The Yellow Wallpaper Setting Analysis

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The Setting -
Settings are major components of any story written. When reading a story it is often times the first important bit of information one will receive. The setting lays the framework for the entire story by introducing the mood of the story, and foreshadowing future events. The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is set in the late 1800s. The narrator describes the house that she is living in as “quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village”. Right away you understand that the narrator is isolated from other people by living in this house. She goes on to say that “there is something strange about the house”. That statement is an example of how the setting can foreshadow future events.
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The setting is described as “closed off” and “a time of quiet and waiting”. The Salinas Valley had mountains and a river and was called “a closed pot”. The “air was cold” in the winter and “there was no sunshine in the valley”. The ranch where Elisa and Henry live had “orchards” and “cattle on the higher slopes”. The setting in this story lets the reader know that Elisa is “closed off” from other people. Her “neat white farm house” is very tidy and well-kept, as well as her garden. There was a “wire fence that protected her flower garden from cattle and dogs and chickens”. It is important that the fence around her garden is mentioned in the story. The barrier between her garden and her husband’s livestock is telling of the relationship between Elisa and Henry. There is not only a literal barrier between the two’s work but also a figurative barrier between them. The setting has opened the eyes of the reader to how Elisa’s ranch is separated from other people, as well as she is metaphorically confined to her house and her garden. Knowing that Elisa takes pride in her garden and her house shows the reader that she has to have an outlet for her “over-eager over-powerful” attitude. The setting shows the reader that she is limited in her life to only do what women in that time did such as house work and gardening. The setting taking place in the middle of the winter and Elisa “cutting down the old year 's chrysanthemum stalk” gives the impression of dark, death, and sadness. The setting provides the reader that mood to better understand how Elisa is feeling. Elisa was a woman trapped in the role of the house wife and desperately longed for some excitement. The setting contributed to the mood of this

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