Stylistic Analysis "The Yellow     Wallpaper"

         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 19^th  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.