The yellow wallpaper Essay Summary Example For Students

The yellow wallpaper Essay Summary He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. He will not allow her to take a downstairs room with .. pretty old fashioned chintz hanging. He has forbidden her to work or enjoy the company of stimulating friends even though she feels .. that congenial work, with excitement would do me good(p129). Her disagreement with her husbands rest cure is apparent. The narrator describes the old nursery as a big airy room. However, the description of the room conjures the image of a nineteenth century lunatic asylum. for the windows are barred and there are rings and things in the walls. (P130) Later in the text we learn that there are scratches on the floor and the bed is nailed down. The nursery room is a symbol for the way the narrator is treated. Her husband treats her as if she is a delicate child with no rights or a valued opinion of her own. He patronisingly calls her blessed little goose(p131) The language and the images invoked, as the narrator describes the wallpaper reflects the depression of her mind debased delirium equal distraction grotesque. She talks of the paper Suddenly committing suicide.. This is an indication that she is unconsciously considering taking her own life. As her mental heath declines further she even considers to jump out of the window(p142) as an admirable exercise. She refers to the pattern as an Optic horror, like a lot of wallowing sea-weeds in full chase. (P134) This mirrors the self-pity and confusion of her mind. An image of stagnant inactivity is created as she refers to the pattern as a fungus budding and sprouting in endless convulsions (p137). This is a metaphor for her intelligent, yet oppressed and inactive mind. A further description of the pattern conjures more images of death and decay. She describes the colour of the paper as having a yellow smell and says that it is not a beautiful smell but old and foul. (P139) This brings to mind the sulphuric stench of rotten corpses. She wakes in the night to find the smell is hanging over her as if death is stalking her. As the narrators health declines further, her psychotic mind can see a creeping woman struggling to be free of the pattern. This is a symbol of the narrator. She has to be furtive and hide from her overshadowing and over protective husband. Her intelligent and creative mind is struggling for release. The imaginary woman only appears at night and this represents the narrators behaviour. She is under strict control during the day and only at night is she able to allow her creative mind wander. I think that woman gets out in the daytime(p140). This fantasy is the narrators alter ego and her buried wishes to be free from her husbands daytime constraints. At the beginning of the story the narrator spends a lot of time admiring the view from the windows. Out of one window I can see the garden(p131) She even imagines people in the garden and this reflects her longing to be free of the constraints of the house. As the story progresses the narrator can see that the creeping woman has escaped from the wallpaper and is creeping during the day in the garden. I can see her out of everyone of my windows! She even admires the creeping woman I dont blame her a bit (P140). This reflects her longing to be herself. She desires to be free of the constraints of her society. In Cold Blood Research EssayThe wallpaper seems to ultimately cause her total breakdown. It is described as flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. As the time of her total lapse of sanity, she seemingly will go to any length to tear down the wallpaper. To illustrate, she cannot reach to the ceiling except for by standing on the bed. She wants to move the bed so she can tear the wallpaper off the wall as far as much as possible. When she fails to move the bed she becomes extremely frustrated and bites off a small piece in one corner, hurting her teeth in the process. This demonstrates that she will go to any length to get to the wallpaper. At the same time as wanting to destroy the wallpaper she gets very protective, no person touches this paper but menot alive. Once she writes this journal entry, she has finally shown conclusive signs of insanity. In addition to the pattern, she also fixates on the color of her imprisoning wallpaper. This color soon becomes a fixture of her thinking, I dont want to go outside. I wont, even if Jennie asks me too. For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. By embracing the color of the walls that subjectively imprison her, she has embraced the insanity gripping her. The insanity that the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, descends into is a result of extreme depression. This depression is falsely diagnosed as simply a mental thing that can be totally controlled by the affected party. John, the husband of the narrator makes this diagnosis and prescribes a treatment that inadvertently drives the narrator to a mental breakdown and insanity. Although many of the restrictions on the narrator are simply in her mind, her husbands behavior and treatments serve to exacerbate the problem instead of curing it as it is intended.