Reading the Pattern in ―The Yellow Wallpaper‖

Reading the Pattern in ―The Yellow Wallpaper‖

This paper is a literary analysis of Charlotte Perkins Gilman‘s short story, ―The Yellow Wallpaper.‖ In the story the unnamed protagonist is diagnosed with a ―nervous disease‖ and confined to a nursery/bedroom in ―ancestral halls‖ (253). Ironically, it is through thisnursery that serves as a prison cell for the captive and ill woman that she finds her voice and her freedom. This paper examines the symbolic devices and imagery that reflect her struggle and provide an escape route for women confined to an oppressive child-like status. Her diary entries are the mechanism whereby she records her observations and examines the features and nature of her own imprisonment.