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The Characteristics of
Stream of Consciousness
in The Yellow Wallpaper
ON 12 JUNE, 201315 JUNE, 2013 / BY
MELANIE S. / IN READER'S RESPONSE
Stream of consciousness, a literary technique that
presents the mental world of a character, was �rst
employed by French writer Édouard Dujardin in his
novel Les Lauriers Sont Coupés (1888), according to
the 6th edition of Columbia Encyclopedia. Also
written in the late 19th century, Gilman’s short story
The Yellow Wallpaper has some similar characteristics
though it is not de�ned as a stream-of-
consciousness work. As a response paper to The
Yellow Wallpaper, this essay intends to analyze the
characteristics of stream of consciousness in this
short story.

The stream of consciousness technique shows a

character’s thoughts and feelings which are
presented in an interior monologue. In The Yellow
Wallpaper, the whole story is a narration from the
heroine’s own perspective. The readers are invited
to enter her mind, to see what she sees and to feel
what she feels. The description of the yellow
wallpaper, which interrupts the narration from time
to time, tells the reader not only how the wallpaper
looks but also how the heroine feels about the
wallpaper: “There is a recurrent spot where the
pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous
eyes stare at you upside down…Up and down and
sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking
eyes are everywhere” (Page 5). The broken neck and
the unblinking eyes are not exactly the pattern but
the heroine’s imagination about the wallpaper. She
describes the pattern in a horri�c way because it
has a terrible in�uence on her nerves. However, the
readers cannot really see the wallpaper. They do not
know whether the wallpaper is as horrible as she
describes, but they tend to believe it to be so
because the author’s words have authority over the
story. The readers are a�ected by the heroine’s
description, and therefore they are more likely to
sympathize with her. For another example, the
author adds the olfaction to the readers’ senses in
order to enhance their perception of the heroine’s
feelings. She describes the smell of the wallpaper:
“It is not bad – at �rst, and very gentle, but quite
the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this
damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and
�nd it hanging over me” (Page 14). The words
“gentle”, “subtlest”, “enduring” and “awful” do not
give the readers a true feeling about the smell. Since
the smell cannot be identi�ed by the heroine
herself, she cannot use more speci�c adjectives.
However, she does create a haunted atmosphere: “I
�nd it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the
parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on
the stairs. It gets into my hair. Even when I go to
ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it –
there is that smell!” (Page 13). One of the
interesting aspects of these descriptions is that the
heroine tends to personalize the lifeless things, from
the “unblinking eyes” to the wandering smell, as if
they had a spirit inside. The heroine’s imagination
dominates the story. The readers “see” and “feel”
through the heroine, and the heroine through her
imagination. Therefore, the narration is not an
actual record of the outside world but a vivid
description of the heroine’s inner world.

Another characteristic of stream of consciousness is

the seemingly loose writing style. The short story is
written in epistolary narrative style under the form
of a journal without dates. A journal is featured
with free writing. The thoughts presented in a
journal are usually not well-organized or logically
connected, and they may jump from this point to
that one, from the present to the past. In The Yellow
Wallpaper, the author writes in short paragraphs,
many of which have only one sentence. This gives
the readers an impression that the heroine “thinks”
on the paper when she is writing. At the beginning
of the story, the heroine �rst introduces her summer
house to the readers and declares that “there is
something queer about it” (Page 1). At this point,
she thinks of her husband who laughs at her
thought. Then she turns to describe her physician
husband and the “resting cure”, which leads to the
talk of her “condition” that makes her feel bad. To
dismiss the bad feeling, she begins to write about
the house again. The journal writer applies no clear
structure in her writing. Since it is supposed to be a
journal, she just writes along with her �owing
thoughts. In the whole story, the narration shifts
repeatedly from the daily life to the wallpaper and
sometimes from the present to the past: “I never saw
so much expression in an inanimate thing before,
and we all know how much expression they have! I
used to lie   awake as a child and get more
entertainment and terror out of blank walls and
plain furniture than most children could �nd in a
toy-store” (Page 6). She naturally thinks of her
childhood hobby when she speculates on the
expression in the wallpaper. This habit further
proves her to be an imaginative woman. In addition,
since the story is not supposed to be �nished in a
single sitting, there are “blanks” between each entry.
The readers can tell that she does not write her
journal every day. What happens between each entry
can be deduced from the clues in her writing. The
journal style adds to the sense of reality of the
�ctional events, and it creates an e�ect that presents
the ideas in an unorganized �owing way. The
directions do not seem to have been planned before
the thoughts are written.

Stream of consciousness is originally a

psychological term, and the story also has a
profound psychological perspective. At �rst, the
woman in the wallpaper is a �gure behind the
pattern, separated from the heroine. As she shakes
the front pattern and the heroine helps her out, they
become one at the end of the story: “ ‘I’ve got out at
last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve
pulled o� most of the paper, so you can’t put me
back!’ ” (Page 18). The woman in the wallpaper is
the heroine herself. She lives deep inside the
heroine’s heart – a woman cries for liberty. At �rst,
the heroine suppresses the part of her that wants
freedom and she tries to be obedient to her
husband: “…he takes all care from me, and so I feel
basely ungrateful not to value it more” (Page 3).
However, as her imagination goes wild and the
condition worsens, the woman inside begins to take
the better of her. They collaborate to tear o� the
wallpaper, which represents the house as well as the
prison of women, and the two parts of the heroine
unite. Under this perspective, the story can be
interpreted as the development of the heroine’s self-
awareness. The readers can follow the track of the
stream of consciousness, and they discover a new
heroine in the end.

In conclusion, the techniques applied to The Yellow

Wallpaper have several characteristics of stream of
consciousness: the track of the character’s thoughts
and feelings, the loosely-organized structure, and
the profound psychological perspective. Although it
is not a distinct representative of this literary �eld,
it provides some   insights of the earliest
development of stream of consciousness.

Citation

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper and

Other Writings. New York: Bantam Dell, 2006. Print.

19th September, 2010

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