What is the topic of the yellow wallpaper?
Self-Expression, Miscommunication, and Misunderstanding. Alongside questions of gender and mental illness in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the simple story of a woman who is unable fully to express herself, or to find someone who will listen.
Which are major themes in The Yellow Wallpaper?
The main themes in “The Yellow Wallpaper” are the oppressive nature of gender roles, appearance versus reality, and the need for self-expression.
What does the narrator obsessed with finding a pattern of the wallpaper?
Her obsession with finding a pattern reveals her imagination and creativity, which is stifled by her husband and by her being forced to spend so much time in the room. She is depressed, not able to see her new baby, not permitted to have visitors, and shut in at all times.
What does the mansion symbolize in the Yellow Wallpaper?
In “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist is oppressed and represents the effect of the oppression of women in society. It is customary to find the symbol of the house as representing a secure place for a woman’s transformation and her release of self expression.
What is the general setting of The Yellow Wallpaper?
setting (place) America, in a large summer home (or possibly an old asylum), primarily in one bedroom within the house.
What is the author’s message in the yellow wallpaper?
The Yellow Wallpaper enlightens the reader on women’s health, motherhood, mental breakdown and its treatment, as well as feminism and gender relations in late 19th-century America.
What happens at the end of the yellow wallpaper?
By the end, the narrator is hopelessly insane, convinced that there are many creeping women around and that she herself has come out of the wallpaper—that she herself is the trapped woman. She creeps endlessly around the room, smudging the wallpaper as she goes.
What is the woman in the wallpaper shaking?
She describes the woman as crawling around quickly behind the paper and shaking it. She recognizes that the woman is trapped behind the paper. She also thinks there are “a great many women behind” the paper, which indicates that the woman’s oppression is not just her own but is a larger societal issue.
What does the narrator believe is the best cure for her?
The narrator believes that her best cure would be work, go out into the world (and society), and try to be a mother to her child. Her husband and brother wish to do the opposite: they want to isolate her, keep her away from her child, and prohibit her from working.