charlotte perkins gilman the yellow wallpaper analysis

Irony, derived from the narrator’s limited knowledge and understanding, is therefore a fundamental technique of “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Moreover, the narrator is not able to comprehend her growing physical confinement and powerlessness, as the reader is able to do. When the narrator does manage to interpret some sign of her subjugation correctly, her anger is neutralised by the ideology of romance and marriage.

Perhaps he is himself deluded by his show of feeling. For example, the reader has no trouble in seeing through John’s patronising affection as an instrument for controlling his wife, but the narrator accepts his cultivated love and concern at face value. She nevertheless unconsciously reveals her subjugation to the reader, with the result that the reader understands it much more clearly. The pervasive irony derives from the narrator, who fails to interpret her own condition, or to notice her gradual, horrifying decline into madness. The narrator, the contents of her narrative (what she reveals and what she withholds, what she knows and what she doesn’t know), her attitudes and her narrative methods, are the basis of the powerful effects Gilman’s story achieves. “The Yellow Wallpaper”: Tools for Interpretation

The ideas presented in her book Women and Economics invite comparison with contemporary insights into women’s social and economic positioning. See below for a list of background and critical reading about “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which, together with her feminist utopia Herland, is Gilman’s best-known work. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a leader of the late nineteenth-century feminist movement in America, and a key theorist.

Charlotte perkins gilman the yellow wallpaper analysis