THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
FIRST PUBLISHED : 1892

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman, written in a diary form, who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of belief. We here get inside the mind of a troubled lady who soon enters a state of madness.

"I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write_ a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.But I find I get pretty tired when I try.It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work." 

The use of imagery and setting helps illustrate this theme throughout the story. The setting of the vast colonial mansion and particularly the nursery room with barred windows provides an image of loneliness and seclusion experienced by the protagonist. The way the wallpaper of the room is described throughout the story fills the reader with a sense of eeriness.

"The color is repellent, almost revolting ; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulfur tint in others."

"I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design."

The gruesome details of the “suicidal” wallpaper pattern set an ominous tone, even of paranoia: 

“There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.”

The violence of her grotesque descriptions seems to express extreme frustration. Her severe obsession with the paper in her room is evident in the line-

"-but I keep watch of it all the same. There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will." 

 And soon enough, this madness overpowers her sanity. Her own imprisonment of mind is being transformed into the physical imprisonment of the imaginary woman in the wallpaper. She seems to relate with that lady.

"The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out." 

And soon, her madness exaggerates.

"The front pattern does move -and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!"

"I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I'll tell you why -privately I've seen her! I can see her out of everyone of my windows!"

One can realize the level of schizophrenic she is at the moment. And no one to help her. And soon enough, the reader's deepest fear comes to play, the lady has turned into the creeping imaginary lady-

"I always lock the door when I creep by daylight."

"It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!".

Somehow, she has constructed a reality she can bear to inhabit. Yet, she has become utterly estranged from herself.

Gilman makes a strong statement about males in society during her time period. The men are portrayed to really see women as children more than as individuals. This is made clear when the narrator says,

“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression- - slight hysterical tendency- - what is one to do?”

One interesting aspect is two different sides of women are shown in the story. The first being the conformist side women used to take.

"I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!"

The narrator feels that she is a burden to her husband because she dislikes the wallpaper and keeps complaining about it even after he says that he won’t change it.

"You see he does not believe I am sick! . And what can one do?"

And then, the narrator finally overcomes her conformist ways towards the end of the story when she says,

“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”.

 This haunting psychological horror story chronicles the narrator's descent into madness, or perhaps into the paranormal, or perhaps—depending on your interpretation—into freedom.