The Yellow Wall-Paper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper is a quintessential example of how housewives were treated and oppressed in late 1800’s America. The Yellow Wall-Paper is written as a journal narrated by a depressed house wife in the late 19th century. She begins the story with diagnosed depression and a nervous condition from her husband, who is a doctor, as they spend the summer renting out a colonial mansion. This depression takes a turn for the worse when the stories narrator goes insane obsessing over the yellow wall-paper in her bed room. Housewives, and women in general, were misunderstood as well as misdiagnosed commonly during this time in American history as is exemplified in The Yellow Wall-Paper. The Yellow …show more content…
Gilman masterfully captures the oppression women underwent form their other half during this time period of American history. A reoccurring motif in The Yellow Wall- Paper is the journal itself. The events that take place are told through the journal, without it there can be no story. Gilman chose to put the story in journal format for a reason. She wanted the reader to be able to view the complete insanity and isolation being felt by our secluded narrator. The reader gets the sense that by the end of the story, this journal is the only thing actually getting to hear her real thoughts. It is the perfect plot device to accurately exemplify the psychological transformation that takes place in the mind of the journal’s writer. Arguably the most symbolic and important element in the story is the yellow wallpaper. On the walls of the narrator’s colonial style bed room are a “repellent” and “unclean yellow” (Gilman793) wallpaper. In the beginning of the story she despises the wallpaper. As the story progresses she begins to see different thing shapes and things inside the patterns of the paper. She explains her view as “the pattern lolls like a
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper is a quintessential example of how housewives were treated and oppressed in late 1800’s America. The Yellow Wall-Paper is written as a journal narrated by a depressed house wife in the late 19th century. She begins the story with diagnosed depression and a nervous condition from her husband, who is a doctor, as they spend the summer renting out a colonial mansion. This depression takes a turn for the worse when the stories narrator goes insane obsessing over the yellow wall-paper in her bed room. Housewives, and women in general, were misunderstood as well as misdiagnosed commonly during this time in American history as is exemplified in The Yellow Wall-Paper. The Yellow …show more content…
Gilman masterfully captures the oppression women underwent form their other half during this time period of American history. A reoccurring motif in The Yellow Wall- Paper is the journal itself. The events that take place are told through the journal, without it there can be no story. Gilman chose to put the story in journal format for a reason. She wanted the reader to be able to view the complete insanity and isolation being felt by our secluded narrator. The reader gets the sense that by the end of the story, this journal is the only thing actually getting to hear her real thoughts. It is the perfect plot device to accurately exemplify the psychological transformation that takes place in the mind of the journal’s writer. Arguably the most symbolic and important element in the story is the yellow wallpaper. On the walls of the narrator’s colonial style bed room are a “repellent” and “unclean yellow” (Gilman793) wallpaper. In the beginning of the story she despises the wallpaper. As the story progresses she begins to see different thing shapes and things inside the patterns of the paper. She explains her view as “the pattern lolls like a