Summary Of The Yellow Wallpaper

In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the literary devices of setting, personification, and symbolism are used to convey that the role of middle-class women as domestic and complacent homemakers was prominent within this society. The main setting of the story was in the ancestral halls, which were secured by the main character (whose name is presumed to be Jane) and her husband John as a summer home. Although Jane wanted to stay in a downstairs bedroom that “…opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it” (page 1). Instead of fighting for the room she wanted to stay in, Jane kept silent and listened to John—instead …show more content…
When she first described the wallpaper, Jane said that as her eyes followed “the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they [her eyes] suddenly commit suicide” (page 2). In the next journal entry, merely two weeks later, Jane writes that “there is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down… Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere” (page 3). It’s been only two weeks in the nursery room and Jane is already beginning to see things that aren’t necessarily there. Regardless of whether or not the eyes on the wall are real, they represent how Jane feels as if she is constantly being watched, and it is driving her insane. In society, middle-class women are also constantly being watched, not by wallpaper, but by men who tend to police women for wearing their favorite clothes or for speaking their minds. Just like Jane in the wallpapered room, middle-class women feel uncomfortable and uneasy with so many unwelcome eyes always on …show more content…
Jane begins to see a sub-pattern in the wallpaper “…like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” (page 5). As Jane’s mental health spirals down, this woman behind the wallpaper is given more life. Jane says that the woman (sometimes multiple women) is and are trapped behind the paper, only free to creep about as they please in the daytime. This delusion is representative of how Jane is trapped inside of her own mind, unable to truly escape. Although to her husband and to her other caretakers it seems as if she is getting better, when Jane is alone she becomes trapped within the confines of her mind, just like how the woman in her delusions is trapped behind the wallpaper at night. When Jane believes that there are multiple women trapped behind the wallpaper, it is representative of the many middle-class women in society who are, like Jane, also trapped within the confines of their minds, unable to escape. These women are mistreated and misdiagnosed, unable to receive the help they really need because nobody wants to listen to them—just like how John never listened to Jane about her thoughts. Often in society, middle-class women are disregarded as people and they are forced to be complacent, domestic, and often unthinking homemakers for their husbands. As implied by the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” this treatment can lead to a decline in the mental