How the writer creates a sense of mystery in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'

The narrative is structured as a series of journal entries. Therefore allowing the writer to get inside the head of the character and reveal private and secret things about the character. The reader therefore gets an insight into the thoughts and feelings of the character. However this also means the character only reveals what they want to tell you and we only see things from her point of view. As a result of this we don’t get to see the whole picture. In this way the writer creates a sense of mystery by making the reader think about what they are not being told by the narrator.

The writer chose to use a first person narrator so that we can see things from the characters opinion of events. This is seen as bias as we see everything from the same perspective. This brings the question of reliability to the readers mind. The narrator is selecting what she wants to reveal to us and we as readers have to decide what true. The writer certainly creates a sense of mystery when the narrator says ‘It does not do to trust people too much’ as the reader thinks about what mysteries the narrator may be hiding from us.

The story is written in present tense which really gets the reader involved and hooks the reader in. By using the present tense the writer creates a sense of urgency, we see events right after they occur creating a sense of immediacy. The writers’ choice to use present tense is one of the ways she creates mystery this is because neither the reader nor narrator knows what is going to happen in the future only what has happened in the past and what is happening in present. The ending therefore remains a mystery to the reader as well as a character until the end.

Generic conventions are used in the description of the setting. She uses these gothic conventions to create a sense of mystery and eeriness. ‘A colonial mansion’ ‘haunted house’ ‘queer’, these descriptions of the house are symbolic as they contain connotations of mystery.

Due to the fact that the narrative is written in first person the writer is unable to show he points of views of other characters. However the writer manages to portray these views through direct speech and reported speech. The direct speech we read from John show him as being dismissive and patronizing. He also uses a lot of imperative sentences tell the narrator what to do. This creates mystery in the readers mind as they think of other ways in which the character of John could be interpreted through other characters other than the narrator. Maybe only the writer sees him as patronizing and dismissive.

Towards the end of the novel the narrator starts to use exclamatory sentences. This tells the reader that the narrator is excited about something but the reader is unaware of the reasons for this excitement. In this way the writer creates mystery by withholding information from the reader.