The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis Essay

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ explores the struggles of a woman dealing with depression and anxiety in the late 19th century. The story is told in the first-person narrative style in which the main character is the narrator of the story. The woman describes her symptoms as ‘anxious and emotionally exhaustive’ - these are legitimate symptoms of depression, but her husband, John a physician does not believe that she is ill and these sentiments are shared by his sister, Jennie and the narrator's own brother who also happens to be a physician himself. Oddly enough, they acknowledge that the narrator has not been herself and decide that the best course of action to successfully approach to situation is to isolate her from others including her own child, who is only briefly mentioned through the entire story. The narrator disagrees with this course of action as she states “Personally, i believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.” (2345) However, she does very little…show more content…
She spends most of her days laying in bed and soon her focus lands on the ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ which the story is named after. Day after day and hours upon hours she spends analyzing the wallpaper and pretty soon, she begins seeing things that aren’t really there - such as the front pattern of the wallpaper ‘moving’ resulting from “the great many women behind” shaking it. Within the context of the story I believe that the wallpaper symbolizes the narrator's feelings of being trapped and her attempts to free the women within the wallpapers is also an attempt to save herself from her husband. The story ends tragically with the narrator becoming completely insane and out of touch with reality as John’s method of treatment proves to be completely ineffective resulting in her condition

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