Question

Describe the setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper." How does the setting "shape" the narrator's "personality, outlook, and values" and how is the setting necessary to the plot?

Answer 1

THE YELLOW NEWSPAPER

INTRODUCTION

The yellow wallpaper is the short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in the new England magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, due to its illustration of the attitude towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century. The story is a collection of journal entries written by a women whose physician husband ( John ) has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the unnamed women is forbidden from working , and is encouraged to eat well and get plenty of air, so she can recuperate from what he calls a " temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical nervous tendency, a diagnosis common to women during the period.

THE NARRATORS OUTLOOK, VALUES AND PLOT ABOUT THE STORY

The story details an intricate period in the life of a young women. Her supportive, though misunderstanding husband, john, believes it is in her best interests to go on a rest cure after experiencing symptoms of temporary nervous depression after the birth of their baby. The family spends the summer at the colonial mansion that strikes the narrator as odd. She and her husband moved into an upstairs room. Along with the couple,Johns sister Jennie is present serving as the housekeeper. At the time, the windows are barred, the wallpaper has been torn, there are metal rings in the walls - the kind that are used for restrains - and the floor is scratched. The narrator blames all these to children having resided there as the most of the damage is away to their reach. Ultimately, readers are left to be unsure what is the source of the rooms state leading them to see the ambiguates in the unreliability of the narrator. It is strongly implied however that the room was formerly used as a prison to contain another mentally ill patient, as the bed has been nailed to the floor and there is the gate at the top of the satires leading to the room.

The narrator devotes many journal entries to describing the wallpaper in the room - its " Yellow " smell, its breakneck pattern, the missing patches, and the way it leaves yellow smears on the skin and clothing of anyone who touches it. She describes how the longer one stays in the bedroom, the more the wallpaper appears to mutate, especially the moonlight. With no stimulus other than the wallpaper, the pattern and designs become increasingly intriguing to the narrator. She soon begins to see a figures in the design, and eventually comes to believe that women is creeping all the fours in the pattern.

CONCLUSION

After many moments of tension between John and his wife, the story climaxes with the final day in the house. On the last day of summer, she locks herself in her room to strip the remains of the wallpaper. When John arrives home, she refuses to unlock the door. When he returns with the key, she finds her creeping inside her room she excitedly exclaims ' I've got out last, inspite of you and Jane, believing herself to have become the personification of the women tracked behind the yellow newspaper.