The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Gilman. The story is about a woman who is suffering from post-partum depression and is prescribed to a “rest cure” by her husband. The woman is confined to a room with yellow wallpaper and she slowly goes insane. The language and syntax of The Yellow Wallpaper reflects the mental state of the protagonist.
The sentence structure is often choppy and ungrammatical, which reflects the protagonist’s disturbed state of mind. The use of first person point of view allows readers to experience the events from the protagonist’s perspective and understand her mental state.
Charlotte Gilman maintains her reader’s attention throughout The Yellow Wallpaper, from the first sentence to the last, as her protagonist documents her own trip into madness. Her character spends an undetermined length of time passing by what appears to be a limitless number of doors. Gilman uses language and syntax to show how the narrator’s mental state changes over time. Throughout her narrative, Gilman immdiately introduces us to her world by manipulating our perspective.
The first sentence, which is The Yellow Wallpaper, describes the wallpaper in a room that the narrator and her husband are renting for the summer. The second sentence The narrator is never named throughout the story, but it is clear that she is struggling with some sort of mental illness., implies that something is not quite right with her from the beginning. The short, choppy sentences that follow give the reader a sense of the confusion and disorientation that the narrator is feeling.
As the story progresses, Gilman uses language to slowly reveal the true nature of the narrator s mental state. The yellow wallpaper itself becomes a symbol of her deteriorating mental state. At first, she is only mildly obsessed with it, but as time goes on, she becomes more and more fixated on it. The wallpaper comes to represent everything that is wrong in her life and she starts to believe that there are people trapped behind it.
The narrator s descent into madness is also reflected in her increasing use of first person pronouns. In the beginning of the story, she refers to herself as “we” or “us”, but as her mental state deteriorates, she starts to refer to herself as “I” more and more often. This change in perspective allows the reader to see the world from the narrator s increasingly skewed point of view.
Gilman also uses syntax to create a sense of foreboding and unease in The Yellow Wallpaper. The sentence length gradually gets shorter and shorter as the story goes on, mirroring the narrator s increasing fragmentation and instability. The sentences also become more choppy and disjointed, further emphasizing the confusion and chaos of the narrator s mind.
Charlotte Gilman uses language and syntax to create a powerful and disturbing portrait of a woman descending into madness. The yellow wallpaper itself becomes a symbol of her deteriorating mental state, and the short, choppy sentences reflect the confusion and chaos of her mind. By manipulating the reader s perspective, Gilman allows us to see the world from the narrator s increasingly skewed point of view. The result is a chilling story that gives us a glimpse into the dark depths of a disturbed mind.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman employs the persona of a female narrator who has been institutionalized and is experiencing mental illness. The narrator, as we learn in her opening lines, comes from a long line of suffragists (691). Her distrust is apparent early on; it appears to be misdirection intended to hint at a possible ghost tale. She goes on with her narrative describing the most lovely location with a delectable garden (692). Her characterisation is that of an old housekeeper leading us to imagine a stable woman in a new environment.
The lack of security she feels could be chalked up to nerves or the newness of her surroundings. The second mention of the wallpaper- The smell of it makes me dizzy-it is almost like the chloroform (Gilman 692) The narrator s use of scent and color intensifies when she references the wallpaper again; This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck (Gilman 693).
The yellow wallpaper becomes malevolent in the nature-a character itself that speaks to her. It seems that an outside force is manipulating her state of mind-compounding any underlying mental issues. The language switches from flowery and detailed to harsh and blunt. The woman is no longer in a garden; she sin a dungeon. The yellow wallpaper is her jailer-mocking and demeaning her.
The final sentence of the story is telling; 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!(Gilman 693). The narrator has gone mad- driven by the wallpaper to believe that she must tear it down or be trapped forever. The use of language throughout The Yellow Wallpaper creates an uneasy feeling in the reader- as if something is just not quite right.
The narrator’s big vocabulary is a strong indicator of her intellect and the ability to reflect on something she disagrees with. In order to construct a foundation for comparison with the rest of the tale, it is necessary to provide a description of the wall. Because we only have access to the narrator’s perspective, descriptions of the wall become more essential as a method of determining her mental deterioration. She perceives the wall as an enormous, flamboyant design that commits every artistic crime imaginable when first mentioned (693), once again emphasizing her present cognitive capabilities.
The wall is a symbol of the narrator s confinement, both physical and mental. The wallpaper comes to represent her own state of mind, which is highly symbolic. The torn and ripped wallpaper becomes a metaphor for the protagonist s shredded psyche. The yellow color of the wallpaper represents sickness, both physically and mentally. The pattern itself could be seen as a representation of the way in which she views herself, as something that is not quite right, that needs to be fixed.
The language used in The Yellow Wallpaper is very important in understanding the narrator s mental state. The choice of words shows us how her perception of reality changes as she descends into madness. For example, early on in the story, she describes the wallpaper as having a strange, provoking smell. (Gilman 693) This is a small detail, but it is significant in that it shows us how her perception of the wallpaper changes from something that is merely unpleasant to something that is actually dangerous.
The use of the word provoking suggests that there is something about the wallpaper that is causing her to act in a certain way. This idea is reinforced later on in the story when she says that the wallpaper seems to be alive and moving. (Gilman 699) The use of the word seems suggests that she is not quite sure if what she is seeing is real or not. This uncertainly reflects her own mental state, which is deteriorating rapidly.
