Critical Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, The Yellow Wallpaper, portrays the life and mind of a woman suffering from post-partum depression in the late eighteenth century. Gilman uses setting to strengthen the impact of her story by allowing the distant country mansion symbolize the loneliness of her narrator, Jane. Gilman also uses flat characters to enhance the depth of Jane’s thoughts; however, Gilman’s use of narrative technique impacts her story the most. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses interior monologue to add impact to Jane’s progression into insanity, to add insight into the relationships in the story, and to increase the depth of Jane’s connection with the yellow wallpaper it self.

“The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a first-person narration of madness experienced by an unnamed woman in the Victorian era. The madness is exposed through a “nervous condition” diagnosed by the writer’s husband, a physician, who believes the only cure is prohibiting all intellectual thought and to remain in solitude for a “rest-cure”. The act of confinement propels the narrator into an internal spiral of defiance against patriarchal discourse. Through characterization and symbolism, “The Yellow Wallpaper” exhibits an inventive parallel between the narrator’s mental deterioration and her internal struggle to break free from female oppression imposed on her through her husband and society.

The forceful tone throughout the passage I chose, and story, shows that Gilman was forcefully trying to get her point across through the narrator of the story, that resting, and confinement were not the answers to curing mental health issues, such as postpartum depression, in the late nineteenth century, “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them, but it does exhaust me a good deal- having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition” (Gilman, P. 462). She is forceful. She does not agree with the ideas of rest and confinement as a cure. The narrator wants to be able to be free and live with the normal excitements of life. In addition, she states forcefully, that she writes in spite of her husband and brother. The narrator knows that writing helps her and wants the reader to know that she continues to do it anyways, because she knows that it is in the best interest of her health, to be able to clear her head, by writing down her

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wall-Paper," does more than just tell the story of a woman who suffers at the hands of 19th century quack medicine. Gilman created a protagonist with real emotions and a real psych that can be examined and analyzed in the context of modern psychology. In fact, to understand the psychology of the unnamed protagonist is to be well on the way to understanding the story itself. "The Yellow Wall-Paper," written in first-person narrative, charts the psychological state of the protagonist as she slowly deteriorates into schizophrenia (a disintegration of the personality).

Gilman uses indirect characterization in revealing the narrator’s private thoughts and feelings through the narrator’s secret journal. Since the narrator is diagnosed with nervous depression, – “conventional women’s disease of the nineteenth century” – her husband John, who is also her physician, recommends that her treatment be a rest cure, where she is not allowed to do anything active, especially reading and writing (Treichler, 1984, p.61). Treichler writes that during that time, doctors dictated this therapy because it was believed that too much intellectual stimulation would cause women to experience this illness (1984). But, because the narrator insists that the freedom to read and write would improve her condition, she decides to keep a secret journal as an outlet for her thoughts and imagination (Gilman, 1892).

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a woman who writes about personal experience, and in her short, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” we learn exactly who our author is based on the language and communication that appears throughout the story. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a captivating tale, largely because the language and communication between characters translates to a feeling of near madness for the reader. The man, the dominant character in the story, has much to say about his wife’s mental condition and practically refuses to permit her feelings. Gilman explains how this story wasn’t made to drive people insane, but rather to save people from insanity. She realizes she has the power to create a powerful effect within literature and that is the thing that

The story is scattered with metaphors and allegories pertaining to the issue of female oppression and can be seen in the actions of the narrator and her husband in the story. During the story, the narrator is pressured by her husband and the doctors about her nervous condition, and agreed to the treatment, because that is what her husband would want. Gilman uses many typical characteristics of a woman in her story; innocent, loyal and obedient to her husband. Like many historical disputes of women writing, her husband bans her from writing, and even diagnoses her as ill to stop the writing. Phrases in the story also link

To begin, Gilman reveals very early on in the short story that the main character, Jane suffers from a mental illness that her husband john, who is also her physician fails to acknowledge is real. John along with other men in Janes family downplay her depression by attempting to convince her that she is not

Gilman's female narrator, who either chose not to fight this tradition or was unable to do so, loses her sanity at the hands of an oppressive male-dominated American society. The narrator feels certain that the

Towards the end of the story the narrator has a complete mental breakdown and goes insane. The story ends when John, the narrator's husband, faints when he enters his wife's room, because he is greatly disturbed when he finds her "creeping" around and becoming one of the figures behind the wallpaper. The Yellow Wallpaper can be interpreted on a personal level by associating it with the author. Gilman suffered from nervous breakdowns and depression because she was told to live a very plain life as best as she could by a specialist in nervous diseases.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells a story about the main character who seems to be in touch with her sanity at the beginning of the story, as she obsesses over her room she is pulled further and further away from sanity. The husband believes he can help his wife, but in the end, it just makes her worse.

The actual state of the narrator's sickness throughout the story is also symbolic of the narrator and more generally, women breaking free from society's stereotypes and expectations. Although she may only be breaking free through hallucinations and craziness, it is important because she is making a stand against the norms and expectations put upon her. Her insanity, for Gilman, represents feminist anger at society's rules and restraints for women. She is saying that women during the late 19th century were expected to be domestic housewives and that was it. That was their identity. But through this woman, Gilman began the idea that even if insanity was the only escape from the dumb, doting, docile domestic that women were supposed to be, she would rather take that than be

During the nineteenth century in the United States, woman was on the bottom of society. They had to follow the rules of society. Gilman was married to a doctor whose name in the short story is John. She had “nervous depression” which now is known as postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is where a female gives birth and has it because she has trouble attaching to her baby and the symptoms are appetite loss, anxiety and different moods. In that time females who had some sort of mental illness were kept away from society, especially when their husband was in high society. The story was "inspired partially from the way

It brings a heavy darkness” (30). Even though this shows Gilman occasionally had trouble with her depression, it also shows she understood how to manage it, and she became exceedingly aware of her limitations. Gilman was also exposed to oppression during her youth. She witnessed her mother being oppressed by her father when he left her with two children and no way to support herself (Knight 29). Because of the exposure to these things, Gilman grew into a highly mature and well-rounded young woman. One can infer Gilman led a seemingly conventional childhood with few problems.

     Throughout the story, Gilman holds us attentive and sympathetic due to the specific positioning of the narrator; the narrator confides in us and us alone. The whole story is told as journal entries and personal thoughts. In reading the journal entries we fell privileged and intimate. Yet it is the personal thoughts that actually hold us captive in the realm of lunacy, a literal invitation into an insane mind in which we have no other option rather than actually "seeing" the twisted world that she sees, through her own eyes.