"The Yellow Wall Paper"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that it is customary to find the symbol of the house as representing a secure place for a woman's transformation and her release of self-expression; however, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall Paper", the protagonist does not want to be in the house and declares it is "haunted". The author points out that the yellow wall-paper plays a double role because (1) it has the ability to trap her in with its intricate pattern, which leads her to no satisfying end; however, (2) it also sets her free. The paper relates that, when examining the larger body of Gilman's work, there is a shift away from the type of confused first-person narrator found in the very popular "The Yellow Wall-Paper" towards a confident all-knowing third-person narrator, not stories that explore the complex psychological development of a character but rather stories that feature stock characters who can be seen as a representative of a type or a class.

From the Paper:

"Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper," does more than just tell the story of a woman who suffers at the hands of 19th century quack medicine. Gilman created a protagonist with real emotions and a real psyche that can be examined and analyzed in the context of modern psychology. In fact, to understand the psychology of the unnamed protagonist is to be well on the way to understanding the story itself. "The Yellow Wall-Paper," written in first-person narrative, charts the psychological state of the protagonist as she slowly deteriorates into schizophrenia (a disintegration of the personality)."

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