I wanted to share a paper I recently wrote for my American Literature class. I had the help of my wonderfully patient parents and my amazing friend Melanie! Thanks for muddling through my rough drafts and not being afraid to tell me when something sucked. Here it is.
One
specific device that helps create a successful story is symbolism. Symbolism
can either make or break an author’s attempt to convey their tale. Like many
authors before her, Charlotte Perkins Gilman effectively uses symbolism in her
story, The Yellow Wallpaper; in fact,
many of the most gripping parts of The Yellow Wallpaper are overflowing
with symbolism. Gilman’s story opens with a couple and their new baby moving
into a home for the summer. The wife narrates the story; and the first
appearance of the use of symbolism is found in her description of the gardens
behind the house. She describes to the reader the green beauty of the gardens
and contrasting dilapidated greenhouses. These visuals relate to the narrator
as she is also as a new green bud that is slowly trying to overgrow the
skeleton of the old greenhouses. The old, shambling, broken-down greenhouses represent
the denial of growth by her husband, the social standards of the time, and the
expectations that both have of her.
The
second bit of symbolism that the narrator presents is revealed when she tells
the readers what room her husband insists they stay in. While there are many
beautiful, airy, and comfortable rooms downstairs in the house John, the
narrator’s husband, insists they stay in the upstairs nursery. Typically when
one thinks of a nursery, they think of a happy, light, airy room filled with
happiness and laughter. However this nursery is the exact opposite. There is a
bed bolted to the floor, the wallpaper is peeling off, and the windows are
barred. The rather dismal nursery and John’s use of phrases such as “blessed
little goose” (Gilman 488), “his darling and his comfort”, and “little girl”
(Gilman 491), depict the juvenile treatment of the narrator. She is not allowed
to make her own decisions, and any input on her illness is laughed at by her husband.
This is where her confinement starts to become clear before the reader’s eyes.
Not only is the narrator subjected to live in a nursery, but she has to stay in
a nursery that has barred windows. These barred windows represent her imprisonment.
This prison could be the literal prison that is the house or the prison of the
narrator’s mind. However, the message is quite clear--our narrator is
imprisoned one way or the other.
In
this prison of a room, the narrator describes her bed. She calls it the “great
immovable bed”(Gilman 409), for it is nailed to the floor. This could be
symbolism for her marriage, depicting it as a repressed relationship. There is
hardly any affection shown between John and the narrator, other than John’s
little pet names for her. John is rarely at the house with the narrator,
therefore affecting their relationship as well as the narrator’s recovery. It
is mentioned that John usually sleeps in a different room downstairs. However
when the couple does share the bed, John never notices the narrator’s trouble
sleeping. John’s apathetic behavior towards the narrator, and his obliviousness
could factor into the narrator’s decline in mental health as well as her
growing obsession with the wallpaper. Combine the problems in her marriage with
the fact that John does not allow her to receive visitors other than their nurse
Mary and his sister Jennie, the narrator only has herself for company and this
makes for a rather lonely life. It has been said that it takes two to make a
marriage. In this couple’s case, the relationship and marriage is repressed and
it does not seem to grow or move, just as the bed is bolted to the floor.
Perhaps
the most impressive use of symbolism that Gilman uses is with the wall paper
itself. There are several elements to the wallpaper and how Gilman uses it in
symbolism. First is the color of the wallpaper. It is described as a sickly,
ghastly, yellowish orange color. This is referencing the narrator’s illness.
Regardless of whether she is truly ill or not, this coloring of the wallpaper
matches that of the sickness, or perhaps madness, that has come over her.
Second is the pattern of the wallpaper. The paper starts out as “dull enough to
confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and
provoke study” (Gilman 487) and then progresses to the narrator crediting her
“recovery” to the wallpaper. The narrator studies the paper in such depth that
these traits start to blur her boundaries of reality and imagination, and she
starts to see a woman behind the bars of the paper. Here we find another
wonderful use of symbolism. The trapped woman in the wallpaper is in fact the
narrator herself. Her desperate tearing and clawing at the paper is her attempt
to free herself, from her marriage, her illness, her child, and possibly more.
Perhaps
one of the strongest occurrences of symbolism is the peeling of the wallpaper.
As the wallpaper slowly peels off of the wall, the narrator’s sanity is also peeling
away. Towards the end of the story it is revealed that the narrator has
identified herself as the woman behind the wallpaper. The reader discovers this
when the narrator wonders, “…if they [the other women she sees] have come out
of the wall-paper as I did?” (Gilman 496). As the story comes to a close the
readers stumble upon the truth; the narrator has been peeling the paper,
chewing on the bed posts, and carving into the walls. This act of “freeing” the
woman behind the wallpaper and destroying her prison of a room shows that the
narrator has taken her life into her own hands.
Similar
to the narrator’s decent into madness being depicted as the peeling wallpaper;
her madness is also illustrated by her distain of anything other than the
yellow room. She states that she no longer wishes to go outside, but that “it
is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!”
(Gilman 496). She refuses to go outside claiming that everything is too green
and not yellow. This is symbolism of the decline of her mental state. She
starts out wanting to go outside and meet people however this is repressed by
her husband. As she stays shut up in her yellow room, she starts to spiral into
hysteria and confusion.
As
Gilman brings her story to a close, the narrator has convinced herself that
because she pulled the wallpaper down, she is free and her husband can no
longer keep her imprisoned in the room or the house. This occurrence, as well
as the other uses of symbolism throughout the story, reveals the nature of how
the narrator has slowly escaped her stifling marriage and relationship with
John. The Yellow Wallpaper and its
symbolism illustrate a successful commentary on the treatment of women in the
1890’s and how some, if not many, of those women took the situation into their
own hands by whatever means possible. Using symbolism has allowed Charlotte
Perkins Gilman to convey her message in a way that is both entertaining and
educational, creating a wonderfully successful piece of writing.
