The Meaning Of The Yellow Wallpaper

Improved Essays
The meaning of the wallpaper “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman has key details to show and explain the setting and plot of the story. Without the details to explain the room and her thoughts there would not be a good setting, plot or point to the story. The characters would be totally different if they ended up in a different setting. The way the wallpaper looks, what is behind the paper and how it makes her feel are just a few details. If the plot and characters were in a different setting or roles were swapped things would be much different. This story includes a lot of details to explain the purpose and meaning of the narrators thoughts. Our narrator does not like the summer home that her husband and her now live

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The yellow wallpaper is completely abstract; it has no pattern or meaning. No matter how terribly she wants to make sense of the wallpaper, she never will. It seems as though the narrator begins to make friends with the wallpaper, or at least submit to it. Towards the end of the story, she finds that she grows a connection with the room (750). The wallpaper is one of the main reasons that the narrator’s insanity escalates so…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Many authors are influenced by events throughout their lives. These influences can be small occurrences that are present throughout the author’s life. Many are major and change an important aspect of their life. Either big or small, these influences leave a mark in the author’s life. Many authors take these influences and transform them into a work of art, whether it be a painting, poem, or even a story.…

    • 2187 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The wallpaper represents the structure of the family and medicine. The windows in the room seem to have bars going across and make the room feel like a jail-based environment for the narrator. The wallpaper in the rooms gives different types of visuals and vibes towards…

    • 1202 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    When the narrator first encounters the garden, she is very excited about it. Later on, she describes, “the garden, those mysterious deep shaded arbours [sic], the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly” (page). The wallpaper is a symbolic metaphor for her rising madness and depression that is invading her mind day by day. Similarly, the moonlight is metaphoric reference to the narrator’s freedom during night. As the narrator observes the wallpaper, “then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.…

    • 1680 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the “Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman writes about a summer house they are temporarily owning, which is full of symbolism throughout the story. Well, this awful wallpaper and this nursery upstairs, where they draft is heavy, Gilman has to stay up here to cure her disease. All of these things, the wallpaper, the nursery, and her disease, are all symbolism used in the story. The disease is symbolic because it shows that there is definitely something wrong with her, but they are just ignorant and won’t listen to what Gilman is trying to tell them.…

    • 839 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The point of view refers to the perspective that the story is being told from. The point of view of this short story is first person. However, the narrator of the story is untrustworthy, and the reader is unable to believe what she is saying. The point of view reflects her perception of the world and provides the reader with insight into the workings of her mind and her insane state. Throughout the story, there are times when the narrator is writing her thoughts down in a journal, revealing thoughts and feelings that she would never have shown to others.…

    • 136 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The wallpaper is a, “smoldering unclean yellow... A dull yet lurid orange”. The woman sees a desperate woman in the pattern of the wallpaper constantly looking for an escape from the wallpaper which resembles the bars of a cage. This represents the narrator herself being trapped in the life of a typical housewife. When the narrator becomes increasingly interested in the woman I can conclude that the by her being so bored and hopelessly insane she imagines that there is a woman in the wallpaper.…

    • 934 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper

    • 1113 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Yellow Wallpaper The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a short story and first published in 1892, used author’s had experienced of the postpartum depression to create a powerful fictional narrative which has a profound meaning for women. Gilman wrote this story in the first person, and used dramatic and realistic style to form of a journal showed to the reader how quickly insanity takes hold when a person is taken out of context and completely isolated from the rest of the world. The author pulls the reader in by her use of explicit details and imagery of the yellow wallpaper through the eyes of the narrator, which clearly identifies the mental state of the main character, and to express the…

    • 1113 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The reader gets the sense that by the end of the story, this journal is the only thing actually getting to hear her real thoughts. It is the perfect plot device to accurately exemplify the psychological transformation that takes place in the mind of the journal’s writer. Arguably the most symbolic and important element in the story is the yellow wallpaper. On the walls of the narrator’s colonial style bed room are a “repellent” and “unclean yellow” (Gilman793) wallpaper. In the beginning of the story she despises the wallpaper.…

    • 711 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This is a key tool to replace the missing child in her life. Despite the fact that it could be the wallpaper, it could possibly be the motherly side of the narrator that drives herself to the edge of sanity and finally tipping over the…

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In between all the commotion going on in the house the narrator illness is getting worse every day. In her room at the very top of the house she says, "I 'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper. It dwells in my mind so!…

    • 1126 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wallpaper With a Thousand Words “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an important story, but digging has to be done to see so. The author Charlotte Perkins displays a feminist interpretation in an impressive way. Her use of metaphors brings out the true meaning behind this story. The wallpaper represents the way women are treated in our society, and the author tells a story of a “madwoman” to represent this overall theme. The house is the whole backbone to the story and is a one of the metaphors used.…

    • 895 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are so many rule and regulations of our society that we follow without questioning. It becomes the routine of our life and passes on from one generation to the next generation. However, the society demand change with time. Mostly, the change starts with younger generations who want to explore new way of life and challenge the customary rules of culture to seek freedom. Freedom highly motivates us to rebel against the authorities and do everything in our power to gain control of our life.…

    • 1055 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While reading the story, it appears that a woman is going delusion, but in the end it is made clear that a woman is just trying to gain her freedom. "The Yellow Wallpaper” expresses the theme of the control men have on women in society. The control men have on women is shown by the way…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The yellow wallpaper has a great amount of symbolism in this story as well as parallelism. Lisa Galullo states, “In the story, Jane battles the wallpaper and the mystery of Gilman's narrator represents a battling woman. In the story, she is battling the wallpaper and its mystery; in its historical context, she is battling patriarchal social codes”. Galullo’s statement is a perfect interpretation of the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. At the beginning of this story, the wallpaper has almost no significance as the narrator refers to the yellow wallpaper as “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.”…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays