the yellow wallpaper
? The Yellow Wallpaper How can a simple old yellow wallpaper drive someone insane? “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a short story by Charlotte Gilman, is about a married couple whose wife is a little sick, and John (her husband) forbidden her leave a room that has old yellow wallpaper where she’s left alone constantly and the lack of something to occupy her time causes the her to become delusional. John’s assumption of his own superior wisdom leads him to dominate his wife, all in the name of “helping” her. She’s like a child unable to stand up for herself feeling like she’s in prison that has four walls with some old yellow wallpaper.
The theme of this story is oppression and the importance of self-expression because her husband was making decisions for her like keeping her in a room where she didn’t want to be; therefor making her feel with no authority over her life in an unjust manner. The narrator didn’t give the character a name through the story because she was representing all women in her era. Women who in the nineteenth century, middle class marriage was a distinction between the “domestic” functions of the female and the “active” work of the male, which made women second-class citizens.
The character’s projection of an imaginary woman was at first her shadow against the bars of the wallpaper, causing the conflict she experiences and eventually leading to the complete breakdown of the limitation of her identity and that of her projected shadow. With “barred windows for little children and rings and things in the walls” the room is much like her prison (Gilman 88). Even the pattern on the wallpaper which at first was completely random “at night in any kind of light, twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all moonlight, become bars” as if she is caged (Gilman 96).
Both times here she refers to aspects of her room as bars. As she begins to feel imprisoned she sees her feelings onto the wallpaper, but the idea of the room being her prison goes because her need to escape. The wallpaper develops its symbolism throughout the story. At first it seems ugly: it’s ripped, soiled, and an “unclean yellow. ” The worst part is the formless pattern, which catches the interest of the narrator as she tries to figure out how it is organized. The sub-pattern comes as a desperate woman, constantly crawling and stooping, looking for an escape from behind the main pattern, which refers to the bars of a cage.
Gilman uses this hideous paper as a symbol of the domestic life that traps so many women. Her urge to escape that ugly yellow wallpaper is driving her insane causing her see and imagine things, I believe that with a couple of hours outside the room she wouldn’t of gone insane. Not just the wallpaper, but everything about her bedroom including those that occupy it with her the stage for the protagonist’s insanity. When her husband John says: “bless her little heart; she shall be as sick as she pleases” we catch of his childlike treatment of her (Gilman 95).
The use of the word “little” describes her heart giving the image of a small body to go along with it, like that of a child. The fact that he says she is “as sick as she pleases” reflects the way a child uses their illnesses to escape certain chores they do not wish to do. This would make sense because he also diagnosis her with “temporary nervous depression;” which is women who are suspected of trying to escape housework and sexual duties (Gilman 87). This childlike treatment of her is the cause of her breakdown, making her go insane seeing things and feeling trapped in a cage.
Gilman seems to suggest that the narrator’s illness got worst not because of her intelligence on mental health, but because of the fact that she was treated like a child affecting her dependency, and her husband making decisions for her. ’ By the end of the story the woman behind the wallpaper is a hallucination, but in the beginning she is simply a shadow. At first this woman is simply a “formless figure sulking about behind the silly and conspicuous front design,” much like the blurred shadow that all objects possess (Gilman 91).
The fact that the figure is at first “formless” suggests that there is an evolution of this being, since eventually she claims to clearly see a woman; describing the wall as “silly and conspicuous” hints to the pattern being something very loud and noticeable… but not threatening. This also changes by the end of the story when the wallpaper seems to plague her. Therefore, her eventual personality transition is something that seems to happen slowly as her isolation in the room takes hold of her mind.
With the constant loneliness causing the protagonist to obsess over her surroundings the To confirm this she writes in her journal: “I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (Gilman 94) reality becomes clear. The reasoning for this is that the outline of the form is not only her shadow, but a projected being of what she wishes it to be. Calling this form a woman gives her an avenue of escape now that the two are of the same kind.
The “dim sub pattern” is that of the bars which gives way to the illusion of her shadow, which has now become an actual person to her, being entrapped behind it. This transformation from formless shadow to hidden woman gives way for her transferal of identity. The room with the yellow wallpaper is her jail cell, and night after night the woman in the paper taunts her with her freedom until she has ripped away yards and yards of it. This delusional crisis takes her to killing herself, thinking that will be her freedom.
She didn’t have the guts to confront her husband and move rooms. People might assume that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is simply about a woman driven insane by her depression and isolation, but it is so much more than that. It is the illusion of the protagonist’s shadow against the bars of the wallpaper’s pattern that drives her to complete insanity; and eventually into believing she and the so called women in the wallpaper have traded places. This story has a lot to say about the treatment of women in late 1800’s, and just how far the human mind before it snaps.
In a time where woman were beginning to have dreams that no longer only consisted of laundry, their husband’s dinner and their babies nursing schedule, Gilman set out to bring truth to the reality for these woman. Moreover, Gilman took a chance to show that it was not the woman who should be seen as invalid, but instead the treatment of woman. Work Cited 1. http://www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/facts. html 2. http://www. novelguide. com/the-yellow-wallpaper/theme-analysis 3. Gywn, R. S Fiction. Seventh Edition. New York: Penguin Academics 2012. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.