An Analysis Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is not your typical upper class young woman, who has just given birth to her first child. She is an inquisitive dynamic young woman, whose nervous condition has gradually gotten worse as she adapts to the restrictions placed upon her. We see how the restrictions transform her through a series of journal entries, and learn that she has a tough time expressing her feelings to others. As we see her vivid thoughts through the journal entries we see the deterioration of her mental state.
The journal that the nameless narrator writes in leads to her unstable mental state. Gilman lets us see her innermost thoughts through this journal; she constructs an image of herself in there without giving herself a title. We read that her husband and brother are both doctors, and that John’s sister is the housekeeper: “There comes John’s sister. … She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession” (276). This gives everyone besides the narrator a purpose; she turns, intensely analyzing the wallpaper into her purpose: “Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like” (280). Her journal allows us to see into
The female protagonist starts to believe that she has made a new friend; the woman that is trapped in the wallpaper. The central character starts tearing little pieces of the wallpaper off, and is striving for her own freedom. The female that is trapped behind the wallpaper is a symbol of women during the 1900 time period striving for freedom: “‘I’ve got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper so you can’t put me back’” (283). As she has feelings of isolation her mental state is weakened by her