"The Yellow Wallpaper"

The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The narrator and her husband move into a house for the summer and because she has “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency” she is confined to the upstairs bedroom. While alone with nothing to do she becomes obsessed with the wallpaper. On page 93 the narrator realizes her obsession, “I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper.” She starts imagining that there are women trapped in the wallpaper bringing herself deeper and deeper into a psychotic state of mind, and eventually coming to believe that she is one of them.

Gilman wrote this story as if it was being told from the point of view of the main character and written as a series of journal entries. By choosing to write in the method of first person, she allowed the audience to gain a better sense of that character. If this story was told from any other character’s perspective we would not understand what this character was going through, how she was feeling, and we would not get to experience her fall into psychosis. On page 100 she actually believes she can “save” one of the women in the wallpaper, “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.”

Also, since Gilman decided to write the story as if it’s journal entries by the main character we are able to track what changes in the character’s state of mind. In the beginning of the story the main character describes her and her husband as “mere ordinary people” and the audience can infer that the husband, John, had brought her there to get better. As the audience reads on, the journal entries the main character is writing becomes more and more about the wallpaper and her theory about the women in the yellow wallpaper.