By: Jackie Linnebur

Plot Takes the readers down the narrator’s descent into madness: She is believed to have postpartum psychosis after the birth of her child. Family goes to summer colonial mansion “Something queer about it” Confined in the upstairs for the summer The room is a key characteristic Torn wallpaper, windows barred on the outside, scratches on the floor Assumed to have confined a women before against her will.

Plot The writing leaves us unsure if the damage of the room has been done by previous occupants or the narrator her self. She has a journal she writes in where she obsessively writes about the wallpaper: “Yellow” smell “Breakneck” pattern Missing spaces The way the yellow, “smears on the skin and clothing of anyone who touches it” The longer you stay, the more the paper changes, especially in moonlight.

Plot She begins to make out a figure in the paper design. Believes there’s a woman trapped in the paper. The narrator thinks that she must free the woman behind the wallpaper and begins to tear the remaining paper from walls. One the last day of summer she locks the door in order to strip the rest of the room. When her husband finally gets into the room he finds his wife circling around the room creeping along the walls touch the wallpaper. She declares, “I’ve got out at last,” her husband faints and she circling the room stepping over his unconscious body.

Characters Narrator: A young, newly married mother is seeking treatment for depression. A postpartum psychosis diagnostic has been labeled on her where she is put in a confined room with only her journal. In where, only is described by the entries in her journal, she undergoes hysterical obsession with the room and its wallpaper. John: The husband of the narrator, believes the restricting her is a part of her treatment. He is very practical and logical, unlike his frantic wife. Jennie: John’s sister. She carries herself like a housekeeper over the couple and their child. She embodies the common woman was seen to be for the time.

Symbols The wallpaper is driven into the narrator’s sense that it is something she must interpret. Its symbolism develops throughout the story, at first its “yellow” and “unclean”, with an awful pattern. After countless hours of it being stared at a figure is made out of the design. A woman desperate for an escape appears, where the narrator decides it is her job to free her. The wallpaper represent the structure of family and tradition of the time period in which the narrator seems trapped in. Wallpaper is domestic and simple, where the pattern shows how distorted she feels about being apart of it.

Irony In the story, irony is frequently used. Verbally irony happens when words are used to convey opposite meanings. (ex: journal entries) Drama irony occurs when there’s a contrast between the reader’s knowledge and the knowledge of the characters work. (ex: when the room was first shown, characteristics) Structural irony is when actions have the opposite affect of their intentions. (ex: John’s treatment)

Connection to Young Goodman Brown Mentality Society over Adveristy Mysterious, Hard to Concept

Biological Criticism Gilman portrays the main character’s insanity as a way to protest the medical and professional oppression against women. Women were being depicted as mentally weak and fragile. At the time, women were even discouraged from writing, because their writing would ultimately create an identity, and become a form of defiance for them. Charlotte Perkins Gilman realized that writing became one of the only forms of existence for women at a time where they had very few rights. She told that "The Yellow Wallpaper" was "not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked."