Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper, Revised

            I have chosen to do my analysis on The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I am going to be using the readers response critical lens in my analysis of this short story. I am going to start out by saying that this story is very creepy, however it is beautifully written, and I was very much drawn into the story, close to becoming possessed by it. The protagonist of the story is a woman who is married to a physician named John. Her name is not stated, neither is Johns last name, however they are indeed married and have a maid named Jennie, who is Johns sister. I believe the protagonist name in this short story is intentionally left anonymous to allow the reader to believe that it could be anyone. The name John is also a very common name, and might serve in the same sense of anonymity to represent any physician.

            The rising action of the short story is the protagonist's growing curiosity of the yellow wallpaper she is surrounded by in her room. It seems that the more time she is left to her thoughts, the closer she gets to reaching a breaking point of insanity. The story starts out innocently enough, where John believes she is suffering from nervous depression, and rents out a colonial mansion for her to receive rest and to not be distracted. He advices her not to think about her condition, and so she begins to think about the house. This is what gives root to her insanity. She is stuck in this room with yellow wallpaper that she hates, and becomes obsessed by the task of trying to figure out its pattern. This story sort of terrified me, I too spend a lot of time alone, and feel like I become obsessed by a repetitive notions at times. However, I luckily don't have any wallpaper in my room. I realized she was really going nuts when she believed she discovered that there was a woman shaking the pattern behind the wall, and that the pattern held her in the wall. She believes the woman gets out in the daytime, and is then confined to the wall at night behind the pattern.

            I believe every aspect of this story was methodically calculated. I find that even the color of the wallpaper should be analyzed when trying decipher it's meaning. The color yellow is often used in medical terms to signify a quarantine. I believe this to be the reason Charlotte chose this color for the room. The physician does try to quarantine her from other's into the wallpapered room. It is also significant because she starts to see the yellow wallpaper as something that is used to quarantine the strange shadow of a woman behind the wall. The color yellow is sometimes used as a warning sign, as in the street sign yield or the yellow in stop lights, maybe she used the color yellow as a foreshadow that something dangerous would be lying ahead. A third connotation of meaning would be yellows association with insanity. I believe yellow is sometimes associated with insanity, some prisons use yellow attire for those who are mentally unstable, as in those who might want to commit to suicide. Yellow's association with insanity is not something that is widely regarded as being true. I want to put forth the thought that people might of started associating the color yellow with insanity after reading The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Although I did not do any research, I could see this short story having a great effect on people, especially when you take into account that it was written over a hundred years ago. It's certainly had enough time to create a following for this connotation, however I have no facts to back up my thesis.

            The climactic moment of the story has to be when John opens the door to the room and sees that she has torn down the wallpaper, and is creeping on the across the floor. The resolution of this story has to be after she says, "I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. 'I've got out at last,' said I, 'in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!'" John passes out, and she continues to creep along a path over him. The way she uses the word creep is fantastic. Upon first reading her use of the word creeping, I imagined the woman she described seeing outside as merely walking around with hunched shoulders. I imagined creeping to mean that she was walking around mysteriously as if she knew she was somewhere she wasn't allowed to be. However I looked up the word and realized its meaning was much more horrifying. Creeping means to move around on the ground slowly using your hands and knees, like an animal or creature. This made the story even more terrifying for me. I think my imagination of what the protagonist is seeing is more frightful than any horror movie I've seen in the past. The human imagination is much more terrifying that anything that could be manipulated on film. It kind of reminded me of the movie The Ring.

            I read the authors reason to writing this story, and she confessed to going through a similar episode! She said that there was a physician that advised her to remain unproductive, and un-stimulated until she got better. She however, felt that she was going mad, and took the advice of a friend to go back to being productive. Having something to do is what ended up saving her from losing it, this is what inspired her to write The Yellow Wallpaper. I think it'd be interesting to put up some yellow wallpaper in my room after reading this story, and seeing the effect it has on me.