Character Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman deals with the exploitation of women during the fin de siècle. The story reveals the mind of a young woman who is, over of a course of time, going insane and finding her true self. Throughout the story the reader experiences the frustration of a woman who is suffering from postnatal depression, which is a type of depression that many parents experience after having a baby. During the late Victorian era, woman were forced into a certain stereotype, that of a mother and wife. The way men could, women were not allowed to challenge and express themselves. Just as the nameless protagonist of the story was trapped in an “atrocious nursery”, women were trapped in patronizing roles that did not allow

Paula A. Treichler from the University of Illinois analyzes “The Yellow Wallpaper” and its effects of the diagnosis given to the main character effectively in her article “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”. In her article, Treichler emphasizes the reasons why the main character was lead to believe her diagnosis from her husband and the other contributing factors that played a role in her hysteria, such as lack of social interaction and confinement.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the author uses various literary devices to express the themes in the story. Such as the nursery, this represents her sanity, and the doctor that had treated her mental illness, and wouldn’t let her write. Whereas the

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do,” this quote by Phillip Pullman relates incredibly to the novel All The Light We Cannot See. Although it never directly mentions this novel is about the Holocaust, it is alluded towards and creates the setting of WWII and the indescribable horrors in everyday lives during this period of history. During this time it was extremely difficult to make your own choices and listen to your moral code if it was against what the rest of the country’s beliefs. Many people accepted and acted in compliance with these beliefs because they did not want to be singled out and harmed in any way. However, some characters chose a different path for themselves amiss the chaos of the war; and you can identify how these characters changed and evolved throughout the story to become improved versions of themselves.

In the story, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The narrator develops an uncontrollable obsession with this yellow wallpaper as she is deemed crazy and is confined to a large nursery room where she is constantly being medicated and forced to rest. Throughout the story she writes in her secret journal where in each entry she describes her feelings towards both John and the yellow wallpaper. In the beginning she has a very negative attitude against the wallpaper and is constantly remarking it's horrible markings and it's very shade of color. Throughout the story however, her feelings dramatically change as she starts observing the wallpaper and each mark, and analysing everything from the odor that has spread throughout the house, to the hidden figure trapped behind the wall. Near the end of the story, she starts seeing more and more of the hidden figure and making out details of the trapped woman, but then goes crazy as she sees her crawling around the yard and then believes she is that

In the story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’connor, symbolism is found in the grandmother's hat. For the grandmother, the most important thing is that she is considered a lady. The grandmother is a finely dressed woman who is more worried about herself than her family by stating, “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” (368) The hat, which represents her moral code, is damaged and falls apart during the car accident. The accident is caused by the family cat that was “smuggled” on board the trip by the grandmother when she was forbidden to do so. The irony in her hat being destroyed shows that she is no longer considered to be a “lady.” Also, the imagery in the story is very easy to see and hear.

Gilman also highlights a lack of identity of the narrator through the setting of the novella which reflects the narrator’s societal confinement. The protagonist is surrounded by “hedges and walls and gates that lock”, which create a sense of separation that the narrator feels from others and the outside world. In addition, the room in which she is confined contains a “heavy bedstead, and… barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on”. These physical and ‘prison-like’ restrictions imposed on the protagonist clearly demonstrate her lack of freedom. Additionally, Gilman’s use of syndetic listing to describe the narrator’s physical entrapment is perhaps reflective of her feelings of suffocation and her inability to escape as the list feels never ending. Essentially, it is the physical and subsequent metaphorical entrapment of the female protagonist by her husband in The Yellow Wallpaper that leads to a loss of her identity.

In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the emotional state of the narrator and feelings toward her husband are reflected in her description of the setting through the use of first person narration, imagery to portray feelings of oppression and figurative language to create a consistent tone of isolation and cynical irony.

Critical Statement: In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman employs exclamatory functions within her syntax to display the symbolism of the woman within the wallpaper to illustrate her own constricted freedom due the influence of the masculine dominance.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman often discussed for its biographical critic on the way women, but especially those suffering from mental illnesses profiled by 19th century physicians as "women's diseases", have been treated in society at the end of the 19th century (Teichler 1984: 61, Oakley 1997: 29).

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story set in the 1890s about a female narrator who struggles with postpartum depression. She moves into a home for the summer with her husband, John. Since she has this sickness, John forbids her from doing any sort of activities other than some houes work. If she was doing anything, her husband would want her to rest to help with her illness. This was a common "cure" known at the rest cure back then. Though something to her feels off about this house. As they explore the house they, discover a nursery with yellow wallpaper inside. The woman becomes obsessed with this wallpaper, trying to decipher each and every pattern, logging all of it into her diary which she keeps away from her

The Yellow Wallpaper, by writer Charlotte Perkins Gillman, was produced in a time where there was a presence of feminist hysteria. So much so that when a woman’s mental and/or physical health was not up to par for whatever reason it was coined as being “hysterical.” A possible reason being that as Professor stated, “[it was], a sort of catch-all diagnosis for women of a certain class who didn 't behave in the ways women of a certain class were supposed to behave or simply because depression and other illnesses were not properly understood. Gilman writes, “You see he does not believe I am sick! If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing […] what is one to do” (Gilman 10).

The unnamed narrator which is also the protagonist of the short story “Yellow Wallpaper” shows inferiority to her husband John throughout the entirety of the story. Her husband John, limits the amount of creativity she is “allowed” to have. He does this by not allowing her to write although the narrator still does in fact write but only when she knows she can get away with it. The narrator wants to go outside she wants to interact with other people yet she will not stand up for herself which shows great inferior to John. Which of the time period that was almost the normal the men made the rules but it was also a time period where women were pushing equal rights. The narrator suffers from depression

Living within the secret annex wasn't the easiest thing to do. Secrets were kept, stories were told, things changed in the Frank's life and the Van Danns life. Not everyone got along well in the secret annex. There were limitations and restrictions they all had to follow. The rooms annex wasn't a huge house, they had to share lots of things. Many fears would show through all of the. They all had a fear living within the secret annex, whether it was at night or throughout the day. The crowded space was hard for the girls and boys, kids too. Not everyone has a perfect life when they grow up.

Virginia Woolf said that a woman must have a room of her own and enough money. However, in The Yellow Wallpaper and A Rose for Emily, the two female protagonists have single rooms but these rooms not completely belong to them. They still live the rooms under the control of patriarchy for a long time, which make them lose themselves and twist their mentality. They have no choice to use an anomalous or extreme way to revenge male unequal behavior and they finally become “madwomen” in other people’s eyes. “Madwomen” lacks care and equal treatment so they not only need a concrete room, but also need a spiritual single room.