Preview

The Yellow Wallpaper Isolation

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
695 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Yellow Wallpaper Isolation
Many times in life, we encounter many life changes we can't seem to control. We even break down to the point that we are unsure of what to do with ourselves. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “ The yellow wallpaper” the narrator is very obsessive. It focuses on a woman who’s going through depression and has had a nervous breakdown. Her husband tries to help her by moving her in a home, only to keep her upstairs in room (nursery) covered with a yellow wallpaper. He wants her to be isolated and recover from her depression. As part as a way to do so, her husband John, doesn't want her using her imagination in any way but she resist at the treatment. His plan for her to get better fails. Throughout the story, the narrator came across learning …show more content…
“ the color is repellant, a smoldering unclean yellow strangely faded by slow turning sunlight” (582). She becomes obsessed with the wallpaper. After a few days, she has an opinion about the wallpaper. She thinks it's starting to change. She starts to see “a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (586). During the day, she would see the woman in “dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden” (589). Whereas at daylight, she would lock the doors before she creeps because she doesn’t want her husband to see and suspect of anything. Regardless of the room, she makes looking at the wallpaper an everyday thing because the wallpaper is the only thing she …show more content…
She describes him as extreme. Even when she tries to help herself, it fails. It's one of of those situation where she must lose herself in order to help herself. She says “ I tried to have a reasonable talk with him […] I wish he would let me go visit cousin Henry and Julia” (585). He didn't want her to go, he thinks it's best for her to stay in the room. He puts her down and her lack of confidence doesn't really help make the situation any better. Her husband is so sure he knows what's best for her, he doesn't pay attention to her and thinks she must obey him. “What is it, little girl” (586) he says to his wife. She is treated like a child. She thinks he is the reason why she can’t get any better because instead of communicating and working outside the house, he wants her to stay inside.

Lastly, this short story has made me realize that whatever the situation in life, I can always break through. Despite the narrator not liking the room, thinking her husband is controlling and having an obsession with the wallpaper; the narrator had a secret only she could see. She doesn't want to leave the room and doesn’t want others to coming in because she doesn't want anyone finding out the secret. At the end, she rips the wallpaper down in order to break the woman behind it free which represents her escaping her husband misery that he has put her

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    In the summer of 1855 a mentally ill woman moves into a secluded estate with her husband. She immediately voices her concerns about the eerie feeling she gets in the house and how much she hates the yellow wallpaper, but like always, her husband disregards her concerns and insists that he knows best because he is a doctor. She also believes that she was born to be a writer, but her husband forbids her from writing or communicating with other people and insists that she stay in bed to rest. Much like a prisoner in solitary confinement, the narrator starts to lose her mind. She begins to fixate her entire life on the wallpaper while she spends her days in bed. She started keeping a journal which he hid from her family, and in it, she writes about how she ‘discovered’ a creeping woman trapped behind the pattern. She centers her life on freeing this woman by locking the door and attempting to tear off all of the wallpaper. When her husband comes home from work, he breaks down the door, sees the mess, and faints. Then the woman crawls out of the room and the story seems to be over, but there has got to be more. This woman is not simply your Martha Stewart of the 1800s that doesn’t like her bedroom wallpaper. The job of the reader is to break down the roles of each character, analyze the major symbols, evaluate the theme and use them like the pieces of a puzzle to understand what the author, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was trying to say.…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    She is a very imaginative person. She believes that her house is haunted and terrors herself with nightmares about big scary monsters. She turns her imagination on to neutral objects like the house and wallpaper so she can somewhat ignore her frustration. The narrator becomes very focused on the wallpaper in her house. She later identifies herself as the lady trapped in the wallpaper. She’s able to see that other women are forced to hide behind domestic patterns of their lives when she is the one who truly needs to be rescued. In the end, she is “free’ of the constraints of her marriage, society, and her own efforts of her…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story centered around a woman who is “sick with nerves,” and her husband, John, a doctor, who prescribes rest and and a clear mind, absent of imagination, in order to cure her condition. For the duration of the summer, she is confined in an old nursery with torn, yellow wallpaper. As the story progresses, her mental state deteriorates, and she begins to see different images in the pattern on the wallpaper, eventually believing that she, herself is a woman that has climbed out of the wall. However, the narrator of the story is not simply nervous, as her husband suspects, but actually has a case of postpartum psychosis. Her husband’s ignorance and prescribed treatment for her clearly…

    • 1057 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Subsequently, she becomes used to all of the room’s features except for the wallpaper. The other symbols of confinement do not bother her as much as the wallpaper. At first just the ugly pattern and order of the wallpaper bothers her, however as time passes, she begins to believe the wallpaper has eyes that stare at her. This leads her to admit, “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!” The wallpaper begins to influence her mental state for the reason that she has no other mental stimulation. Without other stimulation from others or work, the wallpaper remains all the narrator focuses on and it begins to push her to…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Stetson, in her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper describes an event in which a woman encounters freedom from unraveling yellow wallpaper. Stetson and her husband, John, “secured ancestral halls for the summer.” Unfortunately, she becomes ill and John diagnoses her with “slight hysterical tendency.” Although, she wants to have fun and do work, her husband forbids her from doing so until she becomes better. Furthermore, he picks out one of the rooms in the house, so she can rest, “John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious” – emphasizing that she is trapped while her husband is free to do as he pleases.…

    • 360 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The main character in Charlotte P.Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, narrates her own life and describes her struggle with depression which by the end of the story evolved into insanity. Narrator’s husband, John, treats her like a small child, forbids her to express herself, and keeps her bound to restricted room. Due to her husbands actions she becomes physically, emotionally and socially isolated, which ultimately made her insane.…

    • 978 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    She does not like when John or Jennie touch it, and is terrified that they may all see the same thing that she sees within the boundaries of the yellowed wallpaper: bars made of the darker parts of the wallpaper, trapping the woman in the lighter, peeled parts within the bars confines. Another symptom that would fall under having a serious mental disorder, is hallucinations. She may not see multiple beings within her hallucinations, but it is made very prominent throughout the story, that she does see the woman trapped behind the darker wallpaper on many occasions. “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over”(page 10). Not only does she see the the woman in the wallpaper, but, eventually, she believes that she has become the woman within the wallpaper. “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!”(page…

    • 1874 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages

    It is a bit ironic that the author chose a color so bright and usually defined as being a happy and joyful color. However, this story is not at all joyful, but is instead is very depressing and sad. The wallpaper is described in such great detail that it is very easy for the reader to picture exactly what the author is trying to say. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study…” within this description of the the wallpaper it is obvious that the narrator is unhappy with the wallpaper and as the story goes on the wallpaper begins to play a vital role in her psychological deterioration (156). The wallpaper appears to be a border that keeps the women trapped within the shadows of the men. As the narrator begins to rip the paper off this is the symbol of freedom and the struggle to be release from the constant stereotypes and gender differences. It is interesting to see that even though the wallpaper was what was causing the narrator to deteriorate at the end of the story, the wallpaper is what finally frees…

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper introduces a lesson of freedom and confinement to the audience. The story is explained as an avoidable mental tragedy, resulting from faulty decision making by a suffocating force. Author Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates the tale through narrator Jane Doe, a newlywed finding herself in a battle against the harmful effects of depression. Doe is the center of the novel, as a woman connected with her condition and mind capacity. We learn the story in a pre recorded submission of the narrator's secret diary after an atrocious proposition of confinement caused a literal breakdown.…

    • 710 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is within the wallpaper that the narrator finds her hidden self and her eventual freedom. Her obsession with the paper begins subtly and then consumes both the narrator and the story. Once settled in the gothic setting, the narrator is dismayed to learn that her husband has chosen the top-floor nursery room for her. The room is papered in horrible yellow wallpaper, the design of which “commits every artistic sin”. The design begins to fascinate the narrator and she begins to see more than just the outer design. At first she sees “bulbous eyes” and “absurd unblinking eyes . . . everywhere”. The wallpaper consumes the narrator offering up more intricate images as time passes. She first notices a different colored sub-pattern of a figure beneath the top design. This figure is eventually seen as a woman who “creeps” and shakes the outer pattern, now seen as bars. This woman-figure becomes essentially the narrator’s doppelganger or double trapped behind the bars of her role in…

    • 951 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the story the narrator speaks all about how much she hates the wallpaper and describes it in great detail. However, it progressively gets worse and worse as the story goes on. The narrator begins describing the wallpaper negatively, but with an unsatisfactory vibe. “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.” (Gilman 1) At this point in the story, the narrator has just been introduced to her room and is acquainting herself with the surroundings. Thus, it only seems fitting for her to have opinions. I believe the unsatisfied opinion of the wallpaper…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Yellow Wallpaper Illness

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Instead of sleeping at night, the narrator “kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till [she] felt creepy.” This demonstrates how much the narrator has been absorbed into the wallpaper. The wallpaper now controls the narrator to the point where she sleeps by day and examines the wall paper at night. By spending more nights to analyze the wallpaper, the narrator notices that “it changes as the light changes.” At this point, it is clear that the narrator has been utterly consumed by the wallpaper. for the narrator to see an inanimate object move reveals that she had been trapped in a figment of her own imagination. As the narrator “watch[es] [the wallpaper] always,” she implicitly discloses that the wallpaper has trapped her in a manner similar to how her husband trapped her in the…

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator describes her illness and her husband’s take on her treatment. Her thoughts give detailed insight into her mind as the narrator enters the state of a psychotic breakdown. The narrator’s thoughts describe her reasoning for not getting well faster. “John is a physician, and perhaps-(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) –perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.”(224) The narrator expresses her concerns on paper and wonders if this has any effect on her wellbeing. John has confined her to a room in which she initially dislikes the yellow wallpaper. “I’m really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.”(226) The narrator’s initial thoughts on the yellow wallpaper are that it is horrid. She is confined in a room, picked by her husband, and for some reason she is unable to figure out the pattern to the yellow wallpaper. “It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw-not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things”.(226) She continues to look into the pattern, without actually figuring it out. The narrator is becoming used to the yellow wallpaper and its qualities. She smells the wallpaper everywhere in the house and even so, when she is out of the house. Unbeknownst to her, the smell of the wallpaper begins to creep around her the more…

    • 578 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    aware of a woman present in the pattern of the wallpaper. She sees this woman struggling…

    • 913 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. … I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once. And John is so queer now, that I don't want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself.”(Gilman, 1899).The woman tried to free the woman behind the wallpaper, which the narrator freeing herself and is trying to gain her own identity from her husband. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the lady only gained mental control over her life when she freed the lady trapped behind the wallpaper. The lady trapped behind the wallpaper, represented the woman feeling trapped in a marriage and wanting to be free. By the women escaping, she ends up losing her identity still because she ends up mentally destroyed. “I’ve got out at last…in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (Gilman, 1899).Gilman used setting in, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, to give the readers a visual of how the character ends up trying to find herself, but still losing herself in the…

    • 523 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays