The Yellow Wallpaper -- English Literature

The yellow wallpaperThe Yellow Wall-Paper, by Charlotte Gilman Perkins, can be read as asimple story of a fresh woman suffering from postpartum low.Her husband is unsympathetic to her needs, her doctor refuses to sleep with her serious illness, and her emotional state declines as aresult of being forced to stay inside her means in the middle of her spend with no company except the yellow wallpaper. But, on a deeperlevel, it is this direction and the wallpaper that is pasted all over itthat is symbolic and allows the teller to take place her depressionand slowly decline into insanity.In the beginning of the story, the fabricator describes herself ashaving temporary nervous depression -- a slight hysterical tendency.(169) The narrator is well aware of her condition, and it is apparentthat she is also aware of what her condition whitethorn lead to. But, if itwerent for certain imprisoning aspects of her environment, hercondition might have never progressed to complete insanity . Forexample, the windows of the narrators room become a expressionof the world that squeezes her into the tiny jail of her own mind, andthe wallpaper represents this state of that mind. The room was onceused as a nursery, and thus its environment makes the narrator feellike a child, like a being who is interpreted less seriously than she shouldbe. She is in a room where the windows are forbid for littlechildren, and there are rings and things in the walls. (170) Theprotective interdict on the windows are symbolic of the protectiveness ofher husband, John, and his well-meaning and ultimately unconstructivesuggestions. The narrator is a prisoner in her place of rest, and herhusband is but the jailer, watching over ... ...per as I did? (180) She believesthat by locking herself in her symbolic physical prison and tearingoff the wall-paper that is symbolic of her psychological state, she isreleasing herself from all of the expectations of her husband and allthe depression she fel t end-to-end the story.The narrators physical environment and the symbolism it containedallowed her to materialize her depression and descend into insanity.It is clear that it is possible to view the wallpaper as a reflectionof the narrators state of mind and the fact that she took on thecharacter of the woman in the wallpaper to allow herself to break freeof the ties that bound her. The labour of the barred room and thedisturbingly vivid wallpaper proved not only to be complimentary tothe story, but also to foreshadow the narrators escape fromdepression into a new sphere of insanity.