Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper: Undermining The Truth

The Yellow Wallpaper: Undermining the Truth It’s no secret that gothic stories often use a combination of physical and psychological terror to evoke emotion into the reader. In The Yellow Wallpaper the combination of physical confinement in the room and emotional oppression serve to accelerate the deterioration of the narrator’s sanity. This creates an unreliable narrator which undermines the truth and adds to the gothic of the story. An intangible and uncertain reality makes the reader question the events and characters and creates a sense of uneasiness.
The beginning of the story has a relatively reliable narrator, nothing that is said or explained in these early paragraphs seem to hint that there is anything awry with reality or of the retelling of the story by the narrator. These early paragraphs also lay out the relationship between the narrator and the husband. The narrator’s condition is introduced as well as the remedy that is prescribed by her husband, and her physician “[I] am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well
again.”(Gilman1) Here it becomes clear that the narrator has some sort of medical condition. The quotations and emphasis on “work” express some resentment against the husband maybe even the doctor. The narrator clearly expresses that she does not agree with their course of treatment.
The first signs of oppression become apparent when the narrator is denied even thinking about her supposed condition. “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus -- but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.”(Gilman 1) Intuitively she already knows that socialization and mental stimulation would help her get better. Her husband is denying her an emotional out let and she is simply bottling up her emotions. She yields all power to his and holds none herself. This ultimately contributes to her breakdown. Emotional manipulation is second nature and is the start of her losing the grip on reality.
The very first sign of faltering reality in the narrator’s story comes from the description of the wall paper. The description lingers too long and the subsequent paragraphs only seen to further enhance her obsession with it. The narrator uses the wall paper and simply projects all of her pet up feelings and mental energy into trying to understand the wall paper. “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!”(Gilman 3) Here the narrator expresses how the physical confinement of the room is affecting her. Lacking mental and emotional stimulation the narrator has no choice but to grasp at anything remotely exciting and since she is confined to the house the yellow wall paper is all that keeps her occupied. The narrator personified the wall paper to the point that it severely affects her and her sanity. When the narrator says that the paper has a vicious influence on her really she is saying that the confinement and isolation is causing her to have an unhealthy obsession with the wall paper.
As the narrator spends more time isolated and unable to express emotions it becomes less clear what is actually there and what is simply a figment of her imagination.
She starts seeing a figure inside the wall paper and this is the point when the narrator becomes unreliable. “And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder -- I begin to think – I wish John would take me away from here!”(Gilman 5). Once a figure shows up within the wall paper the narrator becomes unreliable because there isn’t actually a person there she’s just seeing a manifestation of her oppressed imagination. Immediately after seeing the woman behind the wallpaper she blames John and the place she is trapped in. There is an underlying truth in these words that show how the room and the yellow wall paper are to blame for the appearance of the woman when she says, “I wonder—I begin to
think…”
If she had not been confined and denied stimulation then her condition would not have deteriorated and could have actually gotten better. At different points in the story when her husband insists on not letting her leave or she spends a substantial amount of time alone in the room, her description and obsession over the wall paper becomes distorted and exaggerated. This makes her narration become less believable and her sanity questionable. “Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision.” (Gilman 9) At the end of the story the narrator is completely mad and the reader cannot trust a single word she is saying. She becomes angry at the wall paper and gives it negative human emotions. This coupled with the uncertainty of the truth creates a sense of uneasiness. The strangled heads and shrieking fungus growths evoke a sense of fear and uncanny.
This deterioration in the narration makes the events in the story that much more gothic. Essentially she was driven to the point in the story where it no longer seems that she is even a real person. “"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!"” (Gilman 9) The narrator has changed the way she is describing the woman behind the wall paper, this implies that she was the one behind the wall paper the entire time. Only now once the woman has escaped from the paper does it feel like she is free. This could be because she has finally lost all sanity and is completely unreliable in retelling the story. It soon becomes evident that she is doing what she can not to end up back in the wall paper, which I the same as being under the oppression of her husband and those around her.
The truth is not always evident as the narrator spirals down and becomes engrossed with thoughts about the wall paper. Her descriptions cannot be trusted and therefore the story itself cannot be trusted. Uncertainty in this sense adds an unmistakable layer of gothic that makes the reader question and become uneasy. Deterioration of the narration is brought upon by her physical and mental confinement. This accelerated uncertainty makes the story more gothic than if she were simply losing her mind on her own. The fact that is was brought upon and enhanced by those around makes this a much more gothic tale of slowly undermining the truth.