The Yellow Wall Paper Term Paper
and Research Paper
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a classic work by the American feminist writer Gilman,
Charlotte Perkins (1860-1935). It is a story of woman who arrives to live in a
house inside a large estate with her husband. The woman herself narrates the
short story. She thought the house she was living as haunted. Her husband, a
medical doctor, has no room for superstitious beliefs. She spends the long
summer days sitting inside her room-a room decorated with yellow wallpaper. The
presence of the wallpaper made her sick. Her illness is termed as a temporary
nervous depression or a slight hysterical tendency both by her husband and
brother, who is also a physician. They advise her to take some tonics and do
exercises in order to get out of the illusive condition of mind. She herself
does not believe in the prescription and wants some other remedy to her problem.
The most she hates about the haunted house is the yellow wallpaper in her
bedroom. The room was in fact a nursery on top of the house and her husband
chose it because he wanted a bigger room for them. “The color is repellent,
almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the
slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly
sulphur tint in others.” (Gilman, 1996)
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The paper had an adverse effect on her and it disturbed her more than anything
around. “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!”
(Gilman, 1996) The paper is ugly-looking, faded at some spots and has an
irritating effect. She developed a psychic state of mind and used to cry most of
the time and that too about nothing. The paper really got on her nerves, “I'm
getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps because of
the wall-paper.” (Gilman, 1996)
With the passage of time she developed a feeling that there was some figure
behind that wallpaper probably of a woman. Her mental state was can be compared
to a Schizophrenic patient. The yellow color became a death trap for her. She
developed a hatred for all yellow things around. She also felt a strange smell
about the paper and that was always around. “It is not bad--at first, and very
gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.” She started
calling it the ‘yellow smell’. She started feeling that there is some woman or
women behind the wallpaper, who crawls and shakes it. She goes further in her
hallucination saying that the woman comes out form behind the wallpaper and
walks in the house and that she has seen her roaming around. “It is the same
woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by
daylight. I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when
a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.” (Gilman, 1996)
She started waiting for a time when she is alone and can get hold of the women
behind the wallpaper. One day when her husband was away for a night, her
imaginations or hallucinations engulf her and she thought that the woman was
trying to get out of the wall. She went to help her come out. “I pulled and she
shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of
that paper.” In the process she stripped off a large piece of the wallpaper.
This gave her courage and she wanted to scratch out the remaining. In her next
attempt she did it. This is was the climax of her feelings and that led her to
imagine that she herself was the woman behind the wallpaper and no one else. Now
that the wallpaper was no more, she felt herself to be free from the metal
illness and unseen trap.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Ed. Elaine Hedges, The Yellow Wallpaper. Revised ed.
Feminist Pr. 1996
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