Higgins 1

Emily Higgins

Professor Dunham

English 1101

24 October 2018

Literary Analysis

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, a feminist

that would lecture and write about reforming marriage and family. This short story is actually

based on a time in her life when she was married to her now ex-husband, Charles Walter

Stenson. While married to him she started experiencing depression, their marriage started failing,

leading to her own mental breakdown. “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows a husband/wife dynamic

that was very common in the time period it was written and mirrors what, I am sure, she went

through during her first marriage. In Gillman’s short story the narrator struggles with being

belittled by her husband while he ignores her mental health, forcing her to do no type of work

and suppress all of her valid emotions.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator journaling about how herself and her

husband have rented a house for a summer vacation. She describes the house or, how she states

it, mansion using terms such as haunted, romantic. She wonders why it has been unoccupied for

so long and how they rented it for such a fair price, eventually concluding that there is something

queer about the house. The narrator begins to talk about her husband, John, how he is a physician

in high standing and does not believe she is sick, which is the one reason, she believes, she is not

getting better. John has her on phosphates and tonics and has her exercise and get air. He does

not allow her to work or do anything that could excite her, she is not even allowed to write but

she continues to do so even though it exhausts her, having to be sly about it. She thinks that some
 Higgins 2

sort of stimulus would help her, but John tells her that thinking about her own condition is not

good for her and she confesses that it does always make her feel bad.

The narrator goes on to talk about the house and how beautiful it is and how she can feel

there is something strange about it. She begins talking about her room and how she hates it and

wishes they would move to a different one, but John would not let her. She describes John as

careful and loving, saying he always gives her direction and has specific prescriptions for her to

take throughout the day, she feels ungrateful if she does not value all he does. John tells her that

they came to the house so she could rest and get air. She describes the room they are staying in

as a big room with lots of windows, air, and sunshine, she says that it began as a nursery then

turned into and playroom and gymnasium, saying that the windows have bars for children and

the walls have rings. What stands out to her most is the wallpaper, there were patches in places

where it had been ripped off, the color being an unclean, faded looking yellow with an irritating

pattern. She puts her journal away when John starts coming in and begins writing again two

weeks later.

The narrator continues describing the wallpaper and how she sees expressions in it. She

starts to grow fond of the wallpaper because it gives her something to think about. She is

determined to follow the pattern of the wallpaper until she finds the end, she just has to do it in

secret so John and his sister do not find out. She becomes obsessive and possessive of the

wallpaper, making sure John suspects nothing because she wants to be the one to find out what is

in it. She begins to see a woman in the wallpaper and becomes even more interested in it. She

asks John one night to take her somewhere else but he assures her that she is getting better, she

just does not see it herself. The pattern begins moving, the woman is shaking it, trying to get out

and the narrator becomes fixated on getting the woman out. The last day of their vacation, the
 Higgins 3

narrator locks herself in the room determined to finally get the woman out, eventually becoming

insane, thinking she is the woman in the wallpaper.

This short story is in a first-person point-of-view, set in an old house that they have

rented for a summer vacation, most likely set in 1899. The plot begins with character

introductions, moves on to a very slow rising action that consists of getting to know the narrator

and her mental health and how the people around her attempt to deal with it in a horrible way.

We watch her get worse and worse throughout the story, becoming obsessive about the

wallpaper and the woman she sees in it until it drives her mad at the very end, which becomes to

conflict and falling action.

There are two main characters the narrator, whom we see change over the course of the

story, we learn about through her writing in her journal, and we decide who she is as a person

and what she is going through. The other main character is her husband John, who generally

stays the same throughout the story, is someone that we get to decide what type of person he is

and what we think of him through the narrator. In the story, the woman the narrator sees trying to

get out of the wallpaper is symbolic for herself, she is stuck in a wall, essentially, being forced to

do nothing about her feelings and mental health problems, being trapped in her own mind until

she cannot handle it anymore.

The theme of “The Yellow Wallpaper” deals with how during this time period women

had to be submissive to their husbands and, in the narrator’s case, it can lead to severe mental

health deterioration. Throughout the story, we constantly see how John just tells the narrator to

rest, not to think about her feelings because it would only make it worse. She listens to him

because she believes he is right because nobody will stand up for her against a high-standing
 Higgins 4

physician such as himself, she believes he is doing it out of love and care for her when in reality

he is just belittling her feelings.

John, the narrator’s husband, is shown ignoring her mental health and belittling her by

forcing her to suppress her feelings and not allowing her to do anything but rest. In the beginning

of the story, when the narrator is explaining how she is sick but John does not believe her she

writes “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?” (Gillman). This is when the reader starts to see how John is

ignoring her mental health and how no one is going to believe a common woman over a male

doctor. The narrator also states how her brother, who is also a physician, says the same thing, so

how is she supposed to get other people to believe her over two male physicians. The narrator

continues to show examples of how controlling John is as she continues to journal, which is

something he has forbidden her to do as well so she has to hide while writing. John is constantly

telling the narrator to not think about her emotions or do any type of work, only to rest which

drives her to find something, anything to fixate on so she has something to think about.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a tragic story that focused on the dynamics of marriage in

that time period and how women had virtually no say in what they were feeling and how they

wanted to deal with it. This story shows that if someone has a mental illness, they need to be

heard and helped, not pushed aside and belittled. Thankfully, people have come a long way from

then, women are treated as equal in most marriages and mental health is a common topic these

days. If only the narrator had someone that cared enough to help her, the end might have been

different.
 Higgins 5

Works Cited

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC.

2006. Web. 23 Oct. 2018.

Gilman, Charlotte. Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper, Small & Maynard,

csivc.csi.cuny.edu/history/files/lavender/wallpaper.html.

“From Woman to Human: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” Radcliffe Institute

for Advanced Study at Harvard University, 2 Feb. 2017,

www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/schlesinger-library/exhibition/woman-human-life-and-work-

charlotte-perkins-gilman.