Critically Analyzing The Yellow Wallpaper

Running Head: CRTICALLY ANALYSING THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
Crtically Analysing The Yellow Wallpaper
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1CRTICALLY ANALYSING THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
Introduction
The taboo that mental disorders were in the 19th century, post-natal depression was yet to
be explored by doctors and psychologists of the time. The author Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s
objective behind writing The Yellow wallpaper was largely provoked by the ignorance of the
common mass and the dalliance of clinical treatment in handling patients, especially women
suffering from depression. The plot explores multiple themes concerning the oppression of the
‘weaker’ gender, the need for self-acknowledgement and the nature of depression that is
susceptible to paranoia. This essay intends to critically analyze the theme of Gilman’s story by
identifying the literary elements she uses to inform the reader of her objective. The paper
presents a psychoanalytical perspective of reading the piece and elaborates how the plot,
characterization and symbols are integral for a better understanding of the story’s theme.
Discussion
The story is written in the form of daily journals and the confidential tone of the narrator
suggests that she is attempting to reach out, or rather to create an audience she cannot otherwise
fine in the confined, dingy room. Deception is one of the major themes in the story; the
narrator’s relationship with her husband is based on deception since she cannot divulge her secret
to him while John is deceiving both himself and his wife with the oblivion that prolonged rest
will cure her of the ailment. It is only in the journal that the narrator can confess to her deceit,
reasoning the necessity. She can explain though writing what she cannot to the society and her
husband, hence she makes it her only resort. Irony is another potent theme of the story since it is
replete with ironical circumstances. The journal is both her greatest testimony to deception and
her only attempt at honesty. Contradictions like these may be experienced as personal failures
but the narrative expresses them as inevitable consequences of prescribed gender roles, in this

2CRTICALLY ANALYSING THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
case the role of a wife and a mother. Women are conditioned to conform to the socially-
designated role of being the ‘angel of the house’ and making them the only avenue to self-
fulfillment. This process creates a moral conflict between personal and social perceptions of the
‘Self’, a conflict the results in a tendency towards self-deception and also that towards honesty.
The narrator gets exhausted with deceiving herself about the true nature of her treatment and thus
the dramatic irony in her descriptions as the reader comprehends things by piecing together her
details, these are things she herself cannot understand. For instance, the description of the room
she is made to stay in appears a nursery to her but to an analytic reader it will strike as a room
designed to confine violent mental patients. This gap between the details and her individual
perception of them indicates her desire to believe in the things her husband tells her and her
growing disability to do so. This reveals her entrapment in a conception of herself which is
largely derived from John and the patriarchal society she is subjected to.
Like the narrator, John too is a victim of the patriarchal society. The ‘cruel’ treatment of
her wife is after all inspired by love since he cannot find any alternative to forcing her into the
adherence of the gender roles prescribed for her. The mental and physical entrapment is imposed
by the society where a women must conform to the ‘wifely patterns’ (Lanser 415). The story
hints no communion between women apart from the narrator’s crazed vision of the ‘creeping
women’ and the imaginary woman who is imprisoned behind the patterned wallpaper, like the
narrator who is imprisoned in the pattern of her social roles (Treichler 61). She is liberated at the
end but the freedom she experiences is only the need to deceive herself and others about the true
nature of her role. Sloughing off the trappings of being mother and wife, she is left only with her
madness and her insight into the true workings of the society.