A Literary Analysis Essay: The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Character Analysis Essay: The Yellow Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a first-person narration in a journal account of a depressed woman sent to a colonial mansion for the summer in her husband’s attempts to help her get well, but this is only her version. The narrator is trapped in her own mind, creating scenarios in a fantasy world of her own in order to ignore her reality. The unnamed female character claims in her journal that she is her with her husband, who is a physician, for the summer in order to get better from her post-traumatic stress disorder after having a baby. Yet, isn’t it a bit strange that she stays in an attic all day with bars on the windows? In turn, her mental illness, outrageous visions,
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She explains that John does not understand her pain with her nervous disorder, “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. (Gilman 90)” As part of her “cure” John tells her not to express her imagination, even through writing, so her emotions rebel and are directly connected to her negative feelings about the yellow wallpaper in her attic. This is clear when she is being left alone at the house a lot and has a great deal of time to contemplate her thoughts and feelings, “It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work…There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down…I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. (Gilman 91)” The narrator’s isolation in the room leads to the worsening of her mental state and negative emotions, therefore creating the unrealistic visions of the shadowy woman in the …show more content…
No one else ever sees the woman besides the narrator, meaning that she isn’t real and theses things aren’t actually happening, therefore the actions in her journal are not credible. The shadowy woman she sees “creeping” from the wallpaper is sort of the ANTAGONIST in her story because she not only frightens the narrator but haunts her as well by leaving the yellow-wallpapered room and doing the things she wants to do, “I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden. (Gilman 99)” At one point she refers to herself as a creeping woman coming out of the yellow wallpaper, “I don’t like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they came out of the wallpaper as I did? (Gilman 101)” This is towards the CLIMAX of the story where her thoughts and emotions get all discombobulated because she realizes she is the shadowy figure from the yellow wallpaper, like that figure she wants out of that attic, free from her so-called husband’s clutches, but she will not admit it to herself in order to keep her fantasy world in
She explains that John does not understand her pain with her nervous disorder, “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. (Gilman 90)” As part of her “cure” John tells her not to express her imagination, even through writing, so her emotions rebel and are directly connected to her negative feelings about the yellow wallpaper in her attic. This is clear when she is being left alone at the house a lot and has a great deal of time to contemplate her thoughts and feelings, “It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work…There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down…I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. (Gilman 91)” The narrator’s isolation in the room leads to the worsening of her mental state and negative emotions, therefore creating the unrealistic visions of the shadowy woman in the …show more content…
No one else ever sees the woman besides the narrator, meaning that she isn’t real and theses things aren’t actually happening, therefore the actions in her journal are not credible. The shadowy woman she sees “creeping” from the wallpaper is sort of the ANTAGONIST in her story because she not only frightens the narrator but haunts her as well by leaving the yellow-wallpapered room and doing the things she wants to do, “I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden. (Gilman 99)” At one point she refers to herself as a creeping woman coming out of the yellow wallpaper, “I don’t like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they came out of the wallpaper as I did? (Gilman 101)” This is towards the CLIMAX of the story where her thoughts and emotions get all discombobulated because she realizes she is the shadowy figure from the yellow wallpaper, like that figure she wants out of that attic, free from her so-called husband’s clutches, but she will not admit it to herself in order to keep her fantasy world in