The First Entry of the Yellow Wallpaper
‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ First Diary Analysis
One of the prominent techniques that Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses in this first diary entry would be the repetition of certain phrases and words.
At first, we can see the narrator repeats the name of her husband John often in phrases such as ‘Ordinary people like John and me’, ‘John laughs at me’ ‘John is practical in the extreme’ etc. This repetition shows the reader the narrator’s dependency on her husband – it seems as if her husband is all that controls her life and all that she thinks about. John seems to have such a powerful influence on her life that she almost can’t function without him mentally and physically; Physically because he is a ‘physician’ and is caring for her while she’s in her unstable state, and mentally because of both her unstable state and her submissive nature towards him. During the time in which The Yellow Wallpaper was written, males constantly had power and control over women and were seen as the more dominant of the two; the effect of her husband’s name repeated reflects this attitude and how unstable women are viewed without their husbands.
The repetition of the rhetorical question ‘What is one to do?’ shows the narrator’s helplessness in a sense. It seems to us as if she’s trapped in a difficult situation and there’s no way out of it: for example when describing how ‘John does not believe that she is sick’ her response is ‘And what can one do?’ which shows that there’s nothing she can do to make the situation better for herself, which could be due to her mentally unstable disposition and her submissive attitude towards John. She’s often dismissed by John, who says there’s ‘really nothing the matter with her but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency—‘which seems to result in her just accepting the situation she’s in because John’s a ‘physician of high standing’, which inevitably shows that whatever she thinks or says is automatically wrong because she’s only
One of the prominent techniques that Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses in this first diary entry would be the repetition of certain phrases and words.
At first, we can see the narrator repeats the name of her husband John often in phrases such as ‘Ordinary people like John and me’, ‘John laughs at me’ ‘John is practical in the extreme’ etc. This repetition shows the reader the narrator’s dependency on her husband – it seems as if her husband is all that controls her life and all that she thinks about. John seems to have such a powerful influence on her life that she almost can’t function without him mentally and physically; Physically because he is a ‘physician’ and is caring for her while she’s in her unstable state, and mentally because of both her unstable state and her submissive nature towards him. During the time in which The Yellow Wallpaper was written, males constantly had power and control over women and were seen as the more dominant of the two; the effect of her husband’s name repeated reflects this attitude and how unstable women are viewed without their husbands.
The repetition of the rhetorical question ‘What is one to do?’ shows the narrator’s helplessness in a sense. It seems to us as if she’s trapped in a difficult situation and there’s no way out of it: for example when describing how ‘John does not believe that she is sick’ her response is ‘And what can one do?’ which shows that there’s nothing she can do to make the situation better for herself, which could be due to her mentally unstable disposition and her submissive attitude towards John. She’s often dismissed by John, who says there’s ‘really nothing the matter with her but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency—‘which seems to result in her just accepting the situation she’s in because John’s a ‘physician of high standing’, which inevitably shows that whatever she thinks or says is automatically wrong because she’s only