The Yellow Wallpaper has been my absolute favorite short story since I was in high school. Reading it every few years always sparks some new interpretation. This is the beginning of a final I was writing but never finished for lack of ability to express my thoughts. However, now that the pressure is off, I believe I have finally created a more cohesive thought.
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Charlotte
Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is narrated by a
delusional and insane narrator, through this bias narration, the
imagery and diction contributes to the confusion and ambiguity within
the story. The narrator’s conflict with the yellow wallpaper, which
symbolizes her instability, pushes her towards a deeper sense of
insanity and the imagery often symbolizes the elevation of her
paranoia and confinement. Being narrated by the main character
results in ambiguity in reference to her sanity until the end.
When
the narrator discusses her condition, she remains slightly
ambiguous., restating only what her doctor, husband says, then
brushes it off, “So I will let it alone and talk about the house”
(2). She does sometimes assert possible solutions to her problem but
she never hypothesizes about the root of her problem. The quote above
is also the first incident where she buries her problems by talking
of the house, which ultimately begins to illustrate her madness.
The
narrator speaks very often of her “husband” but due to some
strange statements about him, it could be asserted that this
“husband” could be her doctor with whom she has fictionalized
some romantic connection with in order to cope with her presence in
an insane asylum. Through the reading, we learn that he does not stay
with her at night, “John is away all day, and even some nights when
his cases are serious” (4). It is highly coincidental that she
married a man who happened to be an expert in mental disorders who
has extreme “cases” (4). There is enough ambiguity to categorize
his character as the doctor and her character as the patient. He
talks to her patronizingly, the way a doctor who believed his female
patient to be simply suffering “hysteria” would in the early
1900’s (4). The final moment that supports this assertion is during
an episode between John and his “sister”, Jennie, “I heard him
ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very
good report to give” (17). This quote persuades the reader to also
question whether Jennie is John’s sister or a nurse. The use of the
term “report” insinuates that Jennie is literate in the diagnoses
of “hysteria” and again questions the legitimacy of our
narrator’s observations.
The
images within this story are highly personified, adding a sense of
the paranoia of our narrator. This imagery repeats the feelings of
paranoia several times throughout the story. The narrator applies
human aspects to the objects within the house, “All those […]
bulbous eyes” in the wallpaper. The eyeballs insinuate her feelings
of being observed by Jennie and John; she expresses her awareness of
their watchful eyes by putting eyes onto the wallpaper. More
personification of objects in her past perpetuate her personification
of the things around her, “I remember what a kindly wind the knobs
of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that
always seemed like a strong friend. I used to feel that if any of the
other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and
be safe” (7). Further personification of the furniture around her
insinuates bother her desire for protection and her paranoia.
Images
within her room insinuate her confinement (possibly unwilling
confinement). This imagery is perpetuated by several different
descriptions provided by the narrator. Her description of her room
provides more insinuations of confinement, but to a stronger extent,
it appears to be more of a prison. Her “bedstead is nailed down […]
and the “bedstead is fairly gnawed” (18), she sees “bars” in
the wallpaper (15), and the windows themselves have “bars” (13).
This
short story contains an interesting use of pronouns. Gilman often
changes her use of pronoun very quickly, without notice, to confuse
and interchange the point of view and perpetuate our characters
madness. One scene especially illustrates the narrator’s confusion
with her use of pronouns, “I pulled and she shook, I
shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled
off yards of that paper” (17). The beginning of this scene
approaches these two women as separate entities, ultimately bringing
them together- insinuating that the woman is actually seeing herself
within the wallpaper and the other woman is a mirroring vision of our
narrator. Gilman uses pronouns to interchange the speaker and actor.
The word “creeps” several times, which refers to someone crawling
on all fours. Throughout the readers encounters with “creep” the
“creeper” changes form. “it creeps” (14), “she
is always creeping” (16), “you have to creep” (19), “I
had to creep” (20). This use of alternating pronouns shows the
narrator to slowly change from a depressed woman to an out of
control, animal-like individual.
Conflict
within this short story occurs in several different areas, her
“husband” presents a sort of contingency, her writing serves as a
conflicting exercise of coping, but the yellow wallpaper is what
drives our narrator to her ultimate loss of control. She is obsessed
with this wallpaper, it affects her directly, and as she interprets
it, she puts herself into the wallpaper. This results in a fabricated
vision of herself- running her wild. The use of pronouns in reference
to, “she” the woman in the wallpaper and “I” the narrator is a representation of herself as she attempts to free herself from
her imprisonment.
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