The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis

The title of the short story is “The Yellow Wallpaper” and in fact, the vile wallpaper that the narrator hates is a huge ideogram in the story. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. As the narrator she goes on to tell a story of how she lived with her caring husband who is also her physician after giving birth. Even though she may be a woman with a high social placement, the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” goes insane for many different reasons such as tonics, depression and isolation.

To start with she is constantly having to take tonic’s each hour in the day. While she is in the nursery she takes tonics because her physician thinks that it will help her get better. Constantly having to take the tonics, it could be making her have illusions. As she is laying in her room she starts to

She stays in a room at the top of the building until their house is repaired and she doesn’t come out. Because she stays in the house all day and night she has only two things to do, that is write in her journal and order things offline. Her journal is a secret form her husband because he doesn’t like it when she writes in it, so she must do it while he’s away in town. Her job as a wife is to decorate the house but it got hard to order stuff. The narrator wants to spend her time writing and socializing. When she is up in the room she feels trapped and lonely like she has nobody, and people need other people. She states, “John is kept in town very often by serious cases” (Gilman). Her husband is constantly working so he is away all the time. Being trapped in a room all day leads her to be bored, so she follows the pattern on the wallpaper. For example, she says “I lie here on this great immovable bed-it is nailed down, I believe- and follow that pattern about by the hour” (Gilman). The narrator gets so bored that she follows the lines on the wallpaper. Sitting in the room all day she doesn’t have any