Literary Analysis

The Yellow Wall-Paper

Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was reality to many women from the late 1800s and the early 1900s, including Gillman herself.  She wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” after suffering from post partum depression.  As Gillman explains, during her third year of this trouble she went to the best known specialist in the country for nervous disease.  He applied the resting cure, to which she responded so good to that he sent her home and advised to like life as domestic as possible and to “never touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as she lived”.  However, she didn’t listen, after a few months she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in which she says she wrote with its embellishments and additions to carry out the ideal.   She mentions her Doctor nearly drove her mad. In “The yellow wallpaper” the Narrator’s condition is nervous depression, which seems to worsen by the end of the story, while her husband John is her Physician.               The stories setting took place in the late nineteenth century, in midsummer because she mentions fourth of July.  The narrator suffers from nervous depression so she is taken to a place she describes as “the most beautiful place” (Gilman, p809).  She has to stay for three months so she can get better because according to her husband John, “there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression (Gilman, p808). She also hates her room and describes it as “a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore” (Gilman, p 809).  The yellow wallpaper is the thing she hates the most in the room.                From what we know, the narrator is a young middle class woman.  She is married and just had a child.  The narrator is suffering from depression and has been taken to a place so she can recover.  She is given a treatment that does not work for her, and worsens her condition. Her husband John is her physician, and failed to notice how his wife was worsening as time passed by.  He left her alone most of the time, but he was so sure she was making progress.               As the narrator spends more time alone, and in her room, the wallpaper affects her more, and more.  Little by little she starts stepping out of the reality would, and into her own. At first it was just any awful yellow wallpaper, but as the story goes on she starts noticing symbols and lines.  The narrator stares at it for hours and mentions that at night the figure of a woman would creep around and at daytime she sees the woman outside her window.  Until the end she says she was the woman trapped, and now is free, and she is free because at this point she is completely insane and everything in her mind is what she thinks is right.  The yellow wallpaper with the woman trapped inside symbolizes her life.  She felt trapped, and didn't have much say.  Most of the time, she said she was treated like a little girl.  It was always what her husband said, and all she could do was agree.              The climax happened when she talks about the stuff she found out about the woman in the wallpaper.  She says, “I really have discovered something at last.  I think that woman gets out in the daytime.  I always lock the door when I creep by daylight” (Gilman, p817).  She also says, “I have found out another funny thing, but I shan’t tell it this time!  It does not do to trust people too much” (Gilman, p817).  The narrator doesn’t trust people either; For example, Jennie.  The narrator starts identifying herself with the woman in the wallpaper.              The falling action happens when she finally says she is the woman in the yellow wallpaper. At this point, she talks as that woman herself, and she’s creeping all over the room.   At the end she doesn’t recognize John either.  John is looking at the way his wife is acting, and is in shocked.  ​             The narrator’s condition worsened day by day.  The whole time she was there the yellow wallpaper was her only distraction.  She was alone most of her time, and wasn’t allowed to write or to think too much, and that had a great affect on her. In the end the wallpaper symbolized her life.  She felt trapped since the time she walked into the mansion.  The narrator wasn’t allowed to express her feelings, she had no say, and the only way she express what she thought was through the yellow wallpaper.  What she saw in the wallpaper was a reflection of her life.  John could have handled her condition differently, and it might have had a different outcome.

Lane, Ann. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. N.p., n.d. Gale. Web. 19 Apr. 2012

Reesman, Jeanne C. The Norton Anthology. 7thth ed. Vol. C. New York: W.W Norton & Company Inc, 2007. 806-19. Print. Rpt. of The Yellow Wall-paper. 1892.

Reesman, Jeanne C. The Norton Anthology. 7thth ed. Vol. C. New York: W.W Norton & Company Inc, 2007. 820. Print. Rpt. of The Yellow Wall-paper. 1892.