Narrative Convention for "The Yellow Wallpaper"

"The Yellow Wallpaper", written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story about a woman who is mentally sick, but her husband, also her physician, does not believe her. She is taken away to a summer house for three months in order to overcome whatever illness she has. She is forced to stay in a bedroom with old, yellow wallpaper. In the beginning of the story, she does not like the wallpaper and calls it "dull" (89). By the end of the story, she is completely crazy and is creeping around the bedroom thinking she is the woman who came out of the wallpaper.

The story is written in first-person narrative. The woman is telling the story through the jouranl entries she writes when her husband is not around. I think the first-person point of view is very effective in this story. If Gilman would have used third-person narrative, the story would not have been ass effective. First-person narrative allows the reader to follow the woman's thought process and go through the experience of insanity with the woman. It also allows the reader to gain a better understanding of the character and get inside her head. Instead of having a different narrator tell us what is going on, Gilman shows the reader that the woman is going psychotic by showing the reader her thought process and how it changes throughout the story. Gilman uses the journal entry style to show the audience how the woman's mind is changing over the time period that she is at the summer house. Instead of being told that she has something mentally wrong with her, the reader is being shown exactly what is going through her mind.