Social Repression in The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, published in 1899, is a semi-autobiographical short story depicting a young woman’s struggle with depression that is virtually untreated and her subsequent descent into madness. Although the story is centered on the protagonist’s obsessive description of the yellow wallpaper and her neurosis, the story serves a higher purpose as a testament to the feminist struggle and their efforts to break out of their domestic prison. With reference to the works of Janice Haney-Peritz’s, “Monumental Feminism and Literature’s

Central to the story is the wallpaper itself. It is within the wallpaper that the narrator finds her hidden self and her eventual damnation/freedom. Her obsession with the paper begins subtly and then consumes both the narrator and the story. Once settled in the long-empty “ancestral estate,” a typical gothic setting, the narrator is dismayed to learn that her husband has chosen the top-floor nursery room for her. The room is papered in horrible yellow wallpaper, the design of which “commit[s] every artistic sin”(426). The design begins to fascinate the narrator and she

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” tells the story of a woman suffering from post-partum depression, undergoing the sexist psychological treatments of mental health, that took place during the late nineteenth century. The narrator in Gilman’s story writes about being forced to do nothing, and how that she feels that is the worst possible treatment for her. In this particular scene, the narrator writes that she thinks normal work would do her some good, and that writing allows her to vent, and get across her ideas that no one seems to listen to. Gilman’s use of the rhetorical appeal pathos, first-person point of view, and forceful tone convey her message that confinement is not a good cure for mental health, and that writing,

Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to show how women undergo oppression by gender roles. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman’s changes in mental state. The narrator in this story becomes so oppressed by her husband that she actually goes insane. The act of oppression is very obvious within the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and shows how it changes one’s life forever.

Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded.

The Story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a great expression of women’s oppression in the 19th century. The story introduces readers to a woman frustrating in her life and suffering from a nervous depression and her marriage as the yellow wallpaper is causing her a real insanity. Having a background about the timing and the setting that the story is written in helps the reader to internalize the whole meaning of the story and understand its important details. The story is told by a narrator using an anxious tone, and she is being angry and sarcastic at the same time. The woman mentions that her husband has taken her to a summer vacation. So, the story takes

From the beginning of their tenure in the summer home, the narrator’s fixation on the wallpaper in her quarters is ever present. She states that it is the worst paper she had ever seen. It is dull with a vague pattern that follows no rules of how it is laid out. The color is “almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight’” (Gilman)

The diction and tone demonstrate a wonderful descent into madness. The story is written in first person, allowing us to better understand the narrator’s state of mind. As the story progresses, there is an abundant use of exclamation marks, giving off an erratic, exited tone. Many sentences are short and choppy, portraying the uncertain and off-balance state of mind of the narrator. Although it is clear that the narrator has finally lost her mind, the ending of The Yellow Wallpaper is still fairly ambiguous. It suggests that the narrator was finally able to free herself, although she did lose her sanity in the process. This is evident as she casually remarks that “jumping out the window would be

The diction Gilman employs relates directly to the lasting role of women in the home to expose the historical adversities endured within the domestic sphere. The intricacy with which Gilman composes the text highlights the inherent

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a young woman’s gradual descent into insanity due to her entrapment, both mentally and physically, in the restrictive cult of domesticity. Through the narrator’s creeping spiral into madness, Gilman seeks to shed light upon the torturous and constraining societal conditions in which women are expected to live, that permeates throughout all aspects of their lives. At first glance to an average reader unfamiliar with Gilman’s history, “The Yellow Wallpaper” seems to just provide a tale about the oppressive relationship between the man and the woman in a domestic environment, however, once Gilman’s own personal life is uncovered, the story takes on a new level of depth.

and "gates that lock". At the top of the stairs is a gate that keeps

In the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, there are many of literary techniques that illustrates the theme to express the story. Irony, imagery and symbolism are some literary devices that is presented among the story.  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of acceptance and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The story appears to take place during a time where women were oppressed. Women were treated as if they were under one’s thumb in society during this period which is approximately the 19th century.

     The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman gives a brilliant description of the plight of the Victorian woman, and the mental agony that her and many other women were put through as "treatment" for depression when they found that they were not satisfied by the life they had been given.

As her isolation proceeds, she becomes terrified by the room, especially the wallpaper. She starts to describe it in a disturbing fashion. She claims that it commits “every artistic sin.” (Gilman, 381) When reporting on the progression of the pattern, her words use morbid imagery, “…they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.” (Gilman, 381) She later becomes obsessed and terrified by the woman she sees hiding behind the pattern of the wallpaper. The woman in the wallpaper is her reoccurring nightmare that will never leave. What would seem to be a pleasant mundane setting is suddenly transformed into an abhorrent and distressing situation. She requests that he allow her to move to another room, but he declines. She writes about her request for him to get rid of her torments, “At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give away to such fancies.” (Gilman, 382) John provides false hope that the horror she lives in will soon be resolved. As time goes on, her hope for this renovation of the yellow wallpaper dissipates into nothing. Her terror increases just as her loneliness. Everlastingly so, the nighttime is the worst. As the moon rises, so do the bars which contain the woman hiding in the wallpaper. This woman comes to haunt the patient and fill her veins with unrelenting

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, examines 19th century women’s roles. Jane, the main character in the book, feels confined to mental, emotional, and spiritual captivity. Her husband and physician, John, being worried for her, puts her into a house where she is required to do nothing. The house has the opposite effect on the main character, so much so that even the wallpaper in her room becomes a reminder of her feeling of suppression. For Jane, society, time, and space imprison her. On a superficial perspective one might think she has a mental illness; as the male characters in the book seem to convey. However, is she really crazy? Gilman muddies the line between mental illness, psychology, and gender.