Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892 to convey the thoughts of a troubled woman trapped in a male dominated world. Women in the nineteenth century were faced with patriarchal oppression and many characteristics of the story gives the reader an inside view of what it was like as a woman living in this time period. The men in this era of patriarchy treated women as if they were inferior and tried to exert their dominance over them whenever possible. The women couldn’t do anything and were forced to accept what their husbands said as the final say. The power of men over women can be seen in the beginning of the story were the narrator is writing in her journal and says that she could’ve been healed faster if it wasn’t …show more content…
The wallpaper itself can be broken down to represents the narrator’s marriage. According to Treichler, “The yellow wallpaper is variously interpreted by readers to represent the ‘pattern’ which underlines sexual inequality”(62). Many readers have come up with the idea that the wall paper’s design represents how men felt about women during that time period, “Pointless” and with “lame uncertain curves”. While the background would represent the many men of this time period. The men were the framework of most marriages as is the background is to most work. They were what the marriages dependent on to stay strong and they were looked at as the platform of the family. Then there’s the color of the wallpaper which was yellow which can be interpreted into many different ways. According to Raetta Parker, yellow is viewed by most men as a “kiddish” color. This helps elaborate on how the narrator’s husband views his wife. He not only kept her in a room colored for a child but he constantly called the narrator childish names. He also made her opinions out to be less of importance to his, similar to how adults treat most children. Another thing that is intriguing about the color of the wallpaper is that yellow represents instability which is opposite of what a marriage should be. A marriage should be safe and stable something the color yellow most definitely
Finally, the yellow wallpaper plays the biggest role in the story. Not only for the reason that the narrator saw a woman behind it. But for the reason that the woman behind the yellow wallpaper was Perkins. According to the narrator "And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. "(Perkins 532),"I don't like it a bit"(Perkins 532), Trying to send out the moral of the story which was gender oppression.
Her descriptions of the room, with the furniture seemingly being nailed to the floor and the windows being “barred” show an underlying understanding that her thoughts and personality is being confined. The irony present in this description, due to her belief that the room used to be a nursery, shows her early denial of her husband’s dominance over her. As the story progresses and she begins to see the woman behind the wallpaper, the reader is exposed to the narrator’s realization that she is the one that is actually being suppressed. The descriptions of the wallpaper, showing how confining it is for the symbolic woman behind it, shows how the narrator is being trapped by those bars in both her marriage and in her mental illness. Thus when she says, “At night in any kind of light… it becomes bars,” the reader is shown how restricted the narrator feels, reflected through the wallpaper.
Martin states that the narrator’s confinement in the upstairs bedroom fortifies her mental illness developing into “a frightening hallucinatory world constructed around the pattern of the yellow paper on the wall.” This shift in her identity happens as the shift in her disposition towards the wallpaper changes. The wallpaper is a visible metaphor that eventually becomes her identity. In the beginning of her stay in the bedroom she says the wallpaper is “committing artistic sin” (Par34) and can push anyone to “suddenly commit suicide” (Par35) These comments show her despise towards the wallpaper and the separation she originally has from it.
The narrator is a woman who is imaginative trying to make her mind think and realize the meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper as, “repellant, almost revolting; smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 641). This specific wallpaper makes the narrator feel a certain way. At first, she does not like the color or how it looks. But then not having anything else to do in the room, she starts examining the wallpaper.
The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper was written by a lady named Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “Charlotte was a young lady born in the 1860s right into poverty. Her upbringing was in poverty and didnt have it very easy at a young age. She was born in England and at the age of 22 she married a man by the name Charles Walter Stetson. They eventually had a child and almost immediately right after the birth of the child Charlotte fell into a deep depression.
At first it is seen as nothing but an old ruined wallpaper with a “bad” pattern. As the story progresses she stares at the paper for hours and sees a sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light. She hen sees a desperate woman trying to leave the wallpaper which shows how the women feel trapped. The author uses the yellow wallpaper as a symbol of the oppressive life that many women have today and back then.
It's yellow color symbolizes the way the narrator feels about her situation. "Unclean", "dull", "sickly" is how she may have felt deep down about her relationship with her husband and the life she lived under him. The wallpaper itself becomes a symbol for her. She uses it as a coping method and projects her feelings onto it and the woman she sees in it. The windows symbolize how she is trapped in this marriage and she can only view the beautiful outside through the many windows, reminding her of what she cannot have.
Lastly, In the story her husband never lets her talk about house she feels, so she keeps it all bottled up in her head which eventually drives her crazy. As “The Yellow Wallpaper” States “It 's hard to talk to john about my case, because he loves me so. But I tried to last night” (777 Gilman). This show another great example of women cruelty because back then women were not allowed to state there own opinion and also
The main character in the story, “I Stand Here Ironing” was a single, working mother raising five children at the time. She was caring and providing for her children, while back then it was a man’s job to do so. The main character in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was suffering from depression after having her baby. She felt as if she could not care for her newborn as she is supposed to, so it brought her into a deep depression.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story told through diary entries of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, becomes obsessed with the ugly yellow wallpaper in the summer home her husband rented for them. While at the home the Narrator studies the wallpaper and starts to believe there is a woman in the wallpaper. Her obsession with the wallpaper slowly makes her mental state deteriorate. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary devices such as symbolism, personification and imagery to help convey her message and get it across to the reader.
The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story. It’s clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator’s point of view greatly differs from that of her husband’s and other family in her life.
(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”
The house is in a super-isolated place. The house represents the narrator 's personal emotions; restricted and isolation. In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the symbolism of the the wallpaper and the diary demonstrate the psychological difficulties, that were caused by being disrespected and thought less of, during the 19th century for women across the United States. In the “Yellow Wallpaper”, the woman 's husband John neglects her symptoms of postpartum and says she has a slight hysterical tendency.
It 's here where she discovers the yellow wallpaper that leads to her mental demise. What is the symbolic meaning of the yellow wallpaper and how do her interactions with the wallpaper represent the change in her feelings towards her husband and society. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes women 's suffrage and the struggles women went through, and her interactions with the wallpaper represent the problems woman had with their husbands and society. The main symbolism present in the story is how the yellow wallpaper represents woman suffrage and the problems they endured during the 19th century.
Secondly, there is also a sense of confinement throughout the story. The Yellow Wallpaper fits the winter or the anti-romantic phase of Northrop Frye's monomyth diagram as it, "tells the story of imprisonment … and fear." (Bressler 152). The narrator is imprisoned in the room which has yellow wallpaper. Basically, the room where the narrator is staying in is like a prison.