The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Analysis

In the 19th Century (early and mid), the domestic ideologies placed women as both spiritual and moral leaders in their homes (Thrailkill, 525). The separate sphere ideals implied that the place of a woman was the private confines of the home, where she could fulfill her prescribed role as a mother and a wife. However, by mid-19th Century, the perceptions began to change and Gilman’s book, The Yellow Paper, was written during this critical period. Feminists gained momentum and women pushed for change. As such, the historical context greatly influenced the author’s work. Through the setting of the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the author offers the reader to participate in the narrator's plunge into mental confinement or what can be regarded as madness.

At first, the woman loves the house and regards it as a perfect place for the recovery from the nervous condition. She describes the house as “the most beautiful place…There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden-large and shady, full of bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them” (Gilman, 5). It appears that the narrator has fallen in love with the house and its landscapes and it happy with the place. However, John, the woman’s husband, confines her to a single room with an excuse that it will promote the narrator’s mental health for the better. The wallpaper is another symbol that represents the incarceration of the woman. She is greatly affected by the paper's design, which is not only rambling but also horrendous.

The woman describes the color of the wallpaper as "repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow…it is a dull yet lucid orange is some places" (Gilman, 8). The phrases reveal how the color contributing towards the plunging of the woman to insanity. The narration further points out that in the wallpaper “there is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Gilman, 12). Conclusion The novel was written during a period of great historical changes. In the early and mid-19th Century, the society believed that the only place for a woman was the confines of her home where she fulfilled the roles of a wife and a mother. However, the perceptions were changing in the late 19th Century when Gilman wrote the book.