Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an outstanding American writer and a huge supporter of women’s rights that reflected in her literary works. One of her most famous one is the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” that is written in the form of a diary of a young lady, who was diagnosed with a mental disease and spent a time living in a room with yellow wallpaper that led to her demise. The story can be viewed as semiautobiographical, as Gilman wrote it after she had a postpartum psychosis. In her story she uses figurative language to reveal the theme of madness that was experienced by the protagonist of the story.
The topic of insanity unfolds gradually after the narrator confinement in a room with the yellow wallpapers on the walls. “Gilman, who had been perilously close to madness herself, wanted to give a first-person, inside account of the experiences of a woman confined.” (Weatherford, 60) With the help of figurative language the author gives the reader an opportunity to follow, see and feel the woman’s descent into madness through her feelings, emotions and physical state. The reader little by little notices the changes that happen in the narrator’s perception and how her mind grows more chaotic.
The atmosphere of madness in mostly transferred with the help of different kinds of imagery – visual and kinesthetic– that are expressed by the usage of figurative language. The visual imagery can be found in the text in different kinds of epithets that are used to describe a house: “haunted”, “queer”, “hysterical”, “alone”, “strange”, “mysterious deep-shaded arbors”, “riotous old-fashioned flowers”, “gnarly trees”; a room: “windows are barred”, “fierce”, “the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered”, “great heavy bed”, “the furniture is worth than inharmonious”; and the yellow wallpapers: “sprawling flamboyant patterns”, “the color is repellant, almost revolting”, “a smouldering unclean yellow”, “a dull yet lurid orange”, “a sickly sulphur tint”, “horrid”, “irritating” and so on. (Gilman) All the epithets are used in negative meaning. The place where the narrator stays wafts madness at the young lady, as the atmosphere is really depressing and sullen. With such descriptions of the house, the room and the wallpaper Gilman creates an appropriate mood and sort of prepares the reader for the upcoming insanity. On the contrary, the positive epithets are used to describe everything outside the room and the house where the woman is trapped: “delicious garden”, “a lovely shaded winding road”, “a lovely country, full of elms and velvet meadows”, “lovely lane”. (Gilman) Such a contrast is designed to help the reader to distinguish the source of the woman’s lunacy and distraction. She feels normal and happy outside the room, but inside it she falls under the influence of the yellow wallpapers that oppress her.
Kinesthetic imagery is also transferred with epithets and describes the feelings of the narrator: “I felt creepy.”, “constant irritant to a normal mind”, “I get positively angry.”, “it makes me so nervous”, “I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.” (Gilman) The author presents the woman’s feelings and emotions through her own words, so that leaves no place for the reader’s imagination or guess. Everything is as clear as a day, very straightforward and leads to the inevitable madness. Also the woman often points out that she is exhausted and tired when she is in the room and observes the wallpapers.
A lot of attention should be devoted to the colors in the short story. Yellow is the prevailing with different shades of it – “a dull yet lurid orange”, “a sickly sulphur tint”. (Gilman) The yellow color has a symbolic meaning in the story: “As Mary Jacobus and Susan Lanser have noted, yellow is the color of sickness.” (Heilman, 177) It is associated, in a negative meaning, with disease and its symptoms – yellow skin, tongue or eyes. In psychology yellow is the color of mind and intellect that the narrator of the story gradually loses.
Work Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. 1st ed. 2015. Web. 1 Apr. 2016.
Heilmann, Ann. “Overwriting Decadence: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Oscar Wilde, and the Feminization of Art in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'.” The Mixed Legacy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Ed. Catherine J. Golden and Joanna Schneider Zangrando Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000. 175-188. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 62. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 175-188.
Weatherford, Jenny. "Approaching The Ineffable: "The Yellow Wallpaper" And Gilman's Problem With Language". American Studies in Scandinavia 31 (1999): 58-75. Print.
