Analysis of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is about a woman suffering from depression after giving birth to her child. However, postpartum depression was unknown in the 19th century when the story takes place. Thus, the doctor who is at the same time the protagonist’s husband believes that his wife will recover if she rests in a quiet country house and stays away from any intellectual or physical activity.

Away from the village, the house reflects the unnamed narrator’s isolation and it needs to be repaired like her mental health. In this so-called treatment, the narrator is not allowed to see her newborn child or any other person except John, the doctor, and his sister Jenny. Feeling oppressed and confined, the narrator reveals that her mental health does not improve but it is getting worse under the circumstances.

John, the patronizing figure, treats his wife like a child and belittles her concerns. For instance, he calls her “little goose” and laughs when she feels something strange about the house. Even the room that the protagonist stays in has been a playroom once because its windows are barred for “little” children. The unnamed narrator’s husband decides, without asking, what is good for her since, in a patriarchial society, men decide for women.

As she finds it disturbing, the narrator wants to change the color of the yellow wallpaper which symbolizes and also triggers her mental problems. However, even the slightest thing she desires is not put into practice by John and due to his carelessness, the narrator comes close to losing her mind. When he puts the protagonist in a room upstairs, John actually distances his wife from himself. In the beginning, the narrator addresses her husband as “dear” but through the end of the story, she defines him as “that man”.

Although the protagonist finds the yellow wallpaper disturbing at first, she becomes obsessed with it as John does not let her engage in even writing and wants her to rest all day. Thus, she spends her time looking at the wallpaper and secretly keeps a journal. However, her sentences gradually shorten as the narrator decides not to mention more about the figure she sees within the wallpaper. The protagonist’s writing style changes along with her mental deterioration since there are sudden tone shifts and lapses in time. Therefore, she might be an unreliable narrator as her condition worsens day by day. For instance, the narrator thinks Jenny realizes something about the wallpaper but the reader knows that she just looks at the stains on the wall.

During the day, the figure is motionless but at night, she begins creeping. In the same way, the narrator sleeps during the day and does not engage in any activity. However, at night, she is awake in order not to be watched by her husband while enjoying her only activity. Representing the prevailing patriarchial attitude, Jenny is unlike the protagonist whose ideas clash with the ideas of that time. She is not interested in any other field but domestic affairs as an ideal woman of the Victorian Era. In the story, the confinement of the narrator prevails but she wants to be free like the figure who represents other oppressed and confined women in the patriarchial society. Therefore, the narrator tries to help the figure and other women of her time symbolically. Before they leave the country house, she decides to strip the wallpaper and free the trapped figure. By doing this, the protagonist actually frees herself and realizes that she does not have to obey everything that her husband says.

Through the end of the story, the unnamed narrator seeing no alternative other than death becomes rebellious and her tone shifts to a rebellious one as she calls Jenny “sly”. Determined to help the figure, the protagonist becomes the domineering character in the end while John feeling desperate and helpless faints. The reason why he faints is that John feeling responsible for his wife and cannot tolerate and overcome what he has done to the unnamed narrator. The narrator says that she needs to “creep over him” when John faints, which shows her triumph over her husband and symbolically the other men like him. She also tells that in spite of John and Jane, she has come out of the wallpaper. By calling Jenny Jane, which is more formal, the narrator implies that she feels distant from John and Jenny who are the representative characters of the prevalent opinions of the 19th century. Ultimately, the narrator no longer represses her unbearable anger and does not feel alone as she knows that there are other suffering women like her.