...102-020 11 September 2014 Symbolism in “The Yellow Wallpaper” A nameless woman who suffers from a temporary nervous disorder narrates the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Her husband, a doctor, has taken her to a summer vacation home for rest therapy; however, the woman's condition worsens and she starts to see some disturbing images in the wallpaper of the room in which she is confined. She tries to tell her husband without success and with time sees the images more and more frequently. At the end of the story, she locks herself in her room and tries to tear off the wallpaper. The yellow wallpaper in the story represents the protagonist’s feeling of oppression by her husband and society at large. Early on in her encounters with the wallpaper she describes its ugliness as “flamboyant” with “…patterns committing every artistic sin”, which symbolizes the ugliness of the confinement in which she finds herself (480). As time passes in the story, the wallpaper starts to grow on her and she starts to obsess over it. When she says the wallpaper “[knows] what a vicious influence it [has]” over her, she begins to describe the wallpaper as if it is alive (481). As she slowly starts to loose her sanity, she starts to see the pattern in the wallpaper as the form of a person. She describes the personage as “a woman stooping down and creeping about behind [the] pattern [of the wallpaper]…. as if she wanted to get out” (484). The wallpaper woman is a representation...
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...The color yellow; in nature it is the color of flowers, sun, some birds, and so much more. It is a happy color to most people. However, that is not the case in "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Yellow is a color that is despised at first by the main character, but is an important symbol in the story. It is no coincidence that the author uses the color yellow in her symbolic story. In "The Yellow Wallpaper", "The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight."(239). The main character hates the color. The color yellow is part of what made her go crazy. She cannot get over how horrible the color is. "Yellow is the color of caution and physical illness."(Morton)....
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...Symbolism in literature is using an object or a word to represent an abstract idea. An action, person, place, word, or object can all have a symbolic meaning. For example, when you are looking at the literature piece “The Yellow Wallpaper” the most obvious symbol in this piece is the yellow wallpaper. In the literature piece, “The Story of an Hour” one symbol in this piece is the open window. Lastly, in the literature piece “A Good Man is Hard to find” one symbol in this piece is the grandmother’s hat. All these symbols in the different literature pieces are key to telling the story. It lets the reader know the author wants you to understand a certain mood or emotion by hinting it and not just flat out saying it. The narrator and her husband...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about a woman suffering from postpartum depression, where she is under her husband’s orders in the mandatory resting cure in bed hopes to get rid of her illness. This leads to her slowly going insane from being locked in the yellow room with nothing to do. Gilman’s use of the color yellow can be seen as ironic because, while typically associated as being a cheerful, joyous and warm color. She uses the yellow room in ways one does not at first associate with the color, creating a powerful symbol for the different emotions displayed in the text. One of the emotions expressed by the color of yellow is acting cowardly. This can be seen throughout the story when Jane is...
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..."The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, centering on the mental deterioration of a young woman. The story is set in the 1980s in an old mansion that the narrator’s husband has rented for her to cure from her “nervous condition”. The narrator spends most of her time in the attic room with the hideous yellow wallpaper. The author uses a lot of symbolic devices to create the effect pf the oppression of women by the society. The yellow wallpaper is the biggest and most obvious symbol in the story. It represents the narrator’s mind and reflects her thoughts and desires. Accordingly, the wallpaper develops its symbolism throughout the story. At first it seems merely unpleasant: it is ripped, soiled, and an “unclean yellow.” The worst part is the 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, and sometimes many women, constantly crawling and stooping, looking for an escape from behind the main pattern, which has come to resemble the bars of a cage: “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over”. Clearly, the wallpaper represents the tradition and the domestic life in which the narrator finds herself trapped....
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...Symbolism has a very effective meaning in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper short story. Symbolism is defined as “the practice of representing things by symbols, or investing things with a symbolic meaning or character” (Dictionary.com). Firstly, the wallpaper symbolizes a variety of the narrator’s senses. Throughout the story, her senses change and the wallpaper also changes. The wallpaper shows how someone who suffers from a mental illness has different perspectives on their emotional surroundings and self-perception. Next, the house the narrator is kept in and the ugliness in the patterns of the wallpaper help represent the outlook of a woman’s repression. All in all, the wallpaper symbolizes the events in which the narrator finds herself trapped...
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...In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator and her husband John are renting a house for three weeks. Her husband, who is a physician, believes she suffers from temporary nervous depression. “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 275). He makes her stay in a room and orders her to get as much sleep as possible. He believes it is best for her not to write or do any activity she enjoys. Being confined to a room, she becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper and believes a woman is trapped inside the paper. She eventually tears all the wallpaper off and says the woman is now free....
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...married to Walter Stetson for about two years before they separated due to Charlotte’s illness. After giving birth to her daughter Katharine Stetson “Began to experience increasing, melancholy, depression and fatigue” (O’Brien 2). Her doctors treated her by using isolation and they wouldn’t let her write. Her illness and her journey to being well is what gave her inspiration to write her story “The Yellow Wall-Paper”. Gilman’s uses diction, symbolism, and Irony in her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to portray how women were treated in the 19th century. Gilman uses diction to describe how the room she has been isolated in. She uses words like unclean, sickly, and atrocious to describe how the wallpaper looks. These words also describe how her isolation makes her feel. “I should hate it myself if I had to live here long” (Stetson 3). John treats her as if she’s not sick, just that she has “hysterical tendency” (Steston 2). In the 19th century is was common for men to look over their wives because men were the dominate spouse. So, for john to be her husband...
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...“THE YELLOW WALLPAPER” BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN Introduction In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1973) wrote “The Yellow Wall Paper”. This story can make a readers' mind think just by the way this story presents the main character of a woman and her ordeals as she lived a secluded life, as well as how her relationship with the man in her life is dealt. Some readers might think she is crazy and some may think she is depressed. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the story of a woman's descent into madness as the result of being isolated as a form of "treatment" when suffering from post-partum depression. The author, who is believed to be narrator as well, talks about her personal travel in to the world where an illness has brought her. All her thought and feelings are written in a journal and as she goes down in to the world that she has created in the confines of the room where she was kept. The story line presents that the narrator's mental condition is getting worse, leading to psychosis. Gilman explains the complexities of woman nature as she uses symbolisms to define the psychological realms of the plot. “The Yellow Wallpaper” The unnamed woman in this story (believed to be the author herself) fantasies about the yellow wallpaper are driving her mad. The protagonist experienced hallucinations and persistent thoughts over things. Crawling women, colorful artwork and a moving pattern depict the narrator's increased anxiety...
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...Alexis Jones February 26, 2011 Imagery and symbolism is what makes short stories and poems so compelling. Imagery is what lets the reader clearly imagine what is happening, whereas symbols may lie dormant begging for the reader to discover. The following poems and short stories posess recurring images and symbolism that drive the theme of the work. The reader discovers silence is dark. Whether the silence comes from insanity, misunderstanding, self-absorption, or pride, the reader understands that communication is key. That one needs to listen with their heart and mind to truly comprehend our world. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author uses bold symbolism and imagery to show the protagonists oppression and confusion change to insanity, yet freedom. The symbolism is so blatant the main character remains nameless to show her silenced life. The most vivid usage of imagery is the yellow wallpaper. The main character is essentially confined to a room for rest, what her physician husband believes is a nervous condition. The reader can later assume the room is actually an institution for mental health. The room contains horrid yellow wallpaper. In the beginning of the story, the main character is angered and confused by the wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper almost parallel to her own life and mental health, “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study” (548). She goes on to say...
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...As Gilman loses touch with herself and the outer world, she starts to realize her reality of her life. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a women suffers from postpartum depression and is prescribe the resting cure. As she is doing what her husband, an outstanding doctor, has told her to do, she becomes increasingly depressed and soon this results in her losing her insanity. As she losses her way of expressing herself and is doing what the doctor says, she is expected to conform to the doctor and the world around her. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gilman she illustrates women’s struggles through this story by using symbolism, theme, and irony. The wallpaper is a symbol used throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The author states, “The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (649). The way this is worded can...
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...The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the story about a woman named Jane, who writes in her journal about a summer home her and her husband will be staying at. Her husband John, who is a physician assures others that she only has temporary nervous depression. Because of her illness she is not supposed to do anything active, including writing. She feels that writing and having freedom can help her get better, so she begins to write in a secret journal. Particularly when she writes in her journal she describes a disgusting yellow wallpaper she sees in her room. She becomes fixated on the wallpaper and instead of hating it, grows fonder of it. She becomes more and more obsessed with it that she starts to see a woman trying to escape. As the summer goes on she continues to write about the yellow wallpaper, and the woman trying to escape from the paper. She has completely gone insane when her husband breaks down the door and faints at the site of her creeping around, and peeling off all the wallpaper. The theme behind this story is that lack freedom can lead to insanity. Throughout Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the elements of fiction conflicts, symbolism, and characters all represent the theme, that lack of freedom can lead one to insanity. The first element of fiction that connects with the theme that lack of freedom can lead to one’s insanity is the conflicts Jane faces throughout the story. The first main conflict...
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...of Them All? Has darkness ever covered everything in your room before? How difficult was it to find the path to the door with just a sliver of light coming from underneath the door? Being completely engulfed by darkness can have a negative effect on some individuals after a period of time. As a result of this darkness, the feeling of helplessness begins to be released from one’s body in the shape of a noose as it slowly smothers its prey. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is known for her feminist approach in her writings. In the story, husband and physician, John, questions the nameless narrator’s mental state, for he takes her to an isolated house and has prescribed his wife to several months of “the rest cure”. Being kept away from society with only her thoughts and the room she lays in day after day, the narrator slowly begins to question herself and tries to discover her identity within the wallpaper. Gilman uses setting, symbolism, and irony in “The Yellow Wallpaper” to illustrate that the lack of autonomy can negatively affect a person’s mental instability. Because the story takes place in a feminist era, Gilman shows how the husband has complete dominance within the setting of the story. In the beginning, the narrator, whose name is never stated, is brought to a house on the countryside by her husband, John, who happens to be her physician as well. The narrator expresses in her journal, “[The house] is quite alone, standing well back from...
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...Alex Moraga Professor Dreiling English 102 21, June 2014 Opinion Essay Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “ The Yellow Wallpaper” A Woman’s Journey from Subservience to Freedom Are male and female minds created equal? Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows us the ideals towards women, held by society in the late 1800’s. Her story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written in the first person point of view, takes us on a journey through the mind of the narrator. The narrator secretly writes in a diary and as we read through her diary entries, we are able to see that during this time in history, women were seen as weak, meek and humble. They were expected to be subservient to men and unequal to their male counterparts in all aspects. Men are seen as being superior to women and godlike. As we read the diary we are looking into her mind, we see how she thinks and how she is expected to think. We meet her as a subservient woman who obeys and believes in her husband. By the end of the journey she has freed herself mentally and shows us that men can be weak. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is a story of a woman’s mental journey to freedom. From the very beginning of the story the narrator gives us insight into her mind. In today’s times we would view her ability to wonder and question as creative. During these times, her inquisitive mind was seen as an illness. The narrator and her husband are off to a summer getaway. The summer getaway was really a “cure” prescribed...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper” all used many different sources of symbolism. Just like how in “The Birth-Mark” the birth-mark was a symbol of human imperfection, in “A Wall of Fire Rising” the balloon was a symbol of freedom, and in “The Yellow Wallpaper” the girl in the wall symbolized John’s wife. In “The Birth-Mark” the girl that had the birthmark was considered to be perfect, with her only flaw being the birth-mark. The birthmark then showed how every human, no matter how close, is not perfect. “With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife’s face and recognized the symbol of imperfection” (Hawthorne 213-214). This symbol set up the entire story by making it so that Aylmer wanted to get rid of his wife’s birthmark. At the end of the story the birthmark was removed, but she died, symbolizing that no one in this world is perfect. The balloon in “A Wall of Fire Rising” symbolized the freedom...
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