Anaysis of the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

http//www. spark n integritys. com/lit/yellow breakwater subject/con school text. html The color W whole opus, Charlotte Perkins Gilman T satisfactory of content Context Plot Overview Char scraper List Analysis of Major Characters Themes, Motifs, and Symbols signifi messt quotations Explained Key Facts How to Cite This SparkNote Context Charlotte Perkins Gilman was best kn bear in her cartridge holder as a crusading journa leaning and feminist in tellectual, a follower of such(prenominal) pi 1ering womens rights advocates as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gilmans great-aunt.Gilman was concerned with political inequality and fri containly only ifice in ecumenic, nonwith carrying the primary focus of her writing was the incommensurate status of women in spite of appearance the g overning body of marriage. In such works as Concerning Children(1900), The Home (1904), and Human Work (1904), Gilman argued that womens obligation to re prin cipal(prenominal)(prenominal) in the domestic sphither robbed them of the expression of their full powers of creativity and intelligence, while at the same snip robbing community of women whose abilities suited them for professional and public life.An essential part of her abridgment was that the usageal power structure of the family do no virtuoso riantnot the cleaning muliebrityhoodhood who was made into an unpaid servant, not the master(prenominal)tain who was made into a master, and not the children who were subject to both. Her most ambitious work, Women and Economics (1898), analyze the hidden value of womens labor at bottom the capitalist miserliness and argued, as Gilman did throughout her works, that financial independence for women could only benefit society as a whole.To mean solar daylight, Gilman is primarily kn protest for one re endeavorable report, The yellow(a) wall stem, which was considered close unprintably assaulting in its cadence and whic h unnerves contri simplyors to this day. This short work of fiction, which deals with an odds-on marriage and a woman annuled by her unfulfilled trust for self-expression, deals with the same concerns and ideas as Gilmans nonfiction but in a much more(prenominal) than personal mode. Indeed, The lily-livered cover draws heavily on a curiously painful episode in Gilmans kat onceledge life.In 1886, early in her rootage marriage and not long subsequently the birth of her daughter, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (as she was then known) was stricken with a s ever soe movement of stamp. In her 1935 autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she describes her utter prostration byunbearable intimate misery and ceaseless tears, a hold in only made worse by the presence of her husband and her baby. She was referred to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, then the countrys jumper lead specialist in nervous disorders, whose discourse in such groundss was a rest cure of strained in e mployment.Especially in the elusion of his female patients, Mitchell believed that depressive disorder was brought on by too much affable activity and not enough attention to domestic affairs. For Gilman, this quarrel of treatment was a disaster. Prevented from working, she presently had a nervous break beat. At her worst, she was reduced to creep into closets and downstairs beds, clutching a rag doll. Once she abandoned Mitchells rest cure, Gilmans condition improved, though she leaded to feel the effects of the ordeal for the rest of her life.Leaving derriere her husband and child, a s butt enddalous decision, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (she took the name Gilman by and by a sustain marriage, to her cousin) embarked on a successful career as a journalist, lecturer, and publisher. She wrote The Yellow Wallcomposition soon after her move to California, and in it she utilizes her personal set close to create a tale that is both a chilling exposition of one womans fall in to madness and a strong symbolic narrative of the fate of creative women stifled by a paternalistic culture.In purely literary terms, The Yellow Wall topic looks back to the tradition of the psychological horror tale as practiced by Edgar Allan Poe. For example, PoesThe Tell-Tale Heart is also told from the point of view of an sore cashier. Going throw out back, Gilman also draws on the tradition of the Gothic romances of the late eighteenth century, which practically featured spooky old mansions and young heroines determined to uncover their sequestereds.Gilmans twaddle is also forward-looking, however, and her sec-by- issue reporting of the tellers recoverings is completely a move in the direction of the sort of stream-of-consciousness narration use by such twentieth-century writers as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. Plot Overview The vote counter begins her journal by marveling at the grandeur of the set up and grounds her husband has taken for their summer vacation. She describes it in romantic terms as an aristocratic e situate or even a haunted house and wonders how they were able to afford it, and w herefore the house had been empty for so long.Her feeling that in that location is some occasion queer virtually the point leads her into a discussion of her illnessshe is suffering from nervous falling offand of her marriage. She complains that her husband hind end, who is also her doctor, belittles both her illness and her thoughts and concerns in general. She secernates his practical, rationalistic mood of life with her own imaginative, sensitive ways. Her treatment requires that she do almost zero active, and she is particularly forbidden from working and writing.She feels that activity, freedom, and interesting work would swear out her condition and reveals that she has begun her secret journal in order to relieve her top dog. In an attempt to do so, the vote counter begins describing the house. Her d escription is mostly positive, but lamentable elements such as the rings and things in the bed way of life walls, and the nix on the windows, keep cover up. She is particularly disturbed by the yellow wallpaper in the sleeping accommodation, with its strange, unintegrated specimen, and describes it as revolting. short, however, her thoughts are interrupted by rumps approach, and she is coerce to stop writing.As the number 1 few weeks of the summer pass, the storyteller be deals good at hiding her journal, and thus hiding her true thoughts from buns. She continues to long for more excite company and activity, and she complains again some keisters patronizing, controlling waysalthough she immediately returns to the wallpaper, which begins to seem not only ugly, but oddly menacing. She mentions that seat is worried right about her becoming fixated on it, and that he has even refused to repaper the inhabit so as not to give in to her neurotic worries.The fabricators im agination, however, has been aroused. She mentions that she enjoys picturing people on the walkways most the house and that bottom unendingly discourages such fantasies. She also signifys back to her childhood, when she was able to work herself into a terror by imagining things in the dark. As she describes the bedroom, which she sound outs must founder been a nursery for young children, she points out that the paper is part off the wall in spots, there are scratches and gouges in the floor, and the furniture is heavy and intractable in place.Just as she begins to see a strange sub- expression behind the main design of the wallpaper, her writing is interrupted again, this time by prats sister, Jennie, who is acting as housekeeper and nurse for the teller. As the Fourth of July passes, the vote counter reports that her family has just visited, leaving her more tired than ever. John threatens to send her to Weir Mitchell, the real-life atomic number 101 under whose care Gi lman had a nervous breakdown. The cashier is unsocial most of the time and says that she has function almost fond of the wallpaper and that attempting to see out its kind has become her primary entertainment.As her obsession grows, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper becomes clearer. It begins to resemble a woman asymmetrical down and creeping behind the main pattern, which looks like the forbid of a cage. Whenever the cashier tries to discuss leaving the house, John work ups light of her concerns, in effect silencing her. Each time he does so, her disgusted fascination with the paper grows. Soon the wallpaper dominates the cashiers imagination. She becomes possessive and secretive, hiding her interest in the paper and making sure no one else examines it so that she preempt find it out on her own.At one point, she startles Jennie, who had been touching the wallpaper and who mentions that she had arrange yellow stains on their clothes. Mistaking the tellers fixation for tra nquility, John designates she is improving. But she sleeps less and less and is convinced that she can smell the paper all over the house, even outside. She discovers a strange smudge mark on the paper, running all beloved the room, as if it had been rubbed by mortal creep against the wall. The sub-pattern now clearly resembles a woman who is trying to dispirit out from behind the main pattern.The storyteller sees her shaking the bars at night and creeping around during the day, when the woman is able to bunk briefly. The teller mentions that she, too, creeps around at times. She suspects that John and Jennie are aware of her obsession, and she resolves to smash the paper once and for all, peeling much of it off during the night. The next day she manages to be alone and goes into something of a frenzy, biting and tearing at the paper in order to free the detain woman, whom she sees struggling from intimate the pattern.By the end, the cashier is hopelessly insane, convinc ed that there are many creeping women around and that she herself has come out of the wallpaperthat she herself is the trapped woman. She creeps endlessly around the room, smudging the wallpaper as she goes. When John breaks into the locked room and sees the full horror of the situation, he faints in the doorway, so that the narrator has to creep over him e real time Character List The Narrator A young, upper-middle-class woman, newly espouse and a mother, who is undergoing care for impression.The narratorwhose name may or may not be Janeis highly imaginative and a natural storyteller, though her doctors believe she has a slight hysterical tendency. The story is told in the course of instruction of her secret diary, in which she records her thoughts as her obsession with the wallpaper grows. Read an in-depth synopsis of The Narrator. John The narrators husband and her physician. John restricts her behavior as part of her treatment. Unlike his imaginative wife, John is extr emely practical, preferring facts and figures to fancy, at which he scoffs openly. He seems to love his wife, but he does not understand the negative effect his treatment has on her. Read an in-depth analysis of John. Jennie Johns sister. Jennie acts as housekeeper for the couple. Her presence and her contentment with a domestic role heighten the narrators feelings of guilt over her own inability to act as a traditional wife and mother. Jennie seems, at times, to suspect that the narrator is more troubled than she lets on. Analysis of Major Characters The NarratorThe narrator of The Yellow cover is a paradox as she loses touch with the outer world, she comes to a great understanding of the inner reality of her life. This inner/outer split is life-and-death to understanding the nature of the narrators suffering. At every point, she is face up with kindreds, objects, and situations that seem innocent and natural but that are actually instead bizarre and even oppressive. In a sense, the plot of The Yellow Wallpaper is the narrators attempt to avoid acknowledging the extent to which her external situation stifles her inner impulses.From the starting signal, we see that the narrator is an imaginative, highly expressive woman. She remembers terrifying herself with imaginary number nighttime monsters as a child, and she enjoys the notion that the house they sire taken is haunted. Yet as part of her cure, her husband forbids her to exercise her imagination in any way. Both her reason and her emotions rebel at this treatment, and she turns her imagination onto ostensibly neutral objectsthe house and the wallpaperin an attempt to ignore her maturement frustration.Her negative feelings color her description of her surroundings, making them seem uncanny and sinister, and she becomes fixated on the wallpaper. As the narrator sinks further into her inner fascination with the wallpaper, she becomes progressively more dissociated from her day-to-day life. This p rocess of dissociation begins when the story does, at the very moment she decides to keep a secret diary as a abatement to her mind. From that point, her true thoughts are hidden from the outer world, and the narrator begins to slip into a fantasy world in which the nature of her situation is made clear in symbolic terms.Gilman shows us this division in the narrators consciousness by having the narrator puzzle over effects in the world that she herself has caused. For example, the narrator doesnt immediately understand that the yellow stains on her clothing and the long smootch on the wallpaper are connected. Similarly, the narrator fights the recognition that the predicament of the woman in the wallpaper is a symbolic meter reading of her own situation. At first she even disapproves of the womans efforts to leave out and intends to tie her up. When the narrator at last identifies herself with the woman trapped in the wallpaper, she is able to see that other women are hale to creep and hide behind the domestic patterns of their lives, and that she herself is the one in need of rescue. The horror of this story is that the narrator must lose herself to understand herself. She has untangled the pattern of her life, but she has torn herself apart in ca-cating free of it. An odd detail at the end of the story reveals how much the narrator has sacrificed. During her final split from reality, the narrator says, Ive got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. Who is this Jane? Some critics claim Jane is a misprint for Jennie,the sister-in-law. It is more belike, however, that Jane is the name of the unnamed narrator, who has been a fantastic to herself and her jailers. Now she is horribly free of the constraints of her marriage, her society, and her own efforts to smother her mind. John though John seems like the obvious villain of The Yellow Wallpaper, the story does not allow us to see him as wholly evil. Johns treatment of the narrators depression goes te rribly wrong, but in all likelihood he was trying to help her, not make her worse.The real problem with John is the all-encompassing power he has in his coincided role as the narrators husband and doctor. John is so sure that he knows whats best for his wife that he disregards her own opinion of the matter, forcing her to hide her true feelings. He consistently patronizes her. He calls her a blessed little goose and vetoes her smallest wishes, such as when he refuses to switch bedrooms so as not to overindulge her fancies. Further, his dry, clinical rationality renders him uniquely unsuited to understand his imaginative wife.He does not intend to victimize her, but his ignorance about what she really needs in the long run proves dangerous. John knows his wife only superficially. He sees the outer pattern but misses the trapped, struggling woman inside. This ignorance is why John is no mere cardboard villain. He cares for his wife, but the unequal relationship in which they fin d themselves prevents him from truly understanding her and her problems. By treating her as a case or a wife and not as a person with a will of her own, he helps destroy her, which is the last thing he wants.That John has been destroyed by this imprisoning relationship is made clear by the storys chilling finale. subsequently breaking in on his insane wife, John faints in shock and goes unrecognized by his wife, who calls him that man and complains about having to creep over him as she makes her way along the wall. Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Themes The Subordination of Women in Marriage In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman uses the conventions of the psychological horror tale to critique the position of women within the institution of marriage, in particular as practiced by the respectableclasses of her time.When the story was first published, most proof contributors took it as a scary tale about a woman in an extreme severalise of consciousnessa gripping, unreassuring entertainmen t, but little more. After its rediscovery in the twentieth century, however, readings of the story stomach become more complex. For Gilman, the conventional 19th-century middle-class marriage, with its rigid distinction amongst the domestic functions of the female and the active work of the male, ensured that women remained second-class citizens.The story reveals that this sexuality division had the effect of keeping women in a childish province of ignorance and preventing their full development. Johns assumption of his own superior intelligence and maturity leads him to misjudge, patronize, and dominate his wife, all in the name of helping her. The narrator is reduced to acting like a cross, petulant child, uneffective to stand up for herself without seeming unreasonable or disloyal. The narrator has no say in even the smallest details of her life, and she retreats into her obsessive fantasy, the only place she can retain some control and exercise the power of her mind.The I mportance of Self-Expression pic The genial constraints placed upon the narrator, even more so than the physical ones, are what ultimately drive her insane. She is forced to hide her anxieties and fears in order to preserve the frontage of a happy marriage and to make it seem as though she is winning the fight against her depression. From the beginning, the most intolerable aspect of her treatment is the domineering silence and idleness of the resting cure. She is forced to become completely passive, forbidden from use her mind in any way.Writing is oddly off limits, and John warns her some(prenominal) times that she must use her self-control to rein in her imagination, which he fears will run away with her. Of course, the narrators ultimate dementia is a product of the repression of her imaginative power, not the expression of it. She is constantly zest for an emotional and intellectual outlet, even going so far as to keep a secret journal, which she describes more than onc e as a relief to her mind. For Gilman, a mind that is kept in a accede of forced inactivity is doomed to self-destruction.The Evils of the Resting Cure As someone who almost was destroyed by S. Weir Mitchells resting cure for depression, it is not surprising that Gilman structured her story as an attack on this ineffective and cruel course of treatment. The Yellow Wallpaper is an illustration of the way a mind that is already plagued with anxiety can deteriorate and begin to prey on itself when it is forced into inactivity and kept from healthy work. To his credit, Mitchell, who is mentioned by name in the story, took Gilmans criticism to heart and abandoned the resting cure. Beyond the specific technique set forth in the story, Gilman fashion to criticize any constellation of medical care that ignores the concerns of the patient, considering her only as a passive object of treatment. The conjunctive amid a womans control in the station and her subordination in a doctor/pati ent relationship is clearJohn is, after all, the narrators husband and doctor. Gilman implies that both forms of authority can be easily abused, even when the husband or doctor means to help.All too often, the women who are the silent subjects of this authority are infantilized, or worse. Motifs satire Almost every aspect of The Yellow Wallpaper is ironic in some way. banter is a way of using words to drive multiple levels of meaning that contrast with or complicate one other. In verbal jeering, words are frequently used to convey the conduct resistance of their literal meaning, such as when one person responds to anothers mistake by saying nice work. (Sarcasmwhich this example embodiesis a form of verbal irony. In her journal, the narrator uses verbal irony often, oddly in reference to her husband John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. Obviously, one expects no such thing, at least not in a healthy marriage. Later, she says, I am glad my case is n ot serious, at a point when it is clear that she is concerned that her case is very serious indeed. Dramatic irony occurs when there is a contrast between the reviewers knowledge and the knowledge of the consultations in the work.Dramatic irony is used extensively in The Yellow Wallpaper. For example, when the narrator first describes the bedroom John has chosen for them, she attributes the rooms bizarre featuresthe rings and things in the walls, the nailed-down furniture, the bars on the windows, and the torn wallpaperto the fact that it must give once been used as a nursery. Even this early in the story, the reader sees that there is an equally plausible explanation for these details the room had been used to house an insane person.Another example is when the narrator assumes that Jennie shares her interest in the wallpaper, while it is clear that Jennie is only now noticing the source of the yellow stains on their clothing. The effect intensifies toward the end of the story, a s the narrator sinks further into her fantasy and the reader remains able to see her actions from theoutside. By the time the narrator full identifies with the trapped woman she sees in the wallpaper, the reader can appreciate the narrators experience from her point of view as well as Johns shock at what he sees when he breaks down the door to the bedroom.Situational irony refers to moments when a characters actions have the opposite of their intended effect. For example, Johns course of treatment backfires, worsening the depression he was trying to cure and actually driving his wife insane. Similarly, there is a deep irony in the way the narrators fate develops. She gains a kind of power and insight only by losing what we would call her self-control and reason. The Journal An informal work of fiction takes the form of letters between characters. The Yellow Wallpaper is a kind of epistolary story, in which the narrator writes to herself.Gilman uses this technique to show the narr ators capitulation into madness both subjectively and objectivelythat is, from both the inside and the outside. Had Gilman told her story in traditional first-person narration, reporting events from inside the narrators head, the reader would never know exactly what to think a woman inside the wallpaper might seem to actually exist. Had Gilman told the story from an objective, third-person point of view, without reveal the narrators thoughts, the social and political symbolism of the story would have been obscured.As it is, the reader must decipher the ambiguity of the story, just as the narrator must attempt to decipher the bewildering story of her life and the bizarre patterns of the wallpaper. Gilman also uses the journal to give the story an in deform intimacy and immediacy, especially in those moments when the narrative is interrupted by the approach of John or Jennie. These interruptions utterly illustrate the constraints placed on the narrator by authority figures who wei ghtlift her not to think about hercondition. Symbols The Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper is set by the narrators sense that the wallpaper is a text she must interpret, that it symbolizes something that affects her directly. Accordingly, the wallpaper develops its symbolism throughout the story. At first it seems nevertheless unpleasant it is ripped, soiled, and an unclean yellow. The worst part is the ostensibly formless pattern, which fascinates the narrator as she attempts to figure out how it is organized. After staring at the paper for hours, she sees a ghostly sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light.Eventually, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a desperate woman, constantly crawling and stooping, looking for an escape from behind the main pattern, which has come to resemble the bars of a cage. The narrator sees this cage as festooned with the heads of many women, all of whom were throttle as they tried to escape. Clearly, the wallpaper represent s the structure of family, medicine, and tradition in which the narrator finds herself trapped. Wallpaper is domestic and humble, and Gilman skillfully uses this nightmarish, hideous paper as a symbol of the domestic life that traps so many women.Important Quotations Explained 1. If a physician of high standing, and ones own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but maverick nervous depressiona slight hysterical tendencywhat is one to do? . . . So I take phosphates or phosphiteswhichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am short forbidden to work until I am well again. Personally, I dissent with their ideas . . . history for Quotation 1 In this passage, which appears near the beginning of the story, the main elements of the narrators plight are present.The powerful, authoritative personas of her husband, her family, and the medical institution urge her to be passive. Her own conviction, however, is that what she needs is precisely the oppositeactivity and stimulation. From the outset, her opinions carry little weight. Personally, she disagrees with her treatment, but she has no power to change the situation. Gilman also begins to characterize the narrator here. The perplexity over phosphates or phosphites is in character for someone who is not particularly interested in factual accuracy.And the sudden rhythm of the sentences, often mixed-up into one-line paragraphs, helps evoke the hurried writing of the narrator in her secret journal, as well as the agitated state of her mind. abutting 2. I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulusbut John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I admit it endlessly makes me feel severeness. So I will let it alone and talk about the house. Explanation for Quotation 2 This section appears near the beginning of the story, and it helps characterize both the narr ators dilemma and the narrator herself. Notably, the narrator interrupts her own train of thought by recalling Johns instructions. Gilman shows how the narrator has internalized her husbands authority to the point that she practically hears his voice in her head, telling her what to think. Even so, she cannot help but feel the way she does, and so the move she makes at the end focus on the house instead of her situationmarks the beginning of her slide into obsession and madness.This mental struggle, this desperate attempt not to think about her unhappiness, makes her project her feelings onto her surroundings, especially the wallpaper, which becomes a symbolic image of her condition. The fetch on words here is typical of Gilmans consistent use of irony throughout the story. She feels bad whenever she thinks about hercondition, that is, about both her depression and her condition in general within her oppressive marriage. Close 3. on that point are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I dont like it a bit. I wonderI begin to thinkI wish John would take me away from here Explanation for Quotation 3 just about halfway through the story, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper finally comes into focus. The narrator is being draw further and further into her fantasy, which contains a disturbing loyalty about her life. Gilmans irony is actively at work here the things in the paper are both the ghostly women the narrator sees and the disturbing ideas she is coming to understand.She is at the same time jealous of the secret (nobody knows but me) and stimulate of what it seems to imply. Again the narrator tries to deny her growing insight (the dim shapes get clearer every day), but she is powerless to extricate herself. Small wonder that the woman she sees is always stooping down and creeping about. Like the narrator herself, she is trapped within a suffocating domestic pattern from which no escape is possible. Close 4. Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. Explanation for Quotation 4 This comment comes just after the expectation in which the narrator catches Jennie touching the paper and resolves that no one else is allowed to figure out the pattern. It captures one of the most distinctive qualities of The Yellow Wallpaper Gilmans bitter, sarcastic sense of humor. Now that the narrator has become hopelessly obsess with the pattern, spending all day and all night thinking about it, life has become more interesting and she is no longer bored. Gilman manages to agree humor and dread in such moments. The comment is funny, but the reader knows that someone who would make such a joke is not well.Indeed, in the section that follows, the narrator casually mentions that she considered burning the house down in order to eliminate the smell of the wallpaper. Close 5. I dont like to look out of the windows eventhere are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did? Explanation for Quotation 5 Important Quotations Explained 1. If a physician of high standing, and ones own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depressiona slight hysterical tendencywhat is one to do? . . So I take phosphates or phosphiteswhichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to work until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas . . . Explanation for Quotation 1 In this passage, which appears near the beginning of the story, the main elements of the narrators dilemma are present. The powerful, authoritative voices of her husband, her family, and the medical establishment urge her to be passive. Her own conviction, however, i s that what she needs is precisely the oppositeactivity and stimulation.From the outset, her opinions carry little weight. Personally, she disagrees with her treatment, but she has no power to change the situation. Gilman also begins to characterize the narrator here. The confusion over phosphates or phosphites is in character for someone who is not particularly interested in factual accuracy. And the choppy rhythm of the sentences, often broken into one-line paragraphs, helps evoke the hurried writing of the narrator in her secret journal, as well as the agitated state of her mind. Close . I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulusbut John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house. Explanation for Quotation 2 This section appears near the beginning of the story, and it helps characterize both the narrators dilemma and t he narrator herself. Notably, the narrator interrupts her own train of thought by recalling Johns instructions.Gilman shows how the narrator has internalized her husbands authority to the point that she practically hears his voice in her head, telling her what to think. Even so, she cannot help but feel the way she does, and so the move she makes at the endfocusing on the house instead of her situationmarks the beginning of her slide into obsession and madness. This mental struggle, this desperate attempt not to think about her unhappiness, makes her project her feelings onto her surroundings, especially the wallpaper, which becomes a symbolic image of her condition. The play on words here is typical of Gilmans consistent use of irony throughout the story. She feels bad whenever she thinks about hercondition, that is, about both her depression and her condition in general within her oppressive marriage. Close 3. There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I dont like it a bit. I wonderI begin to thinkI wish John would take me away from here Explanation for Quotation 3 About halfway through the story, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper finally comes into focus. The narrator is being drawn further and further into her fantasy, which contains a disturbing truth about her life. Gilmans irony is actively at work here the things in the paper are both the ghostly women the narrator sees and the disturbing ideas she is coming to understand. She is simultaneously jealous of the secret (nobody knows but me) and frightened of what it seems to imply. Again the narrator tries to deny her growing insight (the dim shapes get clearer every day), but she is powerless to extricate herself.Small wonder that the woman she sees is always stooping down and creeping ab out. Like the narrator herself, she is trapped within a suffocating domestic pattern from which no escape is possible. Close 4. Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. Explanation for Quotation 4 This comment comes just after the scene in which the narrator catches Jennie touching the paper and resolves that no one else is allowed to figure out the pattern. It captures one of the most distinctive qualities of The Yellow Wallpaper Gilmans bitter, sarcastic sense of humor.Now that the narrator has become hopelessly haunt with the pattern, spending all day and all night thinking about it, life has become more interesting and she is no longer bored. Gilman manages to combine humor and dread in such moments. The comment is funny, but the reader knows that someone who would make such a joke is not well. Indeed, in the section that follows, the narrator casually mentions that she considered burning the house down in order to eliminate the smell of the wallpaper. Close 5. I dont like to look out of the windows eventhere are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did? Explanation for Quotation 5 In the storys final scene, just before John finally breaks into her room, the narrator has finished tearing off enough of the wallpaper that the woman she saw inside is now freeand the two women have become one. This passage is the exact moment of full identification, when the narrator finally makes the connection she has been avoiding, a connection that the reader has made already. The woman behind the pattern was an image of herselfshe has been the one stooping and creeping. Further, she knows that there are many women just like her, so many that she is afraid to look at them. The point she asks is poignant and complex did they all have to struggle the way I did? Were they trapped within homes that were really prisons? Did they all have to tear their lives up at the roots in order to be free? The narrator, unable to answer these questions, leaves them for another womanor the readerto ponder. Key Facts title The Yellow Wallpaper author Charlotte Perkins Gilman type of work Short story genre Gothic horror tale character study socio-political emblem language English ime and place written 1892, California date of first publication May, 1892 publisher The New England Magazine narrator A mentally troubled young woman, possibly named Jane point of view As the main characters fictional journal, the story is told in strict first-person narration, focusing exclusively on her own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. Everything that we learn or see in the story is filtered through the narrators shifting consciousness, and since the narrator goes insane over the course of the story, her perception of reality is often completely at odds with that of the other characters. one The narrator is in a state of anxiety for much of the story, with flashes of sarcasm, anger , and desperationa tone Gilman wants the reader to share. tense The story stays close to the narrators thoughts at the moment and is thus mostly in the present tense. setting (time) Late nineteenth century setting (place) America, in a large summer home (or possibly an old asylum), primarily in one bedroom within the house. rotagonist The narrator, a young upper-middle-class woman who is suffering from what is most likely postpartum depression and whose illness gives her insight into her (and other womens) situation in society and in marriage, even as the treatment she undergoes robs her of her sanity. major interlocking The struggle between the narrator and her husband, who is also her doctor, over the nature and treatment of her illness leads to a conflict within the narrators mind between her growing understanding of her own powerlessness and her desire to repress this awareness. ising action The narrator decides to keep a secret journal, in which she describes her forced passivity and expresses her dislike for her bedroom wallpaper, a dislike that gradually intensifies into obsession. flood The narrator completely identifies herself with the woman imprisoned in the wallpaper. falling action The narrator, now completely identified with the woman in the wallpaper,spends her time crawling on all fours around the room. Her husband discovers her and collapses in shock, and she keeps crawling, right over his fallen body. hemes The subordination of women in marriage the importance of self-expression the evils of the Resting Cure motifs Irony the journal symbols The wallpaper foreshadowing The discovery of the teeth marks on the bedstead foreshadows the narrators own insanity and suggests the narrator is not revealing everything about her behavior the first use of the word offensive foreshadows the increasing desperation of the narrators situation and her own eventualcreeping. How to Cite This SparkNote Full Bibliographic Citation MLA SparkNotes Ed itors. SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. SparkNotes. com. SparkNotes LLC. 2006. Web. 2 Apr. 2013. The moolah Manual of Style SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. SparkNotes LLC. 2006. http//www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/ (accessed April 12, 2013). APA SparkNotes Editors. (2006). SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. Retrieved April 12, 2013, from http//www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/ In Text Citation MLA Their conversation is awkward, especially when she mentions Wickham, a subject Darcy clearly wishes to avoid (SparkNotes Editors). APA Their conversation is awkward, especially when she mentions Wickham, a subject Darcy clearly wishes to avoid (SparkNotes Editors, 2006).Footnote The Chicago Manual of Style Chicago requires the use of footnotes, rather than parenthetical citations, in conjunction with a list of works cited when dealing with literature. 1 SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. SparkNotes LLC. 2006. http//www. sp arknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/ (accessed April 12, 2013). pic enjoy be sure to cite your sources. For more information about what piracy is and how to avoid it, please read our article on The Plagiarism Plague. If you have any questions regarding how to use or include references to SparkNotes in your work, please tell us.