Imagery in The Yellow Wallpaper Essay Example

Imagery is used to allow the reader to create a picture in their minds, so they are able to imagine the stories characters, emotions and the setting. In short terms it brings a story to life for the reader. The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, displays imagery throughout the whole story. This short story is about a woman and her husband who are staying in a large mansion like home for the summer. The woman just had a baby and seems to be suffering from nervous depression, which her husband, who is a physician, thinks the rest cure is the best thing for his wife. She is not allowed to write or even take care of her baby at this time. They are staying upstairs in what used to be a nursery. In the nursery there is the worst wallpaper she has ever seen, with many windows that are barred up. Since she isn’t allowed to do anything, she spends a great amount of time looking and the yellow wallpaper and analyzing it. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Gilman Perkins uses imagery of the yellow wallpaper and the house itself to illustrate the oppressive nature of men towards women during that time as well as the feeling of entrapment felt by the narrator. 

The house itself is very isolated and separate from society. Through the use of imagery, the house mirrors the feelings of the narrator; isolated and restricted. In the story she describes the house as, “The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.” (Gilman 844). By her description of the outside of the house, it gives readers an idea of how big the land is and how isolated it is from everything else around her. A little bit later she describes the inside of the house and the room they are staying in. The narrator says, “It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” (Gilman 845). Although the room might seem delightful at first, the bars on the window represent the narrators feeling of being trapped and isolated from the rest of society. The room that was meant to make her feel better and more free lead her to feel more trapped and go insane. The gate that locks and the windows that are barred up show just how much of a “prisoner” she was without even realizing it at the time. 

Once stuck in this bedroom she starts to obsess over the hideous yellow wallpaper that covers the walls. The imagery of the yellow wallpaper can be seen throughout the whole story. As the narrator is talking about the room, she describes the wallpaper as, “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounces enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance, they suddenly commit suicide-plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.” (Gilman 845). The narrator is writing this down as she hears her husband coming and knows she must put it away, so he doesn’t see her writing. With her husband being gone most days and his sister leaving her be for the most part, she starts to focus on the wallpaper so much that it consumes most of her time. She says, “This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so-I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.” (Gilman 847). This may hint that the narrator is starting to experience hallucinations and her mental state is starting to decline.  One night while John was sleeping, she watched the wallpaper as the moon shined through the windows on it. She saw a figure behind that seemed to shake the pattern, as if it wanted to get out and she got up to feel the wallpaper to see if it had moved and it didn’t. A little while later she says, “I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.” (Gilman 851). She comes to the conclusion that the woman stuck behind the paper is trying to get out and shakes the pattern while trying. She thinks the woman comes out during the day because she sees her creeping throughout. The woman the narrator sees in the wallpaper is how she sees herself. At this point the narrator isn’t sleeping at night as she finds it interesting to watch the developments in the wallpaper, but rather sleeps in the daytime. The woman trapped behind the wallpaper mirrors the narrator’s life and other women’s lives during this time. She was locked up in this bedroom to cure her depression and had no say in how she was being cured. Her husband thought this was the best way and it is clear that she wanted to be free but was trapped. 

Eventually she comes to the conclusion that the wallpaper needed to come down in order to free the woman stuck behind it. She says, “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook, and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.” (Gilman 854). As the wallpaper was being torn down, so is the narrator’s mental state. She was so focused on freeing this woman, as if freeing this woman, she was freeing herself. She was determined to tear down the rest of the paper, she decided to lock the door and throw the key down the front path as she didn’t want anyone coming in until John came home. Once her husband came home and opened the door he said, “For God’s sake, what are you doing!” and she says, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (Gilman 855). At this point she has completely lost her mind and John was shocked when he walked in and had seen what occurred. The narrator has been trapped and forced to look at the wallpaper for so long and by tearing down the wallpaper was her way of gaining freedom and no longer being trapped by her husband. 

The narrator has been trapped and controlled by her husband her whole life. Being forced to sit in a room with only the wallpaper to look at led her to seeing herself trapped in the wallpaper. This story shows naturalism. This story could as be seen as naturalism as is it described as, “Frequently drew on social interpretations of Darwinian evolution, which they employed as a lens to understand the struggles that they saw around them.” (Levine 955). In naturalism characters did not have free will and feel like they are held back by factors outside of their control. They may also feel the desire to change their lives. The narrator shows the bad in her life and doesn’t just focus on the good things. She feels trapped and is trying to find a way to free herself and the wallpaper represented herself trying to be free. 

In conclusion, imagery was used to show the oppressive nature of men towards women during that time as well as entrapment felt by the narrator. From the beginning the narrator was isolated and trapped as the gate was locked and the windows had bars covering them. She was left alone with the wallpaper and only her thoughts to keep her company, which isn’t ideal for someone with her illness. The narrator and many other woman at the time never had a choice in the matter and were forced to do things even when they felt trapped and isolated. If it weren’t for her husband trapping her, she wouldn’t have gone insane like she did. She was somewhat normal at the beginning of the story to completely insane. The imagery displayed throughout the story showed that the narrator fought for her freedom, eventually becoming free and maybe finding some peace.