Yellow Wallpaper Diction

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a married couple who stays in a mansion for the summer, and the husband, John, is a physician who takes cares of his wife and her nervous condition by prescribing her a rest cure. However she is obsessed with the yellow wallpaper and she tears off the wallpaper because she believes there are women in it trying to escape. Throughout the story the dynamic between the narrator and John shows the way in which John oppresses her and belies her. Gilman explores the dangers of belying a woman’s ideas and emotions.
One way the narrator shows the belying of a woman’s ideas and emotions is through the diction of John. When the narrator was walking around during nighttime Gilman uses demeaning diction in “What is …show more content…
In the middle of the story when the narrator was examining the wallpaper, Gilman describes how the woman, “takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard” (309). Gilman draws a parallel from the woman in the wallpaper to the narrator herself because as the woman in the wallpaper “takes hold of the bars”, the narrator tries to free herself from her own figurative prison of having her own voice confined. Gilman draws a parallel showing the similar desire of both women wanting to escape , to further demonstrate a key danger of suppressing a woman’s voice. Later in the text, this can be also seen when the narrator has locked herself in her own and Gilman describes how she is “ getting angry enough to do something desperate. But the bars are too strong” (312). Gilman describes how the “bars are too strong” to draw a parallel to the bars trapping the woman in the wallpaper ; but they are too strong for the narrator which highlights how strong John’s oppression is to escape from. But the way the narrator and the woman in the wallpaper are both “desperate” exemplifies that due to their confinement, it has resulted in the danger of both characters having this mindset of doing anything to escape from their own individual restrictions. Gilman draws a parallel from the narrator to the woman in the wallpaper to show that a …show more content…
In the end of the book when the narrator locks herself in her room and peels off all the wallpaper, Gilman demonstrates how the narrator, “wonder (s) if they all came out from the wallpaper as I did ?” (312) The phrase “as I did” reveals to the audience of the narrator’s personal thoughts of how she believes she has escapes from the wallpaper, which is significant because it exemplifies how because of John’s restrictions to express herself has unlocked all of that expression and creativity. First person perspective reveals that she now identifies with one of the women who have escaped from the wallpaper to signify that one of the many dangers to belying a woman is that it leads them to have breakthroughs where they unleash all their expression. Later in the next when John opens the door to see the narrator walking around the room, Gilman expresses how the narrator believes she “ got out at last in spite of you and Jane… you can’t put me back” (313). The phrase “in spite of you and Jane” emphasizes the restrictions , set by John and Jane , that the narrator was forced to undergo through. But the phrase “you can’t put me back” demonstrates that the author now believes she is free from the burdens of not fully being able to express herself. This is significant because the first person perspectives gives the reader insight of the firsthand of how destructive