Introduction
The Yellow Wallpaper is a high literary piece written in the late 1890s by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an active feminist writer who explored various taboo subjects through her literature. The story is primarily about a modern, upper-middle-class narrator confined to a resting cure in the upper rooms of a rental home filled with new-moneyed versions of "the common people," living simply and devoted to "eating and resting." Mostly confined to her room, the narrator anticipates not enjoying the old place, and at the time, her doctor husband takes her for granted and sees to every aspect of her life and every wish. Knowing she is sick, which he considers a minor ailment, the main character's own passivity and faith in his abilities impose it upon her every bit as doggedly as his instruction.
Since the story's appearance, generations of readers have taken up The Yellow Wallpaper, appropriating it as a feminist text. The work is predominantly seen by critics and theorists as a piece about insanity, societal norms for females, victimization, patriarchal forces, and the ways in which gender, sexual, or economic obstacles marshal or manifest the narrator's symptoms. The Yellow Wallpaper is arranged in an irritably chronological sequence and includes insights into everything from a kitchen-fireside with the shades boring and box-like to the narrator's bed or nook.
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Characterization in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'
There are a few key characters in "The Yellow Wallpaper," the most prominent being the unnamed narrator. Beyond her, the secondary characters—her husband John and the landlords—are relatively minuscule, but they still provide opportunities for analysis. Much of the narrator's characterization is linked to her stifling surroundings and her nascent madness. Moreover, her relationships to both John and the landlords provide greater insight into the broader social realities these characters embody. The basis of John's relationship to his wife is his perception of her as weak, summarized in his possessive term. This imagery contributes to a character built on the societal expectation that women's hysteria was frivolous and best left ignored.
Due to the nature of women's treatment at the time, it's unsurprising that the narrator's relative lack of independence and control over her life would contribute to her madness. Her overprotective John, while acting with a veneer of care, is far more concerned with his own reputation and the potential damage his wife and her hysteria could do to it. Furthermore, the fact that John is a doctor cannot go unnoticed; the text is filled with indications that the narrator's mental state is only measured in terms of her perceived sexuality. Furthermore, their relation can be seen as a microcosm of the oppressive atmosphere of larger patriarchal society, and to emphasize the line would underscore that every woman's experience at the hands of men was equally terrible and objectifying. Even further, her generalized illness would mirror the economic, psychological, and sexual violence of the imprisonment of women throughout history. Increasingly, John represents modern marriage and male-dominated relations to not only women but also other races and even other men in a capitalist society that is inextricably linked to othering and oppression.
Symbolism and Imagery
The yellow wallpaper itself seems to be the biggest and most blatant symbol throughout the text. Going from the narrator’s descriptions of its smell, its color, its ingrained "sub-pattern," and the complicated curves on the posterior of the design, around every corner, something new is discovered. The yellow wallpaper is described early on as being peeled off the walls in myriad places and perpetually being gnawed at. As the story continues, "patches" are revealed as being faces of women stooped over under different contraptions, their gaping mouths symbolizing the narrator’s struggle for identity through speech and expression. There is symbolism in the wallpaper itself being one of mental and physical deterioration. For the narrator, these realizations come further and further apart and are harder to find as her illness advances. At the end, the wallpaper becomes a ghastly exterior depiction of who she has become. Stripped bare of reality, her postpartum depression and the enforced treatment given to her drive her away from herself and towards nothing. Her progression and revelation come full circle as she becomes the woman trapped behind the paper.
Paused at roughly halfway through the text is the question, "Why bother to analyze color imagery?" It goes on to answer that question with another question, "Do the yellow or the torn wallpaper represent the colorless narrator?" Within the same sentence, another conclusion is brought up that "there is no physical member of the narrator’s immediate family which clearly refers to the narrator." Only two pages out of the ten speak of the narrator’s skin color in any frame of context. Almost ten pages are dedicated to the wallpaper or the room itself, but even more is used to describe the smell of the wallpaper and the sticky, sickening slime in between the room's cracks. The narrator is trapped in the yellow room, much like the woman in the wallpaper. At the end of the short story, when the protagonist is being questioned, she states firmly who "she" is. That "she" is the woman trapped behind the wallpaper looking to escape. The very first line of the last section refers to the woman as she, once again saying, she "creeps" on all fours.
Narrative Style and Point of View
The narrative of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is confined to a period of several weeks in the unnamed protagonist’s life. Written in a first-person, confessional voice, the narrative draws readers into her mind and experiences, presenting her fragmented states of consciousness, elaborate fantasies, and veiled attempts to cope with the world around her. As a result, the protagonist becomes a much more complex and multifaceted character who is perceived through the sum of her utterances and thoughts. Moreover, her rough transitions and peculiar outbursts of emotion lend an additional level of sympathy and identification for the readers as the protagonist struggles to articulate her feelings and frustrations. The history of the narrative that she leads the readers on puts the protagonist into immediate terms of intimacy, as her feelings and experiences are presented as earnest and free of guile or consequence for her actions. The diary-style format of the tale further solidifies the “reality” or level of authenticity in the protagonist’s feelings and brings readers close to the center of the largely internal narrative.
The reliability of the narrative and the thoughts and expressions of the protagonist are called into question in the final pages of the story, where the protagonist’s erratic states complicate the outcomes of her observations. This ultimately leaves readers questioning the veracity of her situation and the final occurrence of the story, once again implicating her as the untrustworthy narrator and fostering disagreement about her fate. The longitudinal immediacy of the narrative first-person perspective is successfully used to push its themes of isolation and exploitation of women to visceral extremes, enveloping readers in the atmosphere of the story. The first-person point of view taken by the narrator immediately evokes a feeling of intimacy that draws the readers into her plight. This technique helps readers begin to relate to the character in order to empathize with her and to comprehend the impact of her plight.
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