The protagonist is pressured yet again by society to be thankful for her controlling husband. Finally, at the very end of the story. John finds what his wife has done with the wallpaper, symbolically freeing her from the prison she was trapped in, the gender roles seems to switch. He faints due to shock at the torn wallpaper
At first glance, Gilman’s short story,”The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a very strange story. The story is based on a woman who eventually becomes taken over by the yellow wallpaper in her room, even to where she eventually is driven insane. Although the story only tells you the main details, the wallpaper is so much more than just a terrible decoration choice. When annotated, the wallpaper is made out to be a symbol of all the terrible things that are to come. The room at the top of the house was not just a room, but a place that caused the unfortunate woman to become crazy.
I believe that the house on Mango Street represents the narrator's optimistic fantasy and simultaneously, the narrator's gloomy confinement and shame. The narrator is terribly ashamed of their, "small red house" because when they are simply asked where they live, the narrator becomes immediately uncomfortable and feels humiliated by the nun. The narrator’s embarrassment is evident when they reluctantly admit that the floor that had, “paint peeling wooden bars” was indeed, where they lived. The narrator became so embarrassed that it made them, “feel like nothing”. The narrator’s shame in their house seems to be wrapped up in their feelings about wealth and status.
2. At the end of the story, CP Gillman uses
As the story continues, the reader begins to see the wallpaper changing parallel to the narrator 's increasingly morbid perception of it, in the beginning, the narrator believes it to just be visually appalling, describing it as "revolting" and an "unclean yellow" with a foul smell carrying throughout the house and filling the narrator 's small enclosure. Gilman uses a significant amount of color and smell diction to describe the narrator 's relationship with the wallpaper, giving it a sense of life and being. The narrator complains of the wallpaper 's "yellow, unclean, sickly, sulfur" (pg.156) appearance and the how it becomes almost like a "fungus" that grows and sprouts (pg. 163) with the smell of "bad yellow things" (pg.165). These intensely unpleasant and relatable images help to reinforce the narrator 's sense of oppression within her life and through society 's expectations, as they all are haunting smells and colors that seem to linger all around, unable to broken from the pattern. This paper becomes increasingly more menacing as the narrator decreases in mental instability, its pattern becoming ghostly, only seen in certain lighting, then coming to resemble bars.
Kent uses brilliant cinematography to bring feelings such as dread, grief, depression and fear to life. As well as losing her husband the year Samuel was born, Amelia’s struggle to control Samuel takes a very real toll on her, with outbursts of anger and sadness affecting her social life. As all of her friends abandon her, her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. Kent’s style of
While in her way to “recovery” in the mansion she climbs up Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs in a negative way until she reaches the top which drove her to madness. While she goes up the ladder, she continues to build her own world inside the room where the yellow wallpaper is located and when she finally finishes her own world and breaks free instead of letting her husband build her the world she wants. As said before, Gilman used her writing abilities to expose her readers to controversial topics in that era, women were leaving in a man’s world, therefore she spread awareness and encourage their readers of what a woman really wants, her ideas are projected into her characters and their development throughout the story just like the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” that represented women all around the world. Gilman spoke for all oppressed women whenever she wrote stories that her readers could feel a connection with, she was also an example of how woman can build their own world themselves without the need of a man. Malala Yousafzai once
She begins to see strangles heads in the wallpaper, which can be a symbolic representation of the patriarchal order that stifled women. The bars on the wallpaper that cage the imaginary women are a reflection of her own situation where she is confined in the old mansion. Even the smell of the wallpaper, which she describes as being ‘yellow’ and present throughout the house, is a reflection of the mental repression that is always present in her life. She is so consumed by the smell that she thinks about burning the old mansion just to cover it
In the case of perceived “insanity” then women should be neither be seen nor heard. Treichler states, “Language in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is oppressive to women in the particular form of medical diagnosis, a set of linguistic signs whose representational claims are authorized by society and whose power to control women’s fate, whether or not those claims are valid, is real.” (74) I will explore the theory that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a symbolic examination of exactly how women were an oppressive society. Further, I will join the conversation concerning the question of sanity vs. insanity and the stereotypical role of women in the early nineteenth century as a way to further oppress strong intelligent
The author’s use of a paradox creates as sense of irony as the narrator moves farther from reality, she gains more clarity about her inner-self. "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" The emotional state of the narrator and feelings toward her husband are reflected with the narrator’s use of symbolism to portray her connection with her observations and the yellow wallpaper, imagery to portray feelings of oppression, and the use of first-person narrative to emphasize tone in the passage.