Examples Of Ambiguity In The Yellow Wallpaper

As was common of the treatment of women during the nineteenth century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is one of oppression as John, the protagonist's physician husband, tries to cure her mental illness with a treatment plan of solitude and rest after moving in hopes his wife will regain her health. While critics have debated what causes the character's eventual insanity, María Teresa González Mínguez suggests that lack of a creative outlet lends to the woman's rapid regression. The protagonist's lack of a creative outlet combined with isolation ensures a downward spiral for the woman as symptoms of her mental illness ultimately consume her. While John hopes monitoring his wife's behaviors will cure her, his efforts only worsen her mental state.

The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a portrayal of a woman’s descent into madness and how the society around her contributes to her illness. As a matter of fact, the story was inspired and written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own personal experience. Gilman’s use of a first person point of view and tone allows the reader to experience and understand the narrator's actions and situation. The narrator’s tone also plays a role in establishing her character and the theme through the paragraph structure, her thoughts and expressions and finally her ironic expressions. To begin with, the narrator's tone helps establish character through her paragraph structure within the story.

Interpretive Analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about a woman and her husband's efforts to cure her unexplained mental health symptoms. The narrator is isolated in her home, far from the outside world and her husband's attempts to control her behavior. Throughout this story, Gilman highlights the insubordination of women in marriage, in which the husband has all the power, and the wife is left with no power or voice.

Gilman uses the character of John to impose multiple forms of control on the narrator to demonstrate the effects of the patriarchal control that women faced when The Yellow Wallpaper was written. The system

The narrator believes the woman is trapped and is trying to free herself; therefore, she rips the wallpaper to help the woman she is visualizing. This shorty story was written as if the mentally unstable narrator was writing in her diary. The perspective of the narrator brings another level of depth to the metaphor that the wallpaper represents because the story is from her point of view so we watch the entire process of her losing her sanity due to being isolated from the world (she became lonely and helpless). Gilman brilliantly displayed how the narrator perceived the yellow wallpaper and allowed the audience to see how a mentally stable person perceived the yellow wallpaper at the end of the story. Gilman’s use of the narrator allows the audience to empathize and relate to the narrator and the struggles she faces throughout the story.

(2). She goes on to discuss it in great detail and with passionate hatred. However, it is not until later in the story that it begins to wear her down and pave the way to further insanity. The narrator begins each new section of writing discussing normal daily life and what is happening, but always ends up bringing the topic around to the wallpaper, at first to speak about how much she despises it, and later to comment on how she does not hate it so much anymore, and finally speaking of how she is fascinated by it. A quote from further on in the short story that marks the narrator’s changing opinion of the wallpaper is when she writes “Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be….

Through the narrator's descriptions of the wallpaper, Gilman effectively conveys both the narrator's growing realization of the restrictive nature of societal expectations placed upon women and the broader societal limitations, thus reinforcing the central thesis of women's lack of autonomy and agency in, calling the yellow wallpaper, “One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 587) and “dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (Gilman 587) and “repellant, almost revolting: smouldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 587). The descriptions of the wallpaper as committing artistic sin, dull, provoking, repellant, and revolting reflects the narrator's growing realization that the societal expectations placed upon women are restrictive and devoid of meaning. The wallpaper's twisting patterns and the narrator's obsession with it resemble the societal attempts to confine and control women's bodies and choices. This depiction also mirrors the suffocating reality experienced by women like

During her time in this room, she realised that she is trapped not only in the estate but in her role as a mother and a wife. The narrator wants to escape from her duties and become her own person however, her stay in the room has her convinced that this is her life now due to her husband's constant reinforcement of gender roles and the oppression she faces. Through the use of simple objects such as wallpaper and a child, the author creates a world where men

This physical entrapment is enforced by the narrator's husband, a physician attempting to cure her hysteria and post-partum depression using the now-disgraced “rest cure”. Throughout the short story, the narrator descends into madness as a result of the isolation, with nothing to keep her mind busy but to track the pattern of a hideous yellow wallpaper. The narrator is not only physically confined within the room, but is also mentally trapped, for she is discouraged by John to engage in any mental activity including writing. This confinement within the home is a clear representation of the patriarchal oppression of women in the nineteenth century. In fact, the narrator is not the only trapped female figure in the story.

Can you imagine being trapped in a room with walls that seem to close in on you, all while being suffocated by a yellow wallpaper that haunts your every thought? Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" brings this eerie reality to life, drawing on her own experiences and beliefs to create a gripping tale that challenges societal norms and delves into the history of mental health and gender roles. Through its vivid portrayal of a woman's descent into madness, it delves into themes of feminism, mental health, and gender roles. One influential approach to understanding this literary masterpiece is through biographical criticism. Perkins Gilman's own life and beliefs shaped "The Yellow Wallpaper," examining her personal struggles with

Although the protagonist's husband thought that the room will help her recover from her illness, in actuality, it simply exacerbates her condition. The protagonist's mental state declines, she becomes more fixated on the physical attributes of the space, and she begins to perceive as though the walls are closing in around her. Another example is her nailed bed in her room. The narrator described the nailed bed as a “great immovable bedstead,” which makes it impossible for Jane to move it or have the choice to do so. Correspondingly, the bed stands in for her mental limitations, her inability to overcome them, or her lack of control.

The narrator even goes so far as to blame her sporadic and sometimes angry nature on her condition rather than her husband. Instead of lashing out against her husband, the narrator finds other ways to keep herself occupied, like examining their bedroom walls. The narrator finds the walls and wallpaper in the room to be very unflattering and suggests to her husband that she wants to repaper the walls and take down the yellow wallpaper. He refuses because he believes that giving her the freedom to change something in the house will allow her to gain enough freedom to change many more things about the house. The climax in the story comes as the narrator breaks free from all of the doubt her husband has filled her mind with and rips the wallpaper off of the walls.

" The writer develops a strong bond with the wallpaper to the point where she becomes one with it, empathizes with the captive lady, and cares for it as if it were alive. The writer's declining health and how it has permeated her existence are also represented through the wallpaper. The disorganized patterns on the wallpaper serve as a metaphor for the

However, the reader quickly realizes that the narrator is not a reliable source of information. She is clearly suffering from some form of mental illness, and her perceptions of the world around her are distorted by this illness. This is evident in her obsession with the yellow wallpaper. At first, she is simply curious about it, but as the story progresses, her obsession with the wallpaper becomes more and more intense.

The narrator is eventually driven to a point of insanity because of the neglect she faces at the hands of male physicians and women who abide by the gender roles of the time. The author’s use of imagery and symbolism work in a similar way to establish how the narrator is impacted harshly by her settings and the women in the wallpaper. The tone on the other hand is more reflective of the narrator’s identity as a women without much power who is subject to the events happening around her. This tale was meant to scare its audience and provide a warning of some sort to those who are trying to cure women from mental health illnesses. It was effective as many methods changed afterwards and the field began to show improvement.