The Narrator In 'The Yellow Wallpaper'

Improved Essays
The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” takes the reader along the ride through her own personal downfall. The narrator loses her sanity, when her husband refuses to believe she is sick mentally not physically. The narrator’s view of the color, physical characteristics, and her imprisonment leads her to insanity. The narrators first notices the color of the wallpaper and finds it “repellant and almost revolting” The color grabs the narrator’s attention, when John loses his attention towards her. The early stage of noticing the wallpaper and making her focus increase more, the narrator still holds her sanity to the reader. The color of the wallpaper suddenly starts to show human characteristics to the narrator. “There is a recurrent spot where

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Between the ignorance of John, the husband, the confinements made to trap the main character, and her helplessness caused by her mental state, she fixates on a hideous yellow wallpaper where she begins to go mad with subconscious realization. The…

    • 850 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The yellow wallpaper is completely abstract; it has no pattern or meaning. No matter how terribly she wants to make sense of the wallpaper, she never will. It seems as though the narrator begins to make friends with the wallpaper, or at least submit to it. Towards the end of the story, she finds that she grows a connection with the room (750). The wallpaper is one of the main reasons that the narrator’s insanity escalates so…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the critically acclaimed short story, The Yellow Wallpaper(1982), Charles Stetson explores the theme of mental health throughout the story using the narrator’s character. He portrays the change of Jane’s mental health by employing the aspects of symbolism, perspective and traditional gender roles. Jane’s temperament in the beginning is very calm and she is happy to be married. Through the course of the story, during the rest cure treatment, her mental condition deteriorates as she becomes insane. Her increasing paranoia of her surroundings makes her start imagining figures, leading to a disastrous consequence.…

    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Regarding many event that happened, relating with her husband and the wallpaper, causing her to go delusional. When the narrator is first diagnosed, it is done by her husband John, who is a physician and is apprise to rest. She is placed in a room which has a yellow wallpaper. Creating the narrator to devote much of her time in examining the meaning of the wallpaper. She rests very little due to that she is convinced she will be the first and only one to find the meaning of the pattern.…

    • 895 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Contrastingly, the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is fully aware of the reasons her husband and her sister-in-law keep her locked up; but she goes against their wishes by writing. The narrator writes about the wallpaper and how she wishes John would change it or she could leave, but she can’t and it drives her insane. Once the narrator has a mental breakdown, she sees herself as a woman from the wallpaper. The narrator was placed in a room that was figuratively a box and then found her own way out of it: losing her…

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “the Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator and her husband are on vacation in a secluded edifice. The narrator’s husband, John, is also her doctor and diagnoses her with an illness which he calls ‘temporary nervous depression’, and tells her rest. As they live in the house, the narrator starts to become more and more debilitated and starts saying demented things, indicating that the house may be haunted. Also the narrator gets extremely attached to ‘ the yellow wallpaper’ and begins to see shapes that form a picture; a picture of a lady trying to escape from bars. this picture relays an unnerving feeling in the reader.…

    • 1118 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In my opinion, the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" seems to be haunted. There are many reasons in the story that gives proof that the narrator is possessed. One of the reasons I think so is that the house she was being possessed in hasn't had a single owner in a long while. Another reason is that she starts behaving animal like and savagely. Another reason is that she tells her husband that she feels sick but instead of helping he pretends that it’s nothing to worry about.…

    • 271 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The yellow wallpaper is a story about women who is depressed by her husband and society. The style of the both writers with almost the same art of characterization makes them similar. The both writers were successful in making the object of their stories. The use of syntax and personification were almost the same. The narrator of the respective stories can be assumed as the persons, who are facing the mental instability.…

    • 1069 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Woman in the Wallpaper “The Yellow Wallpaper” is set at a time when women could not easily flourish. Treated as less then men, many suffered at the hands of medicine as the narrator does. Her husband, her brother and even her husband’s sister who “thinks it is the writing which made [her] sick”(481) have more control over her recovery than she does.…

    • 1279 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, immerses us into the “depressed” mind of a spouse and mother who becomes infatuated with yellow colored wallpaper. Her husband John takes away the living aspect to his wife’s life by isolating her from her family and the rest of society. He has extreme demands for his wife which endanger her life. John is unaware of the damage he is inflicting, believing he is aiding her properly. Throughout the short story, the narrator struggles with the loss of control over her own life by her husband, John, and her longing desire to regain control over her own life, which can be seen in how the narrator interacts with the yellow wallpaper.…

    • 1652 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    So the narrator stays in the yellow papered room. As time passes, the narrator sees something in the wallpaper, a woman trying to get out from the wallpaper. It means the aggravation of her illness. Finally she rips the yellow wallpaper out when her husband was not at home and creeps on the floor just like the woman in the wallpaper that she saw in the wallpaper. “Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor.…

    • 1359 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about a mentally ill woman and her husband’s time at a vacation home. The story details his attempts to nurse the woman back to health. The story is set in Victorian times and the themes of the story reflect that. While staying in the home, the narrator is often cooped up in one bedroom. This isolation, coupled with society’s expectations of women at that time, cause her to dissolve into a complete nervous breakdown.…

    • 1017 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While reading the story, it appears that a woman is going delusion, but in the end it is made clear that a woman is just trying to gain her freedom. "The Yellow Wallpaper” expresses the theme of the control men have on women in society. The control men have on women is shown by the way…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote the story "The Yellow Wallpaper. " This short story was published in 1982. Through a journal written by the narrator, the reader learns of the story. " The Yellow Wallpaper" is about a woman who has recently given birth and is on a little break from her home life. Her husband tags along on her 'escape ' for the summer at an ancestral hall while their home is undergoing renovations.…

    • 1891 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman demonstrates reasons that caused the narrator`s breakdown. One is the wallpaper in her bedroom. Second, is her imprisonment from the outside world. Third, is her lack of control over everyday activities. Last, is the boredom that is caused by her isolation and imprisonment.…

    • 996 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays