Setting is always an important part of any story but in The Yellow Wallpaper, the setting has an important impact on the reader. It parallels the way the narrator feels throughout the story, the isolation and restriction from social life. To exaggerate on this concept, the main setting throughout the story is the house. The outside and the inside of the house are exaggerated immensely, along with the current time period the short story is set in, and also the nursery that the narrator is confined in. Throughout these interesting settings the author has chosen, the reflection of isolation can be found. The time period that the short story is set in is 1885. During this period of time, women stayed at home and obeyed their husband’s instruction
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The narrator describes it as being “quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village…separate little houses for the gardeners and people” (pg 308). The setting of the house holds a lot of significance to what the narrator will unknowingly be feeling during the story. The physical set up of the house is parallel to the emotional position that the narrator is in through the course of the story. The house is set back three miles from the village and the narrator is set back from the other characters in the story. She watches to see whenever John or Jennie, her sister-in-law, would come to check on her and hide what she was writing. By doing this, she blocks herself off from any emotional development with them, knowing that they would just tell her that the writing is only making her condition worse. Her mind is locked away like the gate that locks the house away from intruders. No one is allowed into her mind unless they are invited in. From the outside, the house seems as if it’s a comfortable, open house. While it may be big, to the narrator is uncomfortable in the room that she being kept in. The setting and the description of the house is somewhat contradicting the main theme of the play, isolation and confinement because it is isolated from other buildings but because it is a large building one would assume that they wouldn’t feel confined in it like the narrator
The narrator describes it as being “quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village…separate little houses for the gardeners and people” (pg 308). The setting of the house holds a lot of significance to what the narrator will unknowingly be feeling during the story. The physical set up of the house is parallel to the emotional position that the narrator is in through the course of the story. The house is set back three miles from the village and the narrator is set back from the other characters in the story. She watches to see whenever John or Jennie, her sister-in-law, would come to check on her and hide what she was writing. By doing this, she blocks herself off from any emotional development with them, knowing that they would just tell her that the writing is only making her condition worse. Her mind is locked away like the gate that locks the house away from intruders. No one is allowed into her mind unless they are invited in. From the outside, the house seems as if it’s a comfortable, open house. While it may be big, to the narrator is uncomfortable in the room that she being kept in. The setting and the description of the house is somewhat contradicting the main theme of the play, isolation and confinement because it is isolated from other buildings but because it is a large building one would assume that they wouldn’t feel confined in it like the narrator