Notes on "The Yellow Wall Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

International Baccalaureate World Literature

The Yellow Wall Paper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The style of the first few paragraphs

It’s very terse, little sentences.
Colloquial - Conversational style of language.
She is completely passive, Accepting or allowing what others do, without active response. She is almost the experiment to her husband who is a physician; she’s taking whatever medicine he gives her.
‘Dead Paper’ – The contrast which will turn into ‘live paper’.

The second few paragraphs

There are frequent paragraph breaks because she’s trying to create impression of real self-helplessness. She knows exactly the state she is in.
Rebellious streak in line, ‘’I did write for a while in spite of them’’. This means she refused to obey in spite of what her husband told her to do.
Isolation, the building she’s in is isolated from the landscape. Her husband believes that the best treatment for her would be some time in the country where she can rest and reinvigorate herself.
She’s pushed into a position and she accepts that.
There is a legal dispute she doesn’t understand that why she cannot believe the house is haunted.
Husband has a unenlightened way of dealing with her.
She is suffering from a nervous disposition. Although today this would appear to be Post Natal Depression, and it’s important to remember that that this was not a recognised illness at the time.
A word used in this episode is Hysterical meaning people who are not in control are female. It’s a man’s opinion of a woman In no control.

The third few paragraphs

She introduces the Yellow Wall Paper, ‘’The paint and the paper look as if a boys’ school had used it.’’ UNRELIABLE NARRATOR at this point (an unreliable narrator doesn’t understand the importance of a particular situation or makes an incorrect conclusion or assumption about an event that he/she witnesses.
She is very analytical, looking closely at the colour and closely intrigued by the pattern.
The paragraphs are very telegraphic, short and concise because her husband might come in any moment. TERSE STYLE
She is predominately on edge although the medicine ...

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The third few paragraphs

She introduces the Yellow Wall Paper, ‘’The paint and the paper look as if a boys’ school had used it.’’ UNRELIABLE NARRATOR at this point (an unreliable narrator doesn’t understand the importance of a particular situation or makes an incorrect conclusion or assumption about an event that he/she witnesses.
She is very analytical, looking closely at the colour and closely intrigued by the pattern.
The paragraphs are very telegraphic, short and concise because her husband might come in any moment. TERSE STYLE
She is predominately on edge although the medicine is supposed to be a rest cure.
The writer comes back to the main it of the story, the Wall Paper very quickly
PROLPETIC IRONY here helps to create the character. With a passage of time irony is revealed.
The use of tiny short sentences and paragraphs is something she is doing in a therapeutic way. She’s squeezing ideas out to reveal how she feels.
Passage of time is noticed by the nurses

The fourth few paragraphs

EPISTOLARY NARRATIVE (in the form of letters or series of bulletins) starts here, ‘’ I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.
Relationship in a nutshell, ‘’He laughs at me so about this wall paper!’’
Doesn’t want her to have the pretty rooms except the cellar. Room where you cannot escape.
IRONY – Husband is a physician who ought to have dealt with her illness
This is a RECURRENT MOTIF of the wall paper; the main subject keeps coming back. ‘’At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards, he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way paper!’’
She uses the word ‘impertinence’ which can only be used when talking about people but she’s used it to talk about the wall paper.
‘’I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before and we all know how much expression they have.’’ – She says this although an inanimate thing can’t have expression. She has a big imagination
She also uses the word ‘inharmonious’ which means not forming to a pleasing whole and it doesn’t match in the context she’s used it in, ‘’ The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious.’’
UNRELIABLE NARRATOR is like a liar, but sometimes done without awareness, e.g ‘’ The wall paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother – they must have had a perseverance as hatred.’’ It could have been her or it could have been the children.
The routes of language go back a very long way

The fifth few paragraphs

This is where the wall paper changes, ‘’ This wall paper 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.’’
The word ‘Sister’ has useful double meanings, could be his sister or the nurse.

Notes on "The Yellow Wall Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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