Anaysis of the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

http//www. spark nones. com/ light/ yellowed cover/context. html The discolour cover, Charlotte Perkins Gilman Table of Contents Context while Over take Character List Analysis of Major Characters Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Important character references Explained Key Facts How to Cite This SparkNote Context Charlotte Perkins Gilman was best cognize in her time as a crusading journalist and feminist intellectual, a follower of much(prenominal) pi atomic number 53ering womens rights advocates as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gilmans great-aunt.Gilman was concerned with political inequality and social justice in general, merely the ancient focus of her writing was the uneven status of women within the organisation of marriage. In such works as Concerning Children(1900), The Home (1904), and Human Work (1904), Gilman argued that womens obligation to remain in the domestic sp here robbed them of the t iodin of their ripe billets of cr eativity and intelligence, while simultaneously robbing society of women whose abilities suited them for professional and public life.An essential subr come forthine of her analysis was that the traditional power structure of the family made no ace happynot the cleaning lady who was made into an unpaid servant, not the maintain who was made into a master, and not the children who were subject to some(prenominal). Her about thought-provoking work, Women and Economics (1898), analyzed the hidden value of womens labor within the capitalist economy and argued, as Gilman did throughout her works, that financial independence for women could only benefit society as a whole.To twenty-four hour period, Gilman is primarily cognise for one re f all guyable figment, The Yellow cover, which was considered almost unprintably shocking in its time and which unnerves subscribers to this day. This short work of fiction, which deals with an unequal marriage and a char destroyed by her un fulfilled desire for self-expression, deals with the same concerns and ideas as Gilmans nonfiction solely in a much to a greater extent personal mode. Indeed, The Yellow Wall cover draws heavily on a particularly painful episode in Gilmans feature life.In 1886, early in her commencement ceremony marriage and not long after the birth of her daughter, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (as she was past k this instantn) was stricken with a severe theatrical role of drop-off. In her 1935 autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she describes her utter prostration byunbearable inner ill luck and ceaseless tears, a condition only made worse by the presence of her married man and her baby. She was referred to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, then the countrys leading specialist in restless disorders, whose discussion in such cases was a symmetry cure of laboured in operation.Especially in the case of his female patients, Mitchell believed that economic crisis was brought on by as s trong as much mental activity and not enough attention to domestic affairs. For Gilman, this course of preaching was a disaster. Prevented from working, she soon had a nervous break worst. At her worst, she was reduced to crawling into closets and under beds, clutching a rag doll. in one case she fling Mitchells rest cure, Gilmans condition improved, though she claimed to tint the effects of the ordeal for the rest of her life.Leaving foundation her husband and child, a scandalous decision, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (she took the name Gilman after a second marriage, to her cousin) embarked on a successful cargoner as a journalist, lecturer, and newspaper publisher. She wrote The Yellow wallpaper soon after her doctor going to California, and in it she works her personal experience to create a tale that is both a chilling remonstrateary of one womans fall into madness and a potent symbolic narrative of the delegate of creative women stifled by a paternalistic culture.In pu rely literary footing, The Yellow Wallpaper looks rear to the tradition of the psychological horror tale as practiced by Edgar Allan Poe. For example, PoesThe Tell-Tale Heart is too told from the point of view of an insane fabricator. Going gain ground back, Gilman also draws on the tradition of the Gothic romances of the deeply eighteenth century, which often featured spooky old mansions and young heroines determined to uncover their cloistereds.Gilmans drool is also forward-looking, however, and her moment-by-moment reporting of the bank clerks thoughts is clear a move in the direction of the differentiate of stream-of-consciousness narration utilize by such twentieth-century writers as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. Plot Overview The fabricator begins her journal by marveling at the grandeur of the sept and grounds her husband has get downn for their summer vacation. She describes it in romantic terms as an aristocratic estate or even a haunted house and investigates how they were able to collapse it, and why the house had been empty for so long.Her feeling that there is some thing queer about the note leads her into a discussion of her illnessshe is suffering from nervous depressionand of her marriage. She complains that her husband seat, who is also her doctor, belittles both her illness and her thoughts and concerns in general. She line of descents his practical, rationalistic manner with her own imaginative, sensitive miens. Her treatment requires that she do almost nothing active, and she is curiously require from working and writing.She feels that activity, freedom, and interesting work would help her condition and reveals that she has begun her secret journal in order to still her mind. In an strive to do so, the cashier begins describing the house. Her description is mostly positive, but disturbing elements such as the rings and things in the bedroom walls, and the debar on the windows, keep showing up . She is particularly disturbed by the yellow paper in the bedroom, with its strange, anatomyless frame, and describes it as revolting. Soon, however, her thoughts atomic number 18 interrupted by bunss approach, and she is constrained to stop writing.As the first few weeks of the summer pass, the yarnteller break downs good at hiding her journal, and so hiding her true thoughts from buttocks. She continues to long for more than stimulating company and activity, and she complains again about sterns patronizing, controlling waysalthough she immediately returns to the wallpaper, which begins to await not only ugly, but oddly menacing. She mentions that wash plinth is unhappy about her be approaching fixated on it, and that he has even ref utilize to repaper the room so as not to grant in to her neurotic worries.The vote counters imagination, however, has been aroused. She mentions that she enjoys picturing people on the walkways round the house and that tin forever d iscourages such fantasies. She also withdraws 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 says must open been a nursery for young children, she points out that the paper is torn run into the wall in spots, there atomic number 18 scratches and gouges in the floor, and the furniture is heavy and fixed in place.Just as she begins to see a strange sub- innovation behind the main design of the wallpaper, her writing is interrupted again, this time by Johns 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, expiration her more tired than ever. John threatens to send her to Weir Mitchell, the real-life physician under whose c atomic number 18 Gilman had a nervous breakdown. The storyteller is alone most of the time and says that she has become almost fond of the wallpaper and t hat attempting to figure out its pattern has become her primary entertainment.As her obsession grows, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper becomes clearer. It begins to resemble a woman crooked down and crawling behind the main pattern, which looks equal the debar of a cage. Whenever the narrator tries to discuss leaving the house, John obtains twinkle of her concerns, effectively silencing her. Each time he does so, her disgusted fascination with the paper grows. Soon the wallpaper dominates the narrators imagination. She becomes possessive and secretive, hiding her interest in the paper and making sure no one else examines it so that she can find it out on her own.At one point, she startles Jennie, who had been lamentable the wallpaper and who mentions that she had found yellow stains on their clothes. Mistaking the narrators fixation for tranquility, John thinks she is improving. But she sleeps less and less and is convert that she can smell the paper all over the house, even outside. She discovers a strange smudge mark on the paper, running all well-nigh the room, as if it had been rubbed by someone crawling against the wall. The sub-pattern now clearly resembles a woman who is trying to get out from behind the main pattern.The narrator sees her shaking the bars at night and front crawl around during the day, when the woman is able to escape briefly. The narrator mentions that she, too, creeps around at times. She suspects that John and Jennie are aware of her obsession, and she resolves to destroy the paper once and for all, peeling much of it come to during the night. The next day she manages to be alone and goes into something of a frenzy, biting and lacrimation at the paper in order to free the trapped woman, whom she sees struggling from indoors the pattern.By the end, the narrator is dispiritedly insane, convinced 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 very time Character List The Narrator A young, upper-middle-class woman, fresh married and a mother, who is undergoing care for depression.The narratorwhose name may or may not be Janeis highly imaginative and a natural written reportteller, though her doctors believe she has a slight hysterical tendency. The trading floor is told in the form of her secret diary, in which she records her thoughts as her obsession with the wallpaper grows. Read an in-depth analysis of The Narrator. John The narrators husband and her physician. John restricts her behavior as part of her treatment. Unlike his imaginative married woman, John is extremely practical, preferring facts and figures to show, at which he scoffs openly. He seems to love his wife, but he does not register the ostracize 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 bliss with a domestic role intensify 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 profuse than she lets on. Analysis of Major Characters The NarratorThe narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is a paradox as she loses touch with the outer(a) world, she comes to a greater intelligence of the inner reality of her life. This inner/outer split is crucial to discernment the nature of the narrators suffering. At all point, she is faced with births, objects, and situations that seem innocent and natural but that are actually quite bizarre and even oppressive. In a sense, the plot of The Yellow Wallpaper is the narrators attempt to avoid ac accreditledging the extent to which her external situation stifle s her inner impulses.From the beginning, we see that the narrator is an imaginative, highly expressive woman. She remembers terrifying herself with imaginary nighttime monsters as a child, and she enjoys the notion that the house they cede taken is haunted. Yet as part of her cure, her husband forbids her to exercise her imagination in any way. some(prenominal) her reason and her emotions rebel at this treatment, and she turns her imagination onto seemingly neutral objectsthe house and the wallpaperin an attempt to ignore her festering 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 process of dissociation begins when the apologue does, at the very moment she decides to keep a secret diary as a reserve 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 realization that the predicament of the woman in the wallpaper is a symbolic version of her own situation. At first she even disapproves of the womans efforts to escape and intends to tie her up. When the narrator finally identifies herself with the woman trapped in the wallpaper, she is able to see that other women 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 nar rator must lose herself to understand herself. She has untangled the pattern of her life, but she has torn herself apart in getting free of it. An odd expatiate 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 likely, however, that Jane is the name of the nameless narrator, who has been a stranger to herself and her jailers. Now she is horribly free of the constraints of her marriage, her society, and her own efforts to repress 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 terribly wrong, but in all likelihood he was trying to help her, not make her worse.The real problem with John is the all-encompassing position he has in his combined role as the narrators husband and doctor. John is so sure that he knows whats best for his wife that he disregards her own belief 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 unequivocally unsuited to understand his imaginative wife.He does not intend to harm her, but his ignorance about what she really ask ultimately 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 find 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. After breaking in on his insane wife, John faints in shock and goes unrecognised 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, especially as practiced by the respectableclasses of her time.When the story was first published, most readers took it as a scary tale about a woman in an extreme state of consciousnessa gripping, disturbing entertainment, but little more. After its re find in the twentieth century, however, readings of the story have become more complex. For Gilman, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, with its rigid distinction between the domestic functions of the female and the active work of the male, ensured that women remained economy class citizens.The story reveals that this gender division had the effect of keeping women in a childish state of ignorance and preventing their full development. Johns assumption of his own superior wisdom 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, futile to stand up for herself without seeming unreasonable or disloyal. The narrator has no say in even the smallest expand 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 enormousness of Self-Expression pic The mental 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 facade 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 compulsory belt up and idleness of the resting cure. She is forced to become completely passive, forbidden from exercising her mind in any way.Writing is especially off limits, and John warns her several 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 eventual insanity is a product of the repression of her imaginative power, not the expression of it. She is constantly longing for an emotional and intellectual outlet, even going so out-of-the-way(prenominal) as to keep a secret journal, which she describes more than once as a relief to her mind. For Gilman, a mind that is kept in a state 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 proficiency described in the story, Gilman means to criticize any form of checkup care that ignores the concerns of the patient, considering her only as a passive object of treatment. The connection between a womans subordination in the home and her subordination in a doctor/patient relationship is clearJohn is, after all, the narrators husband and doctor. Gilman implies that both forms of writerity can be easily abused, even when the husband or doctor means to help.All too oft en, the women who are the silent subjects of this authority are infantilized, or worse. Motifs Irony Almost every aspect of The Yellow Wallpaper is ironic in some way. Irony is a way of using words to need multiple levels of meaning that contrast with or complicate one another. In vocal satire, words are frequently used to convey the exact pivotal of their literal meaning, such as when one person responds to anothers err by saying nice work. (Sarcasmwhich this example embodiesis a form of verbal irony. In her journal, the narrator uses verbal irony often, especially 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 not 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 readers knowledge and the knowledge of the characters 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 have once been used as a nursery. make up 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, as the narrator sinks further into her fantasy and the reader remains able to see her actions from theoutside. By the time the narrator fully identifies with the trapped woman she sees in the wallpaper, the reader c an 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 epistolary 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 narrators descent 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 revealing 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 intense intimacy and immediacy, especially in those moments when the narrative is interrupted by the approach of John or Jennie. These interruptions perfectly illustrate the constraints placed on the narrator by authority figures who urge her not to think about hercondition. Symbols The Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper is driven 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 merely unpleasant it is ripped, soiled, and an unclean yellow. The worst part is the manifestly 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 strangled as they tried to escape. Clearly, the wallpaper represents 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 tra ps so many women.Important computer addresss 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 discord with their ideas . . . story for Quotation 1 In this passage, which appears near the beginning of the story, the main elements of the narrators predicament are present.The powerful, authoritative voices of her husband, her family, and the medical establishment 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. Gil man also begins to characterize the narrator here. The murkiness 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. button up 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 rat it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house. definition for Quotation 2 This function appears near the beginning of the story, and it helps characterize both the narrators predicament 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 prac tically 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 kind of 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 typic 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 sink 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 honorI begin to thinkI wish John would take me away from here report for Quotation 3 About halfway through the story, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper finally comes into focus. The narrator is being gaunt 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 grabby 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 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 background 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 obsessed with the pattern, spending all day and all night thinking about it, life has become more interesting and she is no lasting 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 Im portant 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, 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 characteri ze 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 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, tel ling 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 J ohn 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 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 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 obsessed 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 fin ally 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 question 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 remove socio-political allegory 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 wholly 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 hopelessnessa 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. telescope (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 postnatal 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 conflict 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. climax The narrator completely identifies herself with the woman imprisoned in the wallpaper. falling action The narrator, no w 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 travel 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 creepy foreshadows the increasing desperation of the narrators situation and her own eventualcreeping. How to Cite This SparkNote Full Bibliographic Citation MLA SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. SparkNotes. com. SparkNotes LLC. 2006. Web. 2 Apr. 2013. The Chicago Manual of Style SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. SparkNotes LLC. 2006. http//www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwal lpaper/ (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 colloquy 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. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/ (accessed April 12, 2013). pic Please be sure to cite your sources. For more information about what plagiarisation is and how to avoid it, please read our article on The Plagiarism Plague. If you have any question s regarding how to use or include references to SparkNotes in your work, please tell us.