The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Literary Analysis Essay

Introduction

From the short story entitled ''The Yellow Wallpaper'' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, it can be established the narrator has been moved to a room with a yellow wallpaper together with her husband John, who has failed to heed her call from immediate relocation. The narrator, following childbirth and her illness, has been taken for a rest cure in a rented summer estate in the countryside. The room also has its floor chipped off on some parts and thus does not impress the narrator. The longer she stays in her room, the more her mental health deteriorates as she looks for ways to attract the attention of her husband on the need to relocate. It is because she can no longer demand his permission to relocate as he is wise, loves her, and can also outright reproach her. The yellow color on the wall disgusts her immensely, making her develop more urge to relocate. Her husband keeps telling her that her freedom is entirely in her own hands; hence her engagement in '' mad like activities' that sees her slowly deteriorate mentally till she gets the freedom she craves for.

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First, the narrator is prohibited by John from any form of imagination and writing. Thus, her mind is left to think of the disgusting yellow color on the wall. Owing to her dislike of the color, it keeps disturbing her as she stays in the room during her recuperation. She even starts imagining the awful things she believes are related to the yellow color. She notices that the yellow wallpaper at the front part of her bed has been torn to form some figures. As a symbol of deep imagination, she notices the patterns formed by the torn parts of the paper, including the eyes that appear to move up and down in different types of lights: moonlight, candlelight, and lamplight. Also, she notices the figure formed by the torn wallpaper that is apparently moving in respect to different lights shining on it at different times. As she tries to follow the patterns formed by the torn yellow wallpaper, they diminish as though they commit suicide, as an indicated inn, ''...and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide (Charlotte, 3).'' She, therefore, personifies the artistic impressions formed by the figures on the paper, an indication of mental illness and madness. Thus, such forms her initial stages of awful objects and figures in which the yellow wallpaper was associated with: an indication of the beginning of her madness in a quest for freedom.

Besides, as the narrator continues her stay in the room, she does not like due to the yellow wallpaper, she gets more and more into its analysis and interpretation. There is nothing to stimulate her mental activity because she is not allowed to imagine and write by John - her husband. Also, she is not allowed to fancy about the people walking on the paths and harbors observed through the window as it is perceived by John as her nervous weakness can lead to exciting fancies, seen in ''...but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least (Charlotte, 4).'' Thus, following the July 4th in which they had hosted the family, the narrator began feeling even worse and much tired. Her mental state is deteriorating and she finds it hard to effectively handle her daily activities as seen in ''I don't feel worthwhile to turn my hand over for anything, and I'm getting dreadful, fretful, and querulous '' (Charlotte, 6).'' In the process, she is encouraged by John to consider resting more. She even went to the extent of crying at nothing most of the time, a sign of the elevated state of mental illness and madness.

As her madness grows in the run to attract the attention of her husband to facilitate relocation to a different house, her fanciful imagination of the patterns of the wallpaper drives her to notice a woman in it appearing to be stooping down while creeping about behind the pattern. She states that she does not like it. However, lately, she has developed a liking of the wallpaper and spends most of her time studying it closely, an irony of her thinking ad wishes that John would take her away from such a place. The woman in the pattern seems to be moving about, and the narrator thinks that she has lately seen her creeping and seemingly shaking the pattern, as seen in ''...the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern (Charlotte, 8).'' she could even wake up and go over to feel if the pattern was moving, a sign of heightened level of madness in her. It is in such a moment that John would wake up and reproach her to sleep, perhaps one of the indications of him noticing that indeed, she was getting madder of the place and thus wanted to be relocated. Also, the narrator stated to have heard the smell of the yellow wallpaper recently, which hit on her when she could suddenly turn her head.

In the end, while John stayed overnight in town, the narrator insists on staying alone in the room so she could stare at the wallpaper in its movement uninterrupted. Her madness drove her to tear all the paper and begin creeping having closed the door and threw the key into the plantain. On arrival, she told her husband in several and a soft voice to get the key from the plantain to open the door after which he found the narrator creeping and he fainted. Jennie had been locked out and the narrator claimed that he could see the woman in the wallpaper. The narrator claimed that the woman in the wallpaper had finally exited an indication of her gaining freedom. Such earned her freedom at last - it came at the peak of her madness in craving for freedom. Thus, it came out just like John had suggested; her freedom is entirely in her own hands.

Works Cited

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892). The Yellow Wallpaper