The story under analysis is written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, famous American
writer, poet and feminist, who encouraged women to gain economic independence in 1892. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was born in New England, a descendent
of the prominent and influential Beecher family. Despite the affluence of her
most famous ancestors, she was born into poverty. Her father abandoned
the family when she was a child, and she received just four years of formal
education.
At an early age she vowed never to marry, hoping instead to devote her life
to public service. Gilman married artist Charles Stetson in 1884. Charlotte
Stetson became pregnant almost immediately after their marriage, gave birth to
a daughter, and sunk into a deep depression that lasted for several years.
In the early 1890s, she began
writing and lecturing, and in 1892, she published the now-famous story,
"The Yellow Wall-Paper." . It
is a short story, which was first published in January 1892 as important work
of feminist literature, illustrating the women's life and health in the 19th
century. In 1898, she published
her most famous book, Women and Economics. With its
publication, and its subsequent translation into seven languages, Gilman earned
international acclaim. Other important
nonfiction works followed, such as “The Home: It`s Work and Influence” (1903)
and “Does a Man Support His Wife”? (1915).
In 1900, Gilman had married for the second time, her
cousin George Gilman, and the two stayed together until his death in 1934. In 1932, Gilman learned that she had breast cancer. Three years
later, at the age of seventy-five, she committed suicide.
Although her
reputation declined in the years before her death, in 1993, Gilman was named
the sixth most influential woman of the twentieth century.
The title of
the story is "The Yellow Wallpaper" is suggestive and
thought-provoking. Actually, when I read the title of the
story ("the Yellow Wall-Paper") for the first time, I thought that
this story is about a person who bought new wallpapers in his flat and decided
to make the whole flat at this color, because it was the his favorite one.
Then, I understood that my predictions were false. Besides, this title makes us
thing about the meaning of yellow color.
The actions in the story take
place in the colonial period. The narrator and her husband John are renting a
beautiful, secluded estate for the summer. The narrator suffers from what her
husband believes is a "temporary nervous depression." He orders her
to rest as much as possible, and picks a room in the house for the two of them.
The narrator feels vaguely uncomfortable with the estate, but obeys her
husband’s decision for the two of them to stay there. She also obeys him when
he chooses a large, airy room on the top floor instead of the smaller, prettier
room on the ground floor that she prefers. Since her husband is a doctor, he
wins all their arguments. The narrator would like to spend her time writing,
but her husband, brother, and assorted other family members think this is a
terrible idea.
The narrator is living in a house in which she feels
uncomfortable, in a room she hasn’t picked out, and is forbidden from engaging
in the one activity she enjoys. No wonder she becomes absolutely obsessed with
the yellow wallpaper in her room. She begins fanatically tracing the pattern of
the wallpaper and soon becomes convinced that there is a woman trapped within
the paper. Shortly before the narrator is due to depart the house; she decides
that she must free the trapped woman by stripping the wallpaper off. When her
husband comes into the room, the narrator declares that she is now free. Upon
seeing his wife creeping around the room peeling the paper off the walls, John
faints. Jane continues to creep
around the room.
One
of the main ideas of this story is a life of a woman in 18-19 century, the
relations in family and in general the position in society. As we may see it
from the story it is not at all what we are having now.
From
the point of view of presentation, the story is the 1st person narrative. The
story focuses on the feelings and thoughts of the main character and creates the impression of the author’s
presence in the text. The types of speech employed by the author are the
mixture of narration, dialogue and meditation. In this story we can’t find
descriptions of characters that are why she tried to show it on character’s
actions, thoughts and feelings. Only the detailed description of house and room
is presented in the text. It helps
the reader to fell the atmosphere of the house and to imagine the life of the
characters.
The story is written in a form of a
secret journal where the writer shares with us the information she can`t share
with anybody else. It was her own method to present her emotions.
From the
point of view of composition, the story consists of exposition, development of
the plot, climax, denouement and conclusion.
The story starts with the exposition. There we can see who are
the main characters and get to know about the reasons they moved to the new
house.
I think the development of the plot of
the story is presented by the words:" We have been here
for two weeks, and I have not felt like writing before, since the first
day." In that part, we get to know about the life of the
protagonist in that house day by day, about her relationship with her husband,
about her illness. We get to know about her dairy, where she describes all her
emotions and prohibition of her husband to write in it.
The
climax is the part of the text when the main character compares
herself with the woman depicted in the wallpapers. '' Through
watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The
front pattern does move -and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I
think there are a great many women behind, and sometime;, only one, and she
crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.''
The denouement is in the words: "I've got out at
last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of
the paper, so you can't put me back!" It is the part where the
husband finds the woman crawling in the yellow room.
The conclusion is
shown by the words which show that the main character is out of her mind.
Speaking about the character,
the protagonist described as the image of 19th century. She is an imaginative, creative
woman living in the society. Modeled after Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the
narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a young wife and mother Jane who has
recently began to suffer symptoms of depression and anxiety. Her husband, John, who is a doctor,
misidentifies her condition and prescribes a “rest cure” made popular by the
well-respected physician Weir Mitchell. Also, the denied her all kinds of
creativity, such as writing and reading. All in all, the narrator became crazy
as she started to see a female figure trapped behind the bar-like pattern of
the wallpaper and realized that both she and the figure are suffering from
imprisonment. By the end of the story,
the narrator has lost all sense of reality. She develops a fascination with the
yellow wallpaper in their room. Her mental illness becomes more pronounced,
until, finally, she openly displays madness. Gilman suggests that the
narrator's liberation from sanity and the bars of the wallpaper also means an "escape" from her own sense of
self.
John is the
narrator’s husband, a physician. He differs from his imaginative wife in that
he believes only in what he can see and touch. After finding the illness in his
wife, he chooses in which room she will live, whom she may see, and how she
spends her time. He counters every desire his wife expresses with a measure
keeping her from fulfilling her wish. He seems to enjoy this control over her
life, but he can also be seen as a more sympathetic character. He clearly loves
his wife and relies on her for his own happiness.
Although the narrator eventually believes that
she sees many women in the yellow wallpaper, she centers on one in
particular. The woman appears to be trapped within the bar-like pattern of the
wallpaper. The woman is most active by moonlight. As a ghostly counterpart of
the narrator, the woman in the wallpaper also symbolizes female imprisonment
within the domestic sphere. This woman in the wallpaper has only the symbolic
option.
Jennie is the narrator’s
sister-in-law and takes care of the house during the narrator’s illness.
Although she does not play an active role in the narrative, she is a constant
reminder of the narrator's inability to assume her proper role as John's wife
and housekeeper.
Mary takes care of the narrator
and John's baby. Mary is even less present in the text than Jennie; she still
serves to remind the narrator of her personal failings as a 19th century woman,
particularly in terms of her own child.
All the characters are described with the help of indirect
characterization.
Vocabulary of the story is bookish, there is no slang, jargon but we may
find here several examples of medical terms.
The author uses a great variety of stylistic devices
and expressive means to show all seriousness of the situation. The author uses:
Ø Epithets: “The color…repellant, revolt…”, “a delicious garden”, “a smoldering unclean
yellow”, “atrocious nursery”, “riotous old-fashioned flowers”, “velvet
meadows”, “optic horror” which were used
to give more expressiveness and make the text more realistic.
Ø Similes: “chair that always seemed like a strong friend”, “it as good as gymnastics”
“lie awake as a child” which were used for comparison one subject with another to
make the readers to understand the situation clearly.
Ø Oxymoron: “positively angry” to show the state of protagonist.
Ø Asyndeton: “I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in
the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs: “It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three
miles from the village.”,.” – are used for showing the way of thinking of the
main character.
Ø Anaphora: "Personally,
I disagree with their ideas. Personally,
I believe that congenial work,
with excitement and change, would do me good."
Ø Polysyndeton: “And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and
laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.”, “He
said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take
care of myself for his sake, and keep well.” “He said that after the wall-paper
was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then
that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.” is used to make the reader
feels these emotions as the character.
Ø Parallel constructions: “I don't know why I should write this. I don't want to. I don't feel
able.”, “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that
congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.”
In conclusion I’d like to say
that this story is full of the stylistic devices but it is not easy to find all
of them. Moreover, they help us to get interested in reading. So, I think it is
didactical story. All in all, I make for myself conclusion that people live by
the stereotypes. If the person is ill, the other makes the conclusion that she
is different from those who are feeling good. So I believe that we will break
all these stereotypes. Communication is very important part in our life. We shouldn’t be always ignores when we have
some troubles or illnesses. We shouldn’t be like John and forget about our
nearest for which our presence is that salvation which was unattainable for Jane and which she did not
get. We should always be a human despite
all events around and life’s gifts.
I’d like to say that this story is absolutely worth
reading. It’s definitely one of the brightest examples of feministic short
stories which I’ve ever seen.
