wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” A major theme in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is that solitary confinement and exclusion from the public results in insanity. The use of imagery and setting helps illustrate this theme throughout the story. The unnamed protagonist in this story suffers from a nervous disorder which is enhanced by her feeling of being trapped within a room. The setting of the vast colonial mansion and particularly the nursery room with …showed first 75 words of 515 total…

…showed last 75 words of 515 total…no longer curable and insanity takes over. The protagonist finally recognizes the fact that the women she witnesses is really her own frame of mind and proclaims “I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!” (75). She believes that she has at last gained her freedom from the illness when in reality, the exact opposite has occurred. The incessant creeping is the final summation to her insanity.