“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is about a woman who is suffering from nervous depression, and is taken by her husband, a physician, to a house that has been empty, and unlived in for years. Her husband keeps her in an isolated room in efforts to convince her that time to herself away from her home and life would leave her feeling more positively. However, her illness only worsens due to the fact she is controlled by her husband, isolated against her will, and not receiving the proper medical attention she needs. As a result, she begins to become fixated on the yellow wallpaper in the room.
The narrator in this story is clearly being controlled by her husband, who instead of asking her how she …show more content…
She is being kept at a house for the summer she describes as being “the most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes [her] think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people”. However, she believes that there is something strange about the house, and this feeling only gets stronger when she sees the room that she is being forced to stay in. This room reminds her of a “nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, [she] should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the wall”. Furthermore, the room is surrounded by this dreadful yellow wallpaper that is peeling off the walls. Left alone to her thoughts all day, she eventually becomes fixated on this wallpaper. She describes it as being “dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide…”, and she goes on. She describes the color of it, a dreadful yellow that is repelling and looks worn from being endlessly beamed on by the sun through the windows, and in addition, the more she analyzes this wallpaper the more she believes that there are two patterns in the paper that move. She says that “at night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern [she] [means], and the woman behind it is as plain as can be”. Later near the end of the story, we understand that the woman she is visualizing is herself. If the narrator had not been isolated in that room for so long with her thoughts she most likely would not have become so obsessed with this wallpaper, but because that was not the case,
The narrator in this story is clearly being controlled by her husband, who instead of asking her how she …show more content…
She is being kept at a house for the summer she describes as being “the most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes [her] think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people”. However, she believes that there is something strange about the house, and this feeling only gets stronger when she sees the room that she is being forced to stay in. This room reminds her of a “nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, [she] should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the wall”. Furthermore, the room is surrounded by this dreadful yellow wallpaper that is peeling off the walls. Left alone to her thoughts all day, she eventually becomes fixated on this wallpaper. She describes it as being “dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide…”, and she goes on. She describes the color of it, a dreadful yellow that is repelling and looks worn from being endlessly beamed on by the sun through the windows, and in addition, the more she analyzes this wallpaper the more she believes that there are two patterns in the paper that move. She says that “at night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern [she] [means], and the woman behind it is as plain as can be”. Later near the end of the story, we understand that the woman she is visualizing is herself. If the narrator had not been isolated in that room for so long with her thoughts she most likely would not have become so obsessed with this wallpaper, but because that was not the case,