The Yellow Wallpaper Character Analysis

The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins is the main character of the story. She is a newly married woman who is undergoing postpartum depression. Her husband, who thinks that he is curing her but ignores her cries and pleas to leave, confines the narrator to her home. She tells the story from her secret diary, where she tells of her thoughts about her illness, her treatment, and her growing obsession of the wallpaper. One would chose to analyze the narrator’s personality because she is an interesting figure undergoing an illness that represents the lives of many women during the nineteenth century. The narrator is a hero. Although she is mentally unstable, she is a hero in disguise. John, her husband and the villain, is “trying to help her,” but he really pays no attention to what she really needs. Her illness is not getting any better, yet, he still insists on keeping her confined to that room. The narrator was treated with outdated medications and treatments. “So I take phosphates or phosphites- whichever it is, and tonics, and …show more content…
The narrator starts to see things within the wallpaper, and she finally makes out a woman being trapped behind bars. By the end of the story, one can see that wallpaper actually symbolizes the narrator’s life. She also is trapped behind her own bars and looking for a way to escape. She is confined to a room and is expected to be perfect. The narrator’s life is the ultimate figure of symbolism. She symbolizes women during the nineteenth century. During the nineteenth century, women were expected to be domesticated and were always second class compared to the men. The story shows how men treated their wives as childlike and ignorant. They were superior and did not give the women an opportunity to speak for themselves. The narrator had no say so in how she thought she should live her life, just like the women of the nineteenth

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