The Yellow Wallpaper Rhetorical Analysis

In the short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper", by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist is a woman who is crippled by a mysterious mental illness that is taking a toll on her health. The protagonist is someone who very much loves to write and she is someone who writes mostly about her thoughts on the room to which she is confined to for treatment by her husband, John. The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, uses a wide variety of literary devices, including irony, diction, and imagery to effectively demonstrate the theme of the domination of women by men in the 19th Century. After reading the story, the tone with which John talks his wife stand out a lot. John constantly uses belittling phrases such as "little girl" or "blessed little goose" to talk to his wife, portraying not only how he thought about his wife, but also how most men thought of women, them being inferior to men.

Furthermore, Gilman uses imagery quite a bit in the story. The phrase "There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.”, conveys to the reader how there could have been life ahead for the narrator. Green is a colour that is often associated with growth and life, but when she married and was treated poorly by her husband, her life was broken in a sense. Judging by what she writes in the story, she wanted to have some sort of role in society, however, she cannot as men control society in the time period of the story. Next, Gilman uses the literary device of diction to further convey the theme. The protagonist states "a kind of' debased Romanesque' with delirium tremens". The words “debased Romanesque”, and “delirium tremens”, implies that the author is highly educated. However she repeatedly states in the story that she is told not to write by her husband