Throughout the story we see a correlation between the imagery that is used to describe the summer house and the narrators mental state. The very first thing we are introduced to is the house and how beautiful it is, yet she describes it to have an intangible quality that is off putting to the narrator. We then learn of her condition, diagnosed by her husband as “temporary nervous depression”, and get our first glimpse of her oppressive relationship leaving you with the feeling that there is something not quite there with in her as well. The connection between the to is first displayed through a structural bridge between her mental condition and the physical state of the house as she transitions from discussing her illness to describing the
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There are many characteristics that are described in the room which are personified through her. For example, she describes the color to be that of an extraordinarily irritating kind saying “The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 649), when yellow is described in such a manner, it is closely related to sickness. Just as the room is “sick” physically she is sick mentally. As she begins to study the wallpaper she starts to notice things. She sees that there is a focal pattern and that is is similar to bars, and that there is a sub-pattern, which seem to make out strangled heads from trying to break free from the focal pattern and a moving pattern with the figure of a woman. She writes “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 652). She further identifies with the wallpaper as she slowly unravels the pattern of the wallpaper. We see her interest with the wall paper turn into an obsession once she decodes what is occurring in the pattern. Determined to set her free she beings to peel it away as if to catch the creeping women. What is really happening is her mental state is a projection of that wallpaper on many levels. For example, she says “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over” (Gilman 654). The Women trapped in the pattern of gender roles are the ones she sees with their heads trapped in the bars, while the creeping one is her. She creeps around trying to find freedom from her husband, tearing at the wallpaper to capture the woman. However, as the wallpaper diminishes so does her mental state, and once the woman is captured her sensibility is
There are many characteristics that are described in the room which are personified through her. For example, she describes the color to be that of an extraordinarily irritating kind saying “The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 649), when yellow is described in such a manner, it is closely related to sickness. Just as the room is “sick” physically she is sick mentally. As she begins to study the wallpaper she starts to notice things. She sees that there is a focal pattern and that is is similar to bars, and that there is a sub-pattern, which seem to make out strangled heads from trying to break free from the focal pattern and a moving pattern with the figure of a woman. She writes “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 652). She further identifies with the wallpaper as she slowly unravels the pattern of the wallpaper. We see her interest with the wall paper turn into an obsession once she decodes what is occurring in the pattern. Determined to set her free she beings to peel it away as if to catch the creeping women. What is really happening is her mental state is a projection of that wallpaper on many levels. For example, she says “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over” (Gilman 654). The Women trapped in the pattern of gender roles are the ones she sees with their heads trapped in the bars, while the creeping one is her. She creeps around trying to find freedom from her husband, tearing at the wallpaper to capture the woman. However, as the wallpaper diminishes so does her mental state, and once the woman is captured her sensibility is