed 24/7, and not do any of the things she would normally do. In effect his wife became worse until she reached the limit. The behavior of the husband at this time was completely normal. Men were the higher power over women and women, like the one in this story, felt that they couldn?t stand count for themselves.

    Read More

  • Alienation into Insanity in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Yellow Wallpaper and William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    717 Words  | 2 Pages

    They are written during a time period when women were not viewed as important as men. The narrator from the yellow wallpaper is suffering from post-natal depression and has been recommended the rest of her cure by her husband and her brother, both physicians. Instead of curing her, it worsened her condition. The protagonist did try to convince her husband about what she would prefer, but she could not overcome the powerful authority figure. The narrator is restricted from working, writing, which leads to her obsession with the yellow wallpaper and suffocates her into madness.

    Read More

  • Symbolism and Women's Oppression in The Yellow Wallpaper

    1072 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the 19th century, women had to accept their situation because they lived in a world dominated by men. In the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a woman named Jane is suffering from postpartum depression. John, the husband of Jane is a doctor. In order to cure her illness, he tells Jane that they will go to a summer house. Once they arrive in the summer house, he orders her to stay in bed. At the beginning of the story, Jane was not sick as her husband said, all she had was postpartum depression. She was in a big house away from the others, unable to see or care for her child, in a room with ugly walls, windows with railings, without doing anything and alone, that led her to madness. Jane began to observe all objects in the room, specifically the yellow wallpaper. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes the way women were perceived in the 19th century by society. The illness of the narrator explains the problems of imprisonment, captivity and the lack of freedom that the women were going through in the period of the time. The yellow wallpaper acts as a metaphor of how Jane and the

    Read More

  • The Deeper Meaning of The Yellow Wallpaper

    1250 Words  | 3 Pages

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through such treatments. Because of her experience with the rest cure, it can even be said that Gilman based the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" loosely on herself. But I believe that expressing her negative feelings about the popular rest cure is only half of the message that Gilman wanted to send. Within the subtext of this story lies the theme of oppression: the oppression of the rights of women especially inside of marriage. Gilman was using the woman/women behind the wallpaper to express her personal views on this issue.

    Read More

  • The Narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper

    832 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator becomes more depressed throughout the story because of the recommendation of isolation that was made to her. In this short story the narrator is detained in a lonesome, drab room in an attempt to free herself of a nervous disorder. The narrator’s husband, a physician, adheres to this belief and forces his wife into a treatment of solitude. Rather than heal the narrator of her psychological disorder, the treatment only contributes to its effects, driving her into a severe depression. Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where in she is locked into an upstairs room.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis

    1370 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins-Gilman explores the oppression of women in the nineteenth century and the constant limitation of their freedom, which many times led to their confinement. The short story illustrates male superiority and the restriction of a woman’s choice regarding her own life. The author’s diction created a horrific and creepy tone to illustrate the supernatural elements that serve as metaphors to disguise the true meaning of the story. Through the use of imagery, the reader can see that the narrator is living within a social class, so even though the author is trying to create a universal voice for all women that have been similar situations, it is not possible. This is not possible because there are many

    Read More

  • Treatment of Mental Disorders Exposed in The Yellow Wallpaper

    1986 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a woman descending into psychosis in a creepy tale which depicts the harm of an old therapy called “rest cure.” This therapy was used to treat women who had “slight hysterical tendencies” and depression, and basically it consisted of the inhibition of the mental processes. The label “slight hysterical tendency” indicates that it is not seen as a very important issue, and it is taken rather lightly. It is also ironic because her illness is obviously not “slight” by any means, especially towards the end when the images painted of her are reminiscent of a psychotic, maniacal person, while she aggressively tears off wallpaper and confuses the real world with her alternative world she has fabricated that includes a woman trapped in the wallpaper. The narrator of this story grows obsessed with the wallpaper in her room because her husband minimizes her exposure to the outside world and maximizes her rest.

    Read More

  • 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.

    Read More

  • The Meaning of the Wallpaper in The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    737 Words  | 2 Pages

    The short story titled, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is given its name for no other reason than the disturbing yellow wallpaper that the narrator comes to hate so much; it also plays as a significant symbol in the story. The wallpaper itself can represent many various ideas and circumstances, and among them, the sense of feeling trapped, the impulse of creativity gone awry, and what was supposed to be a simple distraction transfigures into an unhealthy obsession. By examining the continuous references to the yellow wallpaper itself, one can begin to notice how their frequency develops the plot throughout the course of the story. As well as giving the reader an understanding as to why the wallpaper is a more adequate and appropriate symbol to represent the lady’s confinement and the deterioration of her mental and emotional health. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the color of the wallpaper symbolizes the internal and external conflicts of the narrator that reflect the expectations and treatment of the narrator, as well as represent the sense of being controlled in addition to the feeling of being trapped.

    Read More

  • Symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper

    697 Words  | 2 Pages

    The title itself, The Yellow Wallpaper, is symbolizing the role men play in a patriarchal society, where men are the more dominant sex, and how women are 'trapped'; in a life of male control. For instance, At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all moonlight, it becomes bars!';(Gilman 211) This shows how the narrator feels trapped by the paper. Another symbol that refers to the role women play is, 'And she is all the time trying to climb through that pattern, it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.';(Gilman 213) This is meaning that if a women tried to play a role in society she was just not taken seriously, or felt like trying to play a role was getting nowhere.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper Post Structuralism Essay

    483 Words  | 1 Pages

    Through the lens of Post-Structuralism, literature is a system of signs with an impossibility of understanding their meaning due to the fact that language is unstable, arbitrary and ambiguous. The signifiers so familiar in Structuralism become floating signifiers in Post-Structuralism in that the function of a word, or phrase, is not concrete, i.e. it changes. Binary oppositions (male/female, good/bad, open/closed) represent an implied classification and as such, along with the reader/author relationship, are destabilized. Through this lens, “The Yellow Wallpaper” contains binary oppositions worthy of focus. The narrator could very well be insane as she isn’t intimately familiar with her illness, she speaks of the house as being hateful and even haunted, and she almost immediately begins to hallucinate once she moves in. On the flip side the narrator could very well be sane as she is able to write legibly and maintain her diary in a neat and orderly fashion and acts in an intelligent manner, with movements that can be considered carefully planned. This blurs the line between sanity and insanity. The short story appears to present a situation in where a woman has endured a situation designed to deliberately exclude any sort of enjoyment of activity or mental expression. As such, the

    Read More

More about The Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism Essay

Open Document