Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

This description is important because it shows how the narrator is in an unstable mental state. She starts off my talking about a smell that the wallpaper has. Then, she says how it creeps all over the house, as if it is alive and a person. The word “creeps” is significant because the narrator later uses this word to describe how the lady in the wallpaper moves about and how the narrator herself moves to see the lady in the wallpaper. After saying the smell creeps, the narrator continues to personify the smell when she says that the smell is “hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for [her] on the stairs”(654). This is significant because it shows that over time, she continually sees and believes the smell is doing human actions. This development over time is another sign that the narrator is slowly descending into madness. She thinks the smell is everywhere, waiting for and watching her. This could mean mean …show more content…
This is significant because it shows that she is obsessed with the smell because she could not stop trying to analyze it. Obsessive behavior is also in indicator that the narrator is not mentally stable because individuals that are stable usually do not compulsively obsess over smells for hours. After saying this, the narrator goes back to personifying the smell as she says that in the night she can ¨find [the smell] hanging over [herself]”(654). The placement of this within the passage shows that the narrator is not organized. Her ideas are jumbled, which can indicate that she is thinking deeply about this and cannot get her ideas straight. However, along with the other symptoms that the narrator has shown, she may be thinking obsessively over the smell and that may be the reason she cannot get her ideas in