'The Yellow Wallpaper' Literary Analysis Essay Sample

Introduction

The Haunting Imagery and Personal Imprisonment in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Established in 1982, the 'Yellow Wallpaper' is a story that consists of haunting psychological imagery meant to make the audience learn something. She does this by narrating her personal experience and how she was imprisoned in a weird room by her own husband. The setting of the article is quite clear as it indicates isolation where a woman is subjected to a confined place like being in prison (Martson & Bambi 59). The narrator uses Charlotte Gilman because she is cautious about the strange feeling about the room. Moreover, she does not like the room. Before she was taken to that room, she preferred the downstairs room because it had beautiful chintz curtains and roses all over the door and window (Gilman 44). However, John her husband confines her to the upstairs bedroom that differs from the downstairs room. It had bars on the windows and a smoldering and repellent unclean 'Yellow Wallpaper which according to the author, it was the worst she has ever seen. Here, the narrator implies to readers the feeling of getting locked up in a room with someone we love, and no mercy is shown. The 'yellow paper' will elaborate on how the author crafts choices by creating setting and character to heighten the emotional stake of the readers.

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The first view she came across was the repulsed aesthetical color and design of the wallpaper in the unnerved 'left to rest' as administered by her husband. She found this paper more hideous that she never wanted to focus on it. Since the narrator's internalized upon her physical and mental state, she started analyzing her feelings with the yellow paper (Gilman 53). Moreover, her eerie foreshadowing for the final crisis continued to prescience the narrator. According to her, the article did dull that it was pronounced to provoke and irritate the study particularly when the lame uncertain curves are followed for a distance because they may make a person to commit suicide. This is a shocking statement used in this phrase. Readers have been given an image that someone can be confused and since there is no help, they chose to die.

The Journey from Repression to Independence

The Hideous paper later becomes the narrator's symbol to show how women that had visions like herself must creep and hide behind the Victorian Femme Covert patterns because it suppresses ladies. While she tried to free herself from depression and repression, she also released the envisioned women that needed to escape. For some time, Charlotte Gilman manages to unravel the patterns of her life while discovering the meaning of the paper (Gilman 57). She did this by hiding her identity to the point that when her husband came to open the door, he always found her creeping on the floor.

The narrator also perceives herself as a person that was trapped behind the paper. In her prescient remark, the woman committed suicide of her personality (with the name Jane) by destroying her own identity by becoming a free woman to represent the Victorian woman patterns. She even stated that "I have finally managed to get out; in spite of Jane and you, I have also pulled out most of the paper so I cannot go back," (Gilman 61) In other words, the author sees herself as a woman that was imprisoned behind the yellow wallpaper by the name Jane. After removing the paper by destroyed her identity, she now became a free woman that represented the patterns of the Victorian woman. Indeed the yellow paper is significant to the journey of the narrator from repression to independence (Gilman 74). The audience is left with the good feeling of freedom and how ones feel after a long struggle. However, there has been an uncertain cost and angles that mad the narrator disassociated from her true identity.

The Outer/Inner Split and the Narrative Plot

In the 'Yellow Wallpaper, the author uses the character technique on how she loses touch with the outside world but later gains the intimate understanding of her life. This is a devastating situation because it brings in the image of how people can survive without socializing. The outer/inner split is important when it comes to the understanding of the narrator's feeling of suffering. Every time she is faced with situations, objects, and relationships that seem natural but innocent, they are usually oppressive and quite bizarre. In this sense, the plot of the story is seen when the narrator ignores knowledge to the point that her situation stifles her inner impulses (Gilman 79). For instance, in the beginning, the narrator is a highly imaginative and expressive woman. She even remembers being terrified from night hood monsters kids see.

The Symbolic Nature of the Yellow Wallpaper and the Room

While the world hid the narrator's thoughts, she also began to fall into the fantasy world of her condition but in symbolic terms. Here, the author's consciousness including her emotions and reason rebel the treatment offered by the husband because the house hunted her (Gilman 82). The author uses this to entice the readers the dangers of depression and how negative memories pop into people's mind all because there is no other choice. The descriptions surrounding her in the room that seems sinister and uncanny also made her become her fixated on the yellow wallpaper. Therefore the more sinks to her fascination concerning the wallpaper she became dissociated from her daily activities. The dissociation nature, in this case, began when the narrator decided to keep a secret diary.

This is where her thoughts are hidden from the happening of the things of the world. In this case, the narrator slips into a fantasy world because of the nature surrounding her but in symbolic terms. This way, the division of the consciousness of the narrator as reflected by Gilman were under the puzzles because of the world the narrator desires. For instance, the narrator never understood that there was a similarity between the yellow stains and the long smooth as seen in the wallpaper (Gilman 85). Similarly, the narrator also fought the predicament of the symbol of the yellow paper as noticed in her situation.

The importance of the narrator and the settings of the wallpaper is that the room represents the unconscious nature of the author's protective cell that encased her mind as seen in women. The place, in this case, takes control of her by deteriorating her thoughts. This room, in other words, is set up in a mechanism of self-defense when the author puts her situation into the asylum. While she set the false wall for her protection and to prevent her from being insane, the wallpaper continued to deteriorate. The author also uses this type to make the audience have the feeling of desperation and how such situations create creepy moods and thoughts. Eventually, the situation makes her weak thus leaving her with no choice of insanity and madness.

The characters on the wallpaper represented the real lives of people that had other alternatives in their mind (Gilman 89). The 'Yellow Paper' setting assists in setting the theme of solitary exclusion and confinement from the public due to insanity. The house also consisted of the summer characters and the surrounding scenery due to the isolated environment. The reason why the idea of isolation was incorporated in the piece was to teach the audience how making someone to stay alone tortures them. The techniques used in 'the Wallpaper' are the character (the narrator herself), and the settings (the room she was confined in) to literacy analyze the piece.

Works Cited

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Haunting of the House in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" All That Gothic, 2010, pp. 84-101., doi:10.3726/978-3-653-04226-9/19.

Marston, Peter J., and Bambi Rockwell. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper': Rhetorical Subversion in Feminist Literature." Women's Studies in Communication, vol. 14, no. 2, 2009, pp. 58-72., doi:10.1080/07491409.1991.11089755.