Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman during the late nineteenth century. The story is mainly about the narrator, Jane, and her battle with a “nervous disorder”. The woman spends the story journaling to herself, explaining her situation, diagnosis, the wallpaper in the nursery room that she is temporarily staying in, as well as the woman she believes is inside of it. Throughout the story, the narrator is pushed around by her husband and society’s expectations, which leads her to feeling stuck in her life and ‘trapped’ within the wallpaper representing her mind. Jane is the narrator of this short story. She is married to a physician and recently gave birth to a baby boy. She has been isolated from the world …show more content…
Considering the time period, Jane’s ‘ideal’ role in the household consisted of taking care of the children, pleasing the husband, attending social events, and keeping the house in good condition. However, with her diagnosis, she was not able to achieve any of those aspects of the role. This could have lead her to feel useless and unneeded within her house and in her family, which would only stress her mental state of being farther. The wallpaper within the bedroom is a very important piece of the story. She seems to study the wallpaper as a way to go against John’s strict will. The paper slowly took her over as the story progressed; she hated it at first, but it began to grow on her as she became one with it. As the wallpaper grew on her, she started to create a new identity for herself, one that lived inside of it. The wallpaper was ultimately in place to represent her mind, with all its twists, turns, and patterns, and the woman was placed inside of it to show how she was trapped within herself. (Seuss …show more content…
Near the end of the story, after ripping strips of paper off the walls, she exclaims, “I’ve got out at last!”...”in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper so you can't put me back!” (Gilman 184). At this point in the story, John had just walked in on her essentially having a psychotic breakdown, and was completely terrified by what he saw. This was a breaking point for Jane, in which she was finally able to stand up to her husband, addressing how he had held her inside the wallpaper. She was finally able to admit to John, as well as herself, that she was trapped within her mind due to her husband’s actions, treatments, and mannerisms, further feeding the idea that the wallpaper as well as the woman inside it was really just a way for her to represent and express herself and her internal state of