Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story about the imprisonment of a woman and how she is driven insane by the wallpaper in her room. The woman writes this story after being diagnosed with hysteria after giving birth to her baby in the early 1900's. Her husband moves them to a colonial mansion where she can recover. The woman becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper and she begins to act deranged.
The woman's husband thinks it is best for her to stay in the room that was formerly used as a nursery. It has yellow wallpaper which the narrator thinks is horrid. She describes it as, "The colour is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight." (Gilman, 1659). She becomes fascinated with the paper and its pattern.
The woman narrating the story is very fragile and grows more depressed as she must stay in this room.
Her husband, who is also a physician, thinks that she must rest all day in order to recover. She is not allowed to do anything that a normal wife would do. She asks her husband to renovate but he refuses since they will only be there for three months.
The wallpaper begins to consume her as her insanity deepens. The narrator writes, "This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!" (Gilman, 1660). The paper is all that she can think about. The pattern becomes more frightening and tortures her. She hates the colour and it infuriates her. She begins to smell the wallpaper throughout the entire house. "It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house-to reach the smell." (Gilman,
1666). This quotation shows how fixated she has become on...
Yellow Wallpaper
This is a nice essay, but I think you should have talked more about her repression and less about the wallpaper, since it is that is the real cause of her problems. She is not fragile, as her husband would let you think, and it is his constant protection, and the oppression of her actual self that causes her misery and obsession with the wallpaper. She has nothing to do, is driven out of her mind with all the restraints (as you said in the last line). On the whole a nice essay, but you should develop the idea of oppression more, the wallpaper was only a metaphor.
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