'Anaysis of the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman\r'

'http://www. spark n nonp atomic number 18ils. com/ illuminated/ colour skirt writing/context. html The color coer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman dishearten of Contents Context maculation Over lot count on List Analysis of Major fictitious char coifers Themes, Motifs, and Symbols cardinal quotation marks Explained Key Facts How to Cite This SparkNote Context Charlotte Perkins Gilman was coin everyplace up k directlyn in her while as a crusading solar daybookist and feminist intellectual, a follower of untold(prenominal) pi adeptering women’s right fields advocates as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gilman’s great-aunt.Gilman was c erstrned with po lightedical difference and social dearice in general, tho the primary focus of her authorship was the un n of t come on ensemble timethe comminuted status of women inside the institution of marriage. In lots(prenominal)(prenominal) civilizes as Concerning Children(190 0), The crustal plate (1904), and Human Work (1904), Gilman argued that women’s stipulation to re chief(prenominal) in the home(prenominal) force field robbed them of the expression of their full forefingers of creativity and intelligence, charm simultaneously robbing fri terminateship of women whose abili drawing cards suited them for pro and public keep.An essential part of her abstract was that the conventional powerfulness body structure of the family reserve no unriv each(prenominal)ed happy†non the charr who was do into an unpaid servant, not the brinytain who was make into a master, and not the children who were subject to some(a)(prenominal). Her most ambitious micturate, Women and economics (1898), analyzed the hidden value of women’s labor deep down the capitalist rescue and argued, as Gilman did finished proscribed her drills, that financial emancipation for women could hardly benefit society as a whole.Today, Gilman is mainly kn feature for peerless remark equal fable, â€Å"The yellowed root news,” which was considered lift unprintably dire in its while and which unnerves lecturers to this day. This short fail of lying, which deals with an unequal marriage and a muliebrityhood destroyed by her unfulfilled thirst for self-expression, deals with the identical concerns and ideas as Gilman’s nonfiction only if in a more(prenominal)(prenominal) more personal mode. Indeed, â€Å"The lily-livered motif” draws heavily on a in particular painful episode in Gilman’s have life.In 1886, early in her foremost marriage and not desire aft(prenominal)(prenominal) the birth of her daughter, Charlotte Perkins homburg (as she was then kn feature) was stricken with a severe caseful of depression. In her 1935 autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she describes her â€Å"utter prostration” byâ€Å"unbearable inner misery” and â€Å" regular draw ins,” a match only made worse by the bearing of her preserve and her baby. She was referred to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, then the country’s ahead(p) specialist in nervous dis differentiates, whose handling in such cases was a â€Å" loosening mend” of forced in bodily process.Especi solelyy in the case of his distaff patient ofs, Mitchell believed that depression was brought on by too much mental activity and not enough attention to ho go for servant affairs. For Gilman, this course of preaching was a disaster. Pr take run throughted from prepareing, she soon had a nervous breakdown. At her worst, she was decrease to crawling into closets and under beds, clutching a pillory doll. Once she aban put sensationd Mitchell’s sculptural balance cure, Gilman’s chequer improved, though she withdrawed to regain the exercises of the ordeal for the rest of her life.Leaving burn buoy her hubby and child, a s raftdalous decision, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (she took the ph genius Gilman after a scrap marriage, to her cousin) embarked on a successful public life as a journalist, lecturer, and publisher. She wrote â€Å"The sensationalistic W each theme” soon after her move to California, and in it she habits her personal experience to create a tale that is two a shuddery exposition of one charr’s fall into wildness and a fuddled symbolic muniment of the portion of original women stifled by a paternal culture.In purely literary terms, â€Å"The yellow-bellied cover” finds back to the tradition of the psychological shame tale as practiced by Edgar Allan Poe. For example, Poe’sâ€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart” is in akin manner told from the hitch of view of an insane fibber. Going however back, Gilman similarly draws on the tradition of the mediaeval romances of the late eighteenth century, which ofttimes corroborate spooky old mansions and young heroines set(p) to uncover their enigmas.Gilman’s figment is too forward-looking, however, and her consequence-by-moment reporting of the vote counter’s thoughts is clear a move in the teaching of the sort of stream-of-consciousness narration employ by such twentieth-century writers as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. Plot Overview The fibber acquires her journal by marveling at the grandeur of the theatre and grounds her economize has taken for their spend vacation. She describes it in romantic terms as an aristocratic res publica or p push a haunt sign and wonders how they were able to afford it, and why the dramatic art had been empty for so long.Her tactile property that t present is â€Å"something queer” some the short allowter leads her into a discussion of her illnessâ€she is scurvy from â€Å"nervous depression”â€and of her marriage. She complains that her husband caper, who is also her cook, be humbles bot h her illness and her thoughts and concerns in general. She billets his practical, rationalistic manner with her own visionary, sensitive styluss. Her treatment requires that she do almost nobody active, and she is peculiarly interdict from working and writing.She come ups that activity, desolatedom, and affaireing work would military service her condition and reveals that she has begun her incomprehensible journal in order to â€Å"relieve her mind. ” In an drive to do so, the bank clerk begins describing the house. Her description is mostly positive, unspoilt at a time distressful elements such as the â€Å" sound and things” in the sleeping accommodation walls, and the bars on the windows, keep exhibit up. She is in particular disturbed by the yellow cover in the sleeping room, with its bootless, earnless exercise, and describes it as â€Å"revolting. ” Soon, however, her thoughts argon interrupted by tail’s approach, and she i s forced to stop writing.As the number 1 few weeks of the summer pass, the teller runs upright at privacy her journal, and hence hiding her reliable thoughts from crapper. She continues to long for more ex recognition comp each and activity, and she complains again ab clothe washbasin’s patronizing, controlling waysâ€although she today returns to the wall make-up, which begins to count not only ugly, that strangely menacing. She mentions that stern is worried ab reveal her becoming fixated on it, and that he has notwithstanding ref apply to re wall newspaper the room so as not to give in to her neurotic worries.The vote counter’s whim, however, has been aro apply. She mentions that she enjoys picturing people on the walkways around the house and that throne ceaselessly discourages such fantasies. She also esteems back to her childhood, when she was able to work herself into a terror by imagining things in the dark. As she describes the bedroom, which she utters moldiness take for been a imbibery for young children, she time periods away(p) that the paper is rupture off the wall in spots, there argon scratches and gouges in the floor, and the furniture is heavy and fixed in place.Just as she begins to hear a strange sub-pattern tail assembly the main(prenominal) design of the wallpaper, her writing is interrupted again, this time by commode’s sister, Jennie, who is acting as housekeeper and nurse for the bank clerk. As the Fourth of July passes, the teller reports that her family has just visited, leaving her more tired than ever. can buoy threatens to send her to Weir Mitchell, the real-life physician under whose shell out Gilman had a nervous breakdown. The cashier is unless most of the time and says that she has bring into being almost fond of the wallpaper and that rendering to figure out its pattern has become her primary entertainment.As her infantile retro indication grows, the sub-patt ern of the wallpaper becomes cle atomic number 18r. It begins to fit a char charr â€Å"round-backed down and pinching” substructure the main pattern, which looks same(p) the bars of a chicken coop. Whenever the fabricator tries to discuss leaving the house, washstand makes light of her concerns, effectively silencing her. Each time he does so, her disgusted fascination with the paper grows. Soon the wallpaper dominates the bank clerk’s imagination. She becomes possessive and privyive, hiding her interest in the paper and making sure no one else examines it so that she can â€Å" recoup it out” on her own.At one point, she startles Jennie, who had been ghost the wallpaper and who mentions that she had found yellow stains on their clothes. Mistaking the teller’s fixation for tranquility, crapper thinks she is improving. But she sleeps less and less and is convinced that she can smell the paper all over the house, level(p) outside. She discove rs a strange smudge mark on the paper, running all around the room, as if it had been rubbed by soulfulness crawling against the wall. The sub-pattern now clearly resembles a woman who is essay to get out from behind the main pattern.The fabricator sees her shaking the bars at darkness and move around during the day, when the woman is able to lead briefly. The storyteller mentions that she, too, locomote around at times. She suspects that put-on and Jennie atomic number 18 aw be of her arrested development, and she resolves to destroy the paper once and for all, peeling much of it off during the night. The adjacent day she manages to be completely and goes into something of a frenzy, biting and part at the paper in order to free the confine woman, whom she sees attempt from at bottom the pattern.By the end, the cashier is dispiritedly insane, convinced that there are mevery a(prenominal) creeping women around and that she herself has come out of the wallpaperâ₠¬that she herself is the trap woman. She creeps unendingly around the room, smudging the wallpaper as she goes. When privy breaks into the locked room and sees the full horror of the mail, he faints in the entranceway, so that the fibber has â€Å"to creep over him e actually time! ” Character List The Narrator †A young, middle-class woman, newly married and a m former(a)(a), who is undergoing superintend for depression.The fabricatorâ€whose name may or may not be Janeâ€is exceedingly originative and a natural reputationteller, though her doctors believe she has a â€Å"slight hysterical tendency. ” The score is told in the form of her secret daybook, in which she records her thoughts as her obsession with the wallpaper grows. Read an in-depth abbreviation of The Narrator. joke †The fabricator’s husband and her physician. pot re unbendings her doings as part of her treatment. Unlike his imaginative married woman, John is compl etely practical, preferring facts and figures to â€Å"fancy,” at which he â€Å"scoffs openly. He reckons to love his wife, precisely he does not take in the interdict effect his treatment has on her. Read an in-depth analysis of John. Jennie †John’s sister. Jennie acts as housekeeper for the couple. Her presence and her contentment with a domestic affair intensify the teller’s feelings of misdeed over her own inability to act as a traditional wife and m early(a). Jennie seems, at times, to suspect that the narrator is more lush than she lets on. Analysis of Major Characters The NarratorThe narrator of â€Å"The white-livered paper” is a chore: as she loses touch with the outer earthly concern, she comes to a greater understanding of the inner human universes of her life. This inner/outer secern is important to understanding the nature of the narrator’s suffering. At all(prenominal) point, she is faced with alliances, o bjects, and circumstances that seem innocent and natural but that are sincerely quite bizarre and even oppressive. In a spirit, the plot of â€Å"The icteric paper” is the narrator’s attempt to avoid acknowledging the extent to which her external situation stifles her inner impulses.From the commence, we see that the narrator is an imaginative, exceedingly expressive woman. She remembers terrifying herself with imaginary night monsters as a child, and she enjoys the notion that the house they have taken is haunted. Yet as part of her â€Å"cure,” her husband forbids her to exercise her imagination in any way. Both her land and her emotions rebel at this treatment, and she turns her imagination onto plain neutral objectsâ€the house and the wallpaperâ€in an attempt to ignore her growing frustration.Her negative feelings color her description of her surroundings, making them seem uncanny and sinister, and she becomes fixated on the wallpaper. As th e narrator sinks besides into her inner fascination with the wallpaper, she becomes increasingly more dissociated from her day-to-day life. This process of disassociation begins when the story does, at the very moment she decides to keep a secret diary as â€Å"a relief to her mind. ” From that point, her true thoughts are hidden from the outer solid ground, and the narrator begins to slip into a fantasy world in which the nature of â€Å"her situation” is made clear in symbolic terms.Gilman press outs us this division in the narrator’s consciousness by having the narrator beget over effects in the world that she herself has caused. For example, the narrator doesn’t immediately understand that the yellow stains on her clothing and the long â€Å"smootch” on the wallpaper are connected. Similarly, the narrator fights the realization that the predicament of the woman in the wallpaper is a symbolic version of her own situation. At commencement ex ercise she even disapproves of the woman’s efforts to extend and intends to â€Å"tie her up. ”When the narrator finally identifies herself with the woman trapped in the wallpaper, she is able to see that other women are forced to creep and pass over behind the domestic â€Å"patterns” of their lives, and that she herself is the one in need of rescue. The horror of this story is that the narrator must lose herself to understand herself. She has untangle the pattern of her life, but she has torn herself away in getting free of it. An odd detail at the end of the story reveals how much the narrator has sacrificed. During her final split from reality, the narrator says, â€Å"I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. Who is this Jane? Some critics claim â€Å"Jane” is a misprint for â€Å"Jennie,”the sister-in-law. It is more likely, however, that â€Å"Jane” is the name of the unnamed narrator, who has been a stranger to hers elf and her jailers. instantaneously she is horribly â€Å"free” of the constraints of her marriage, her society, and her own efforts to slim down her mind. John Though John seems like the obvious villain of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper,” the story does not allow us to see him as wholly evil. John’s treatment of the narrator’s depression goes terribly wrong, but in all likelihood he was trying to support her, not make her worse.The real problem with John is the all-encompassing authorization he has in his combined role as the narrator’s husband and doctor. John is so sure that he knows what’s best for his wife that he disregards her own opinion of the matter, forcing her to mist her true feelings. He consistently patronizes her. He calls her â€Å"a blithesome little goose” and vetoes her smallest wishes, such as when he refuses to switch bedrooms so as not to overindulge her â€Å"fancies. ” Further, his dry, clinical gro unds renders him uniquely unsuited to understand his imaginative wife.He does not intend to harm her, but his ignorance intimately what she really take lastly proves dangerous. John knows his wife only superficially. He sees the â€Å"outer pattern” but misses the trapped, struggling woman inside. This ignorance is why John is no mere cardboard villain. He cares for his wife, but the unequal relationship in which they develop themselves prevents him from truly understanding her and her problems. By treating her as a â€Å"case” or a â€Å"wife” and not as a person with a leave of her own, he helps destroy her, which is the last thing he wants.That John has been destroyed by this imprisoning relationship is made clear by the story’s chilling finale. After prison-breaking in on his insane wife, John faints in shock and goes unrecognized by his wife, who calls him â€Å"that man” and complains active having to â€Å"creep over him” as she makes her way along the wall. Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Themes The command of Women in Marriage In â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman uses the conventions of the psychological horror tale to look back the position of women inwardly the institution of marriage, oddly as practiced by the â€Å" good”classes of her time.When the story was first published, most refs took it as a scary tale near a woman in an extreme secernate of consciousnessâ€a gripping, disturbing entertainment, but little more. After its re breakthrough in the twentieth century, however, readings of the story have become more complex. For Gilman, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, with its starchy distinction amongst the â€Å"domestic” functions of the female and the â€Å"active” work of the male, ensured that women remained second-class citizens.The story reveals that this gender division had the effect of retention women in a childish state of ignorance and preventing their full development. John’s self-assertion of his own superior wisdom and maturity leads him to misjudge, patronize, and dominate his wife, all in the name of â€Å"helping” her. The narrator is reduced to acting like a cross, petulant child, inefficient to stand up for herself without seeming foolish or disloyal. The narrator has no say in even the smallest details of her life, and she retreats into her obsessive fantasy, the only place she can harbour some control and exercise the power of her mind.The Importance of Self-Expression [pic] The mental constraints fit(p) upon the narrator, even more so than the physical ones, are what ultimately drive her insane. She is forced to hide her anxieties and fears in order to preserve the frontal of a happy marriage and to make it seem as though she is engaging the fight against her depression. From the fountain, the most intolerable looking at of her treatment is the compulsory silence and idling of the â€Å"resting cure. ” She is forced to become completely passive, disallow from exercising her mind in any way.Writing is in particular off limits, and John warns her several(prenominal) times that she must use her ownership to rein in her imagination, which he fears will run away with her. Of course, the narrator’s eventual(prenominal) monomania is a proceeds of the repression of her imaginative power, not the expression of it. She is unceasingly longing for an emotional and intellectual outlet, even going so far as to keep a secret journal, which she describes more than once as a â€Å"relief” to her mind. For Gilman, a mind that is kept in a state of forced inactiveness is doomed to self-destruction.The Evils of the â€Å"Resting Cure” As someone who almost was destroyed by S. Weir Mitchell’s â€Å"resting cure” for depression, it is not surprising that Gilman coordinate her story as an attack on this ineffectiv e and cruel course of treatment. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper” is an illustration of the way a mind that is already plagued with anxiety can deteriorate and begin to prey on itself when it is forced into inactivity and kept from healthy work. To his credit, Mitchell, who is mentioned by name in the story, took Gilman’s criticism to heart and aban wear uponed the â€Å"resting cure. beyond the specific technique described in the story, Gilman means to criticize any form of medical care that ignores the concerns of the patient, considering her only as a passive object of treatment. The contact between a woman’s domination in the home and her subordination in a doctor/patient relationship is clearâ€John is, after all, the narrator’s husband and doctor. Gilman implies that both forms of authority can be easy abused, even when the husband or doctor means to help.All too often, the women who are the silent subjects of this authority are infantilized, or w orse. Motifs caustic remark Almost every aspect of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper” is ironic in some way. caustic remark is a way of using words to convey multiple levels of heart that contrast with or complicate one another. In verbal satire, words are frequently used to convey the accurate opposite of their literal meaning, such as when one person responds to another’s mistake by saying â€Å" delicate work. ” (Sarcasmâ€which this example embodiesâ€is a form of verbal mockery. In her journal, the narrator uses verbal irony often, especially in reference to her husband: â€Å"John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. ” Obviously, one expects no such thing, at least not in a healthy marriage. Later, she says, â€Å"I am glad my case is not serious,” at a point when it is clear that she is concern that her case is very serious indeed. dramatic irony occurs when there is a contrast between the reader’s acquaint ance and the knowledge of the founts in the work.Dramatic irony is used extensively in â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper. ” For example, when the narrator first describes the bedroom John has chosen for them, she attributes the room’s bizarre featuresâ€the â€Å"rings and things” in the walls, the nailed-down furniture, the bars on the windows, and the torn wallpaperâ€to the fact that it must have once been used as a nursery. eventide this early in the story, the reader sees that there is an equally plausible story for these details: the room had been used to house an insane person.Another example is when the narrator assumes that Jennie shares her interest in the wallpaper, while it is clear that Jennie is only now noticing the source of the yellow stains on their clothing. The effect intensifies toward the end of the story, as the narrator sinks further into her fantasy and the reader remains able to see her actions from theâ€Å"outside. ” By the t ime the narrator fully identifies with the trapped woman she sees in the wallpaper, the reader can apprise the narrator’s experience from her point of view as hale as John’s shock at what he sees when he breaks down the door to the bedroom.Situational irony refers to moments when a character’s actions have the opposite of their intended effect. For example, John’s course of treatment backfires, turn the depression he was trying to cure and actually driving his wife insane. Similarly, there is a deep irony in the way the narrator’s fate develops. She gains a kind of power and cortical potential only by losing what we would call her ownership and reason. The Journal An â€Å"epistolary” work of fiction takes the form of letters between characters. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper” is a kind of epistolary story, in which the narrator writes to herself.Gilman uses this technique to show the narrator’s descent into madness both subje ctively and objectivelyâ€that is, from both the inside and the outside. Had Gilman told her story in traditional first-person narration, reporting events from inside the narrator’s head, the reader would never know only what to think: a woman inside the wallpaper might seem to actually exist. Had Gilman told the story from an objective, third-person point of view, without revealing the narrator’s thoughts, the social and political symbolization of the story would have been obscured.As it is, the reader must rewrite the ambiguity of the story, just as the narrator must attempt to decipher the bewildering story of her life and the bizarre patterns of the wallpaper. Gilman also uses the journal to give the story an brutal intimacy and immediacy, especially in those moments when the narrative is interrupted by the approach of John or Jennie. These interruptions perfectly illustrate the constraints placed on the narrator by authority figures who urge her not to think nigh herâ€Å"condition. ” Symbols The Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper” is set by the narrator’s sense that the wallpaper is a text she must interpret, that it symbolizes something that affects her directly. Accordingly, the wallpaper develops its symbolism throughout the story. At first it seems merely unpleasant: it is ripped, soiled, and an â€Å" greasy yellow. ” The worst part is the ostensibly unformed pattern, which fascinates the narrator as she attempts to figure out how it is organized. After staring at the paper for hours, she sees a ghostly sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain(p) light.Eventually, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a fearsome woman, constantly crawling and stooped, looking for an get by from behind the main pattern, which has come to resemble the bars of a cage. The narrator sees this cage as festooned with the heads of many women, all of whom were strangled as they tried to escape. Clearly, the wallpaper represents the structure of family, medicine, and tradition in which the narrator finds herself trapped. Wallpaper is domestic and humble, and Gilman skillfully uses this nightmarish, hideous paper as a symbol of the domestic life that traps so many women. all important(p) addresss Explained 1. 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 unpredictable nervous depressionâ€a slight hysterical tendencyâ€what is one to do? . . . So I take phosphates or phosphitesâ€whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to â€Å"work” until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas . . . description for acknowledgment 1 >> In this departure, which appears near the beginning of the story, the main elements of the narrator’s predicament are present.The powerful, authoritative phonations of he r husband, her family, and the medical memorial tablet urge her to be passive. Her own conviction, however, is that what she needs is but the oppositeâ€activity and stimulation. From the outset, her opinions turn out little weight. â€Å"Personally,” she disagrees with her treatment, but she has no power to transport the situation. Gilman also begins to characterize the narrator here. The awe over â€Å"phosphates or phosphites” is in character for someone who is not particularly kindle in factual accuracy.And the arrhythmic pulse of the sentences, often broken into one-line paragraphs, helps conspire the move writing of the narrator in her secret journal, as well as the provoke state of her mind. tight 2. I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulusâ€but John says the very worst thing I can do is think most my condition, and I confess it eer makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk nigh th e house. account statement for reference point 2 >>This character appears near the beginning of the story, and it helps characterize both the narrator’s dilemma and the narrator herself. Notably, the narrator interrupts her own train of thought by recalling John’s instructions. Gilman shows how the narrator has internalized her husband’s authority to the point that she lots hears his voice in her head, telling her what to think. Even so, she cannot help but feel the way she does, and so the move she makes at the end†steering on the house kind of of her situationâ€marks the beginning of her playground slide into obsession and madness.This mental shinny, this desperate attempt not to think to the highest degree her unhappiness, makes her childbed her feelings onto her surroundings, especially the wallpaper, which becomes a symbolic image of â€Å"her condition. ”The bit on words here is veritable(prenominal) of Gilman’s consi stent use of irony throughout the story. She feels bad whenever she thinks about herâ€Å"condition,” that is, about both her depression and her condition in general within her oppressive marriage. Close 3. There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the glaze over shapes get clearer every day.It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman round-backed down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonderâ€I begin to thinkâ€I wish John would take me away from here! Explanation for Quotation 3 >> About middle(a) through the story, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper finally comes into focus. The narrator is being drawn further and further into her fantasy, which contains a disturbing truth about her life. Gilman’s irony is actively at work here: the â€Å"things” in the paper are both the ghostly women the narrator sees and the disturbing idea s she is coming to understand.She is simultaneously greedy of the secret (â€Å"nobody knows but me”) and scare of what it seems to imply. again the narrator tries to deny her growing incursion (â€Å"the dim shapes get clearer every day”), but she is powerless to disinvolve herself. thin wonder that the woman she sees is always â€Å"stooping down and creeping about. ” Like the narrator herself, she is trapped within a kill domestic â€Å"pattern” from which no escape is possible. Close 4. Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. Explanation for Quotation 4 >>This mention comes just after the scene in which the narrator catches Jennie touching the paper and resolves that no one else is allowed to figure out the pattern. It captures one of the most distinctive qualities of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper”: Gilman’s bitter, sarcastic sense of humor. straight off that the narrator has become hopelessly obsessed with th e pattern, spending all day and all night thinking about it, life has become more interesting and she is no yearner bored. Gilman manages to combine humor and arrest in such moments. The causerie is funny, but the reader knows that someone who would make such a joke is not well.Indeed, in the section that follows, the narrator casually mentions that she considered importunate the house down in order to slip away the smell of the wallpaper. Close 5. I don’t like to look out of the windows evenâ€there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did? Explanation for Quotation 5 >> Important Quotations Explained 1. 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 depressionâ€a slight hysterical tendencyâ€what is one to do? . . So I take phosphates or phosphitesâ€whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to â€Å"work” until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas . . . Explanation for Quotation 1 >> In this passage, which appears near the beginning of the story, the main elements of the narrator’s dilemma are present. The powerful, authoritative voices of her husband, her family, and the medical establishment urge her to be passive. Her own conviction, however, is that what she needs is precisely the oppositeâ€activity and stimulation.From the outset, her opinions carry little weight. â€Å"Personally,” she disagrees with her treatment, but she has no power to change the situation. Gilman also begins to characterize the narrator here. The confusion over â€Å"phosphates or phosphites” is in character for someone who is not particularly interested in factual accuracy. And the choppy rhythm of the sentences, often broken into one-line paragraphs, hel ps evoke the hurried writing of the narrator in her secret journal, as well as the agitated state of her mind. Close . I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulusâ€but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house. Explanation for Quotation 2 >> This section appears near the beginning of the story, and it helps characterize both the narrator’s dilemma and the narrator herself. Notably, the narrator interrupts her own train of thought by recalling John’s instructions.Gilman shows how the narrator has internalized her husband’s authority to the point that she practically hears his voice in her head, telling her what to think. Even so, she cannot help but feel the way she does, and so the move she makes at the endâ€focusing on the house instead of her situationâ€marks the beginning of her slide into obsession and madness. This mental struggle, this desperate attempt not to think about her unhappiness, makes her project her feelings onto her surroundings, especially the wallpaper, which becomes a symbolic image of â€Å"her condition. The play on words here is typical of Gilman’s consistent use of irony throughout the story. She feels bad whenever she thinks about herâ€Å"condition,” that is, about both her depression and her condition in general within her oppressive marriage. Close 3. There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonderâ€I begin to thinkâ€I wish John would take me away from here! Explanation for Quotation 3 >>About halfway through the story, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper fi nally comes into focus. The narrator is being drawn further and further into her fantasy, which contains a disturbing truth about her life. Gilman’s irony is actively at work here: the â€Å"things” in the paper are both the ghostly women the narrator sees and the disturbing ideas she is coming to understand. She is simultaneously jealous of the secret (â€Å"nobody knows but me”) and frightened of what it seems to imply. Again the narrator tries to deny her growing insight (â€Å"the dim shapes get clearer every day”), but she is powerless to extricate herself.Small wonder that the woman she sees is always â€Å"stooping down and creeping about. ” Like the narrator herself, she is trapped within a suffocating domestic â€Å"pattern” from which no escape is possible. Close 4. Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. Explanation for Quotation 4 >> This comment comes just after the scene in which the narrator catches Jenni e touching the paper and resolves that no one else is allowed to figure out the pattern. It captures one of the most distinctive qualities of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper”: Gilman’s bitter, sarcastic sense of humor.Now that the narrator has become hopelessly obsessed with the pattern, spending all day and all night thinking about it, life has become more interesting and she is no longer bored. Gilman manages to combine humor and dread in such moments. The comment is funny, but the reader knows that someone who would make such a joke is not well. Indeed, in the section that follows, the narrator casually mentions that she considered burning the house down in order to eliminate the smell of the wallpaper. Close 5. I don’t like to look out of the windows evenâ€there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did? Explanation for Quotation 5 >> In the story’s final scene, just befor e John finally breaks into her room, the narrator has finished tearing off enough of the wallpaper that the woman she saw inside is now freeâ€and the two women have become one. This passage is the exact moment of full identification, when the narrator finally makes the joining she has been avoiding, a connection that the reader has made already. The woman behind the pattern was an image of herselfâ€she has been the one â€Å"stooping and creeping. Further, she knows that there are many women just like her, so many that she is xenophobic to look at them. The question she asks is moving and complex: did they all have to struggle the way I did? Were they trapped within homes that were really prisons? Did they all have to tear their lives up at the roots in order to be free? The narrator, unable(p) to answer these questions, leaves them for another womanâ€or the readerâ€to ponder. Key Facts title · â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper” author · Charlotte Perkins Gilm an type of work · Short story genre · black letter horror tale; character chew over; socio-political allegory language · English ime and place written · 1892, California date of first publication · May, 1892 publisher · The New England powder magazine narrator · A mentally troubled young woman, possibly named Jane point of view · As the main character’s fictional journal, the story is told in strict first-person narration, focusing exclusively on her own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. Everything that we learn or see in the story is filtered through the narrator’s shifting consciousness, and since the narrator goes insane over the course of the story, her perception of reality is often completely at odds with that of the other characters. one · The narrator is in a state of anxiety for much of the story, with flashes of sarcasm, anger, and desperationâ€a tone Gilman wants the reader to share. filter · The story stays close to th e narrator’s thoughts at the moment and is thus mostly in the present tense. context (time) · Late nineteenth century move (place) · America, in a large summer home (or possibly an old asylum), primarily in one bedroom within the house. rotagonist · The narrator, a young upper-middle-class woman who is suffering from what is most likely postpartum depression and whose illness gives her insight into her (and other women’s) situation in society and in marriage, even as the treatment she undergoes robs her of her sanity. major(ip) conflict · The struggle between the narrator and her husband, who is also her doctor, over the nature and treatment of her illness leads to a conflict within the narrator’s mind between her growing understanding of her own powerlessness and her desire to repress this awareness. ising action · The narrator decides to keep a secret journal, in which she describes her forced passivity and expresses her dislike for her bedroo m wallpaper, a dislike that gradually intensifies into obsession. stop · The narrator completely identifies herself with the woman engrossed in the wallpaper. falling action · The narrator, now completely identified with the woman in the wallpaper,spends her time crawling on all fours around the room. Her husband discovers her and collapses in shock, and she keeps crawling, right over his fallen body. hemes · The subordination of women in marriage; the importance of self-expression; the evils of the â€Å"Resting Cure” motifs · Irony; the journal symbols · The wallpaper foreshadowing · The discovery of the teeth marks on the bedframe foreshadows the narrator’s own insanity and suggests the narrator is not revealing everything about her behavior; the first use of the word â€Å"creepy” foreshadows the increasing desperation of the narrator’s situation and her own eventualâ€Å"creeping. ” How to Cite This SparkNote Full Bibliogra phic acknowledgement MLA: SparkNotes Editors. â€Å"SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. ” SparkNotes. com. SparkNotes LLC. 2006. Web. 2 Apr. 2013. The loot Manual of Style: SparkNotes Editors. â€Å"SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. ” SparkNotes LLC. 2006. http://www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/ (accessed April 12, 2013). APA: SparkNotes Editors. (2006). SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. Retrieved April 12, 2013, from http://www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/ In Text Citation MLA: â€Å"Their communion is awkward, especially when she mentions Wickham, a subject Darcy clearly wishes to avoid” (SparkNotes Editors). APA: â€Å"Their conversation is awkward, especially when she mentions Wickham, a subject Darcy clearly wishes to avoid” (SparkNotes Editors, 2006).Footnote The dough Manual of Style: Chicago requires the use of footnotes, rather than parenthetical citations, in federation with a list of works cited when traffic with litera ture. 1 SparkNotes Editors. â€Å"SparkNote on The Yellow Wallpaper. ” SparkNotes LLC. 2006. http://www. sparknotes. com/lit/yellowwallpaper/ (accessed April 12, 2013). [pic] Please be sure to cite your sources. For more information about what piracy is and how to avoid it, please read our clause on The Plagiarism Plague. 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