"The Yellow Wallpaper": The Progression of Madness

Paper Summary:

This paper examines "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In particular, it looks at how, as her madness progresses, the narrator becomes increasingly aware of a woman present in the pattern of the wallpaper and how, later in her madness, she imagines there to be many women lost in its "torturing" pattern, trying in vain to climb through it. It discusses how the women caught in the wallpaper seems to parallel the narrator's virtual imprisonment by her well-meaning husband. It also shows that, while the narrator's perception of the wallpaper reveals her increasing madness, it effectively symbolizes the struggle of women who attempt to break out of society's imposed standards.

From the Paper:

"She has an immediate dislike for the wallpaper and at first studies it with the eye of a critical interior decorator. The pattern fascinates her and she becomes increasingly obsessed with uncovering its secrets. Eventually it becomes the center of her life and her only concern. On the most basic level, it is apparent that anyone who becomes obsessed with wallpaper and believes it to hold a world that people inhabit is insane. Looking deeper into what the narrator reads into the wallpaper, we can understand her more clearly. The woman she sees in the wallpaper struggling to break free of the bars seems to reflect and reinforce her own desire to leave the house."

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