Personification In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story that deals with the concepts of madness and gender inequality. The narrator in the story is a suppressed woman who is trapped in a small room as part of the treatment of her illness. She is unable to write or take care of her baby as a good and healthy mother can. The narrator, who suffers from a mental illness and resents gender inequality as well as her inability to express herself, is a vehicle through which Gilman criticizes mainstream opinions and closemindedness regarding these issues through the use of symbolism and imagery.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a short story that deals with the concepts of gender difference and madness. The narrator in the story is a ‘bad’ and ‘unsuccessful’ woman and is also mentally-ill. Gilman criticizes the mainstream opinions regarding those concepts using symbolism and imagery. Gilman uses imagery and symbolism when describing the windows and the wallpaper, which helps the reader better understand the differences between ‘normal’ people’s outlook and the one of an insane person, such as the narrator. The windows are a symbol of the way most people, according to Gilman, view the world.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins is an intriguing story that set my mind of to wonder. Told by the first person narrator point of view and the way the story is describe puts me in the narrators shoes, in a way that I can feel what she experienced. As the story takes place around the Victorian era, the protagonist gets lost and asphyxiated in her own prison within the walls of a nursery scheme that created a creepy and dreadful feeling. The main character who pertained anonymous, was diagnostic by her husband of a nervous condition, more probably was postpartum depression.

In stories, there are many intricate details hidden beneath the pattern of the storyline. Many things represent another, it’s part of a bigger picture. Things, such as the setting or significant items, are a vessel that authors use to add to their story. This symbolization helps show the author’s hidden message. Charlotte Stetson uses symbols and images of the setting, the woman in the wallpaper, and ripping off the wallpaper to display her thoughts and opinions in how certain people were treated back in the late 1800’s.

The central idea in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins, Is that a person’s environment can lead to insanity. A writing strategy, which develops this idea, is symbolism. In Stenson’s short story, the narrator’s room symbolizes her confinement and being oppressed. An example where the narrator’s room symbolizes confinement is when she describes her room as, “a big airy room… for the windows are barred for little children…” (648). By the narrator describing the windows as barred, it gives off the feeling of being trapped.

If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression a slight hysterical tendency what is one to do? My brother is also a physician, and of high standing, and he says the same thing (9). Towards the end of the story the narrator finally identifies herself with the woman trapped in the wallpapers, she can see that other woman are forced 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 getting herself free of the constraints of her marriage her

Gilman uses her own experiences from “rest cure” to relate and provide an inside feeling to what it felt like to be under these conditions. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story that uses symbolism to illustrate an authoritative medical mindset and martial controlling husband along with a domestic setting that implies imprisonment and the pattern in which women, specifically the narrator, are trapped. Continuously, the narrator is living in fear of her husband and is not permitted to form her own opinion on her illness. Gilman uses the symbolic nature of the journal and the “typical” marriage of this time period to paint the picture of the narrator’s oppression. Her husband uses the fact that he is a respected physician against her and makes her feel like she is voiceless on her own illness.

Everything from how her interactions with her family to her perception of her environment and how it evolves throughout the story allow the reader to almost feel what the narrator is feeling as the moves through the story. In the beginning, the only reason the reader knows there may be something wrong with the narrator is because she comes right out and says she may be ill, even though her husband didn’t believe she was (216). As the story moves on, it becomes clear that her illness is not one of a physical nature, but of an emotional or mental one. By telling the story in the narrator’s point of view, the reader can really dive into her mind and almost feel what she’s feeling.

The story focuses on the main character who is a woman suffering from mental illness. It is very clear that the woman is ill when she states, “You see, he does not believe I am sick!” (677) speaking of her husband who is a doctor. So first she admits she is sick then later she states, “I am glad my case is not serious!”

She describes it as “The paint and the paper… It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide- plunge off at outrageous angles, destroying themselves in unheard of contradictions” (Gilman 487) The “rest” period she was prescribed in this room drove her to the brink of insanity over the several months that she was there. The woman seems to use the wallpaper as an image of her being trapped. Stuck in her own mind, she is seeing herself in the wallpaper, when she is ripping off the paper she maybe feels as she is ripping herself inside an internal struggle or conflict she is trying to break free

The Yellow Wallpaper “I am sitting by the window in this atrocious nursery” Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman interprets foreshadowing, imagery, and symbolism and other literary devices to express one's own experiences with the wallpaper. In this short story Gilman talks about her own experiences by talking about it through first person and identifies herself as the character. Now Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is going through a temporary depression that within time is making her go mad. Now, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses foreshadowing in “The Yellow Wallpaper” to signify the relationship that she has with the wallpaper.

Point The author of “The Yellow Wallpaper” utilizes similes in order to give the reader an image of what the main character is describing. Evidence 1 Main character compares a specific pattern on the wallpaper to a “broken neck” and “two bulbous eyes staring at you upside down.” This successfully creates a clear image of what the main character is describing.

She is given a treatment plan because she is seen as damaged by her husband John, who thinks that this “Rest Cure” will fix her. This “Rest Cure” only drives the woman to insanity. Symbolism,which is a key literary element in Charlotte Gilman’s work , is used to portray many different messages throughout the story. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman, it is very evident that Gilman symbolically shows the narrator feeling trapped, depressed, and damaged throughout the

She begins to see strangles heads in the wallpaper, which can be a symbolic representation of the patriarchal order that stifled women. The bars on the wallpaper that cage the imaginary women are a reflection of her own situation where she is confined in the old mansion. Even the smell of the wallpaper, which she describes as being ‘yellow’ and present throughout the house, is a reflection of the mental repression that is always present in her life. She is so consumed by the smell that she thinks about burning the old mansion just to cover it

The Yellow Wallpaper is a series of secret journal entries written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. The narrator is suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator isn't able to be with her baby; however, she is thankful that she has Mary to look after the baby. Her husband, John a doctor, doesn't want to accept that she has a mental illness. John told her "she shall be as sick as she pleases," and that it was all her "fancy" (Gillman).