The Yellow Wallpaper Self Realization Analysis

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Barriers Before Self Realization A postpartum depression stricken narrator confined to a room for her recovery clad with yellow wallpaper embarks on a path which was not so well traveled in her day — the journey toward self knowledge and expression. The purpose of the passage is to show the narrator beginning to understand the ways in which societal constraints prevent her self realization. She is first inspired by children who are free of these constraints, then tries to free herself through writing, and finally realizes through the wallpaper what exactly these constraints are. These points are articulated through use of juxtaposition — between acceptable and taboo, perfect and imperfect, …show more content…
The narrator doesn’t “mind [the damage] a bit” (1070). She is only bothered by the paper. Rather than grumble — as an adult might normally do — about the recklessness and impetuousness of the children, the narrator speaks of them admiringly. She acknowledges that the wallpaper “sticketh closer than a brother” and to remove it must have required “perseverance as well as hatred” (1070). She envies the children’s ability to express their rage and dissatisfaction, something to which she has not yet discovered a path herself. The juxtaposition between the biblical connotation of the phrase “sticketh closer than a brother”, which in context describes friendship and love, and the qualities of “perseverance as well as hate” possessed by the children, highlights the narrator’s desire to break out of society and display emotions and facets of herself which are not necessarily positive or accepted. The narrator resents the social standards she is held to and is nostalgic for a childhood purity of emotions and mind. She envies the children for their youthful fervor and self-expression. Desiring her own form of expression, the narrator turns to her …show more content…
The “formless sort of figure” (1070) within the wallpaper represents the narrator — and the marginalized in general — who are struggling to escape the prison of suppression and male dominance. This suppression is a sub-pattern of the conspicuous design of society’s expectations and constructs — what it presents to the world. Only “in certain lights, and not clearly then” (1070) can one see through this facade and into the dark truth of society — a society full of stereotypes, marginalization, female suppression, and male supremacy. As this sub-pattern takes shape, so does the narrator’s sense of self. She starts to identify with the emerging woman in the wallpaper and by doing so learns about herself. Just as the narrator begins to realize herself, she is again interrupted by “sister on the stairs” (1070) who symbolizes the more direct and tangible societal constraints by which she is