Unabashed and slightly eccentric, Charlotte Perkins Gilman delivers a story of the chaotic mess known as reality. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, is a story that has been both criticized and debated about the true nature of the piece. With some readers claiming it to be a ghost story, and others believing the story as one of a controlling relationship between man and wife. While there appears to be an element that can only be described as eerie or ghostlike, this story is not one of ghosts. In actuality, the story is one of a husband’s unyielding control, a desperate plea for help, and the eventual succumbing to insanity. In a relationship, spouses play an essential and vital role in each other’s health and happiness. Simple words and
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Her initial hatred of the wallpaper is slowly turning into an obsession and shows the succumbing to her insanity. Slowly the narrator begins to spend more time looking at the wallpaper, and following the intricate designs; soon the narrator ‘learns’ that there is a woman who lives behind the wallpaper. The narrator’s new focus is to help the woman that is caged behind the wallpaper, at this point the wallpaper is more than just the horrid wallpaper she viewed in the beginning, now the wallpaper acts as her chance of freedom. Initially the narrator wants to save this ‘woman’, however, instead the narrator transforms from rescuer to the woman behind the wallpaper. The narrator truly believes that she lives behind the wallpaper, saying that she supposes she “shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night.” (279) This subtle transition allows the reader to understand that the narrator has completely retreated into the world that exists in her mind, and that by becoming the woman behind the wallpaper she was gaining the freedom she never …show more content…
The wallpaper went from being simply a horrible color, to a jumbled mess of patterns, and finally to becoming her freedom. While this story is a tangled and confusing mess of feelings and situations that are not quite understandable, this is no story of ghosts. This is a story of woman who is trying to save herself. The element of ghosts may not exist, however in its place, is the unyielding control of a husband, a desperate plea that went unanswered, and finally the unavoidable escape towards
Her initial hatred of the wallpaper is slowly turning into an obsession and shows the succumbing to her insanity. Slowly the narrator begins to spend more time looking at the wallpaper, and following the intricate designs; soon the narrator ‘learns’ that there is a woman who lives behind the wallpaper. The narrator’s new focus is to help the woman that is caged behind the wallpaper, at this point the wallpaper is more than just the horrid wallpaper she viewed in the beginning, now the wallpaper acts as her chance of freedom. Initially the narrator wants to save this ‘woman’, however, instead the narrator transforms from rescuer to the woman behind the wallpaper. The narrator truly believes that she lives behind the wallpaper, saying that she supposes she “shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night.” (279) This subtle transition allows the reader to understand that the narrator has completely retreated into the world that exists in her mind, and that by becoming the woman behind the wallpaper she was gaining the freedom she never …show more content…
The wallpaper went from being simply a horrible color, to a jumbled mess of patterns, and finally to becoming her freedom. While this story is a tangled and confusing mess of feelings and situations that are not quite understandable, this is no story of ghosts. This is a story of woman who is trying to save herself. The element of ghosts may not exist, however in its place, is the unyielding control of a husband, a desperate plea that went unanswered, and finally the unavoidable escape towards