The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis

Improved Essays
The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis
When the reader first immerses themselves into the first-person journal styled short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, it is portrayed as a young wife and new mother’s slow decent into madness. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is not only a gothic journal of a woman’s decent into psychosis; it is an attempt to explain the unnecessary pressures on women and help save them from succumbing to their own insanity.
The narrator, presumably Jane, begins her tale the day she arrives at an abandoned colonial mansion. Her husband and physician, John, has ordered her to undergo rest cure, a once common practice more so on women than men. ”It involved isolation from friends and family. It also enforced

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Stripped of Freedom Many Feminist writers during the Progressive era often wrote about gender equality. During the Progressive era many women found freedom through artist creativity from their bounded lives through writing. Each writer expressed their opinions in hope to strike a spark in women rights. The authors Charlotte Perkins and Kate Chopin in their stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story of an hour,” use reoccuring themes of complete isolation to illustrate the domestic space typically inhabited by women during the progressive era, providing detail and evidence of this isolation through the use of setting and symbolism.…

    • 1301 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates the ignorance and neglect towards women’s health, physically and mentally, during the 19th century through a short story called “The Yellow Wallpaper”. It describes an account of a woman who was driven to insanity due to the Victorian rest-cure- forced upon her through the credibility of her physician husband. The husband, John, represents a stereotypical spouse with his stance on the relationship and protests to the protagonist any freedom of creativity “for her own good” esque. Through the narrative of the protagonist, Gilman reveals the underlying truth behind the cause of her mental issues and how it relates to feminism.…

    • 958 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late 1800's, focuses on a distressed woman with no place to turn. The woman narrates the story to give the reader an inside look at what she feels and how she reacts to her surroundings. She initially tums to her husband, John, as a doctor and as her companion and he dismisses the notion of mental illness as a "slightly hysterical tendency". He isolates her by taking her to a secluded house with no human contact outside of his sister and himself who both view her illness in the same way. Gilman makes a convincing statement about gender roles in this time period, the debate of mental illness vs. physical ailment, and the concept of freedom in insanity in her exquisitely written short story.…

    • 990 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The journal style gothic writing by Charloette Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, follows the corrupt narration of an mentally distraught woman for three months. She is under the care of her husband John, a physician, and his sister Jennie, who serves as her caretaker. John believes that by cutting off the stimulation of everyday life, including writing and socializing, the basic human interactions, that his wife will be cured. John moves his wife to another house for three months to ensure that Weir Mitchell`s resting cure is being acted out in its full potential. The symbols in the story conclude that the woman is almost trapped by her husband.…

    • 1235 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    All by Herself During the writing of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she goes to great depths and lengths to describe the young, upper-middle-class woman who is newly married to a physician named John and a mother yet a nameless narrator who has a character of what she describes herself as, “a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 64). How would one expect the personality and character of a woman who is sent to a quiet and empty house, by her husband, be? A character analysis of the narrator and wife of John, reveals throughout this writing her depression, how she overcomes it while she is being isolated from the world, and how she regains her freedom of thoughts and actions.…

    • 1068 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Literary Analysis on “The Yellow Wallpaper” The journal “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. This journal, is written by an unknown narrator describing her trip to a summer home with her husband and sister-in-law that was intended to improve her mental illness. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” was described as having a mental illness that was being treated by her husband, John, who was a physician. Throughout the story, her mental illness becomes drastically worse due to the mistreatment from her husband.…

    • 1592 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Layers of Fiction Symbolism is represented by levels of pragmatic and figurative meaning. As an example, in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman incorporates the very wallpaper to represent this idea. The wallpaper displays more than just symbolism; it also shows the time period and theme of the story. These elements of fiction are also supported by the first person narration in helping the reader understand and analyze the text. This combination helps to show the relationships of the protagonist, overall setting, and theme of the story.…

    • 1046 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Yellow Wall-Paper Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper is a quintessential example of how housewives were treated and oppressed in late 1800’s America. The Yellow Wall-Paper is written as a journal narrated by a depressed house wife in the late 19th century. She begins the story with diagnosed depression and a nervous condition from her husband, who is a doctor, as they spend the summer renting out a colonial mansion. This depression takes a turn for the worse when the stories narrator goes insane obsessing over the yellow wall-paper in her bed room.…

    • 711 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper is a short-story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman first published in 1892 in The New England Magazine. Given the manner in which it was written, The Yellow Wallpaper stands out as one of the ancient voices that agitated for American feminist agendas illustrating issues about women’s physical and mental health as were perceived in the 19th century. The story is written in the first person showing a collection of journal entries by a woman who is oppressed and denied a chance to express herself or even work by her physician husband. This condition frustrates her health in the end becoming psychotic becoming paranoid about any human contact and this makes her lock herself in a solitary room where she feels safe and she…

    • 1013 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper Synthesis Paper Introduction Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short novel, The Yellow Wallpaper is one of the literacies shows the feminist in nineteenth century. It contains woman’s depression and neurasthenia as a psychological illness and a patriarchal man and his attitude to his wife in 10-pages short story. The protagonist Jane and her husband move to a mansion and stay there for a while. Jane is suffering from a psychological illness, and her husband John advises her a rest cure other than practical treatments. However, there are some parts show John loves and cares about Jane, but he does not listen to her.…

    • 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

    The Yellow Wallpaper What the treatment of women was for marriage and society in 1892. The “yellow wallpaper "by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, her think the wallpaper does not try to express the attempt to escape from the narrator of her husband, since he was not understanding well in her depression. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) this story is told in the first person, focused entirely on the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of the narrator. The struggle between the narrator and her husband, who in turn is her doctor, on the nature and treatment of her nervous problems, leads to a conflict within the narrator's mind during most of the story. The narrator can be assumed to be a young woman, who suffers from nervous…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by the fabulous Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story based on a narrators experience in this room that is surrounded with walls covered by yellow wallpaper (“Depression”). During this tale the reader is introduced to the knowledge of the narrators’ family, she has a husband who is a physician, a sister-in law who cares and cleans the house, and a newborn (Gilman Perkins 315). For the length that the story takes place, the narrator stays in this room throughout the stories entirety, and becomes fancied by the yellow wallpaper that begins to draw readers into thinking she examines an insane and unhealthy lifestyle. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator is a new mother who stays away from her child the entire length of time that she is in the house for the reason that her husband…

    • 775 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Yellow Wallpaper Maleness

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wallpaper, is about a wife, her mental troubles and her spouse 's purported remedial treatment of her aliments amid the late 1800s. The story starts with a young lady and her husband heading out to the country side for the late summer and for the recuperating forces of being far from composing which just appears to exacerbate her condition. After perusing this exceptional depiction of a very nearly jail like solution for succeeding "temporary nervous depression" the reader is pervaded with the thought the men are just the superintendents in the lives of ladies. Gilman, well all through the story to appear with elucidating expressions exactly how effortlessly and successfully, the man "apparently" wields his "maleness" to control the lady. Be that as it may, with further elucidation and knowledge I trust Gilman succeeds in just demonstrating the shortcoming of ladies, of the day, as dynamic persons in their own and additionally society 's choice making procedures rather than the quality of men as ladies…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an advocate for women, who believed that they should be on the same level as men economically, socially, and politically. This was very forward thinking for the late 1800s to early 1900s. Gilman often used her literary work to make a statement about her opinions and her desire for gender equality. In her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator and her husband rent a summer house and she spends most of her time in a room upstairs with barred windows and horrid wallpaper. The narrator is suffering from post-partum depression, which her husband calls temporary nervous depression, and is meant to be resting to cure it.…

    • 986 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays