The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

  • Submitted By: ian2113
  • Date Submitted: 11/02/2015 12:03 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1424
  • Page: 6




Stuck in the Paper

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house and reach the height of romantic felicity-but that would be asking to much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician and perhaps- (I would not say it to a living sould of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)- perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see, he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency- what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing. (Gilman, 113)



In the opening passage of the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1877, the reader is introduced to an anonymous narrator and her husband John. The writing style of the author involves several themes including psychosis and the oppression of women. The passage serves as a powerful introduction to a tale of Golic horror which prepares the acute reader with insight into the lives of the characters and their essential role in the denouement of the story
The author reveals the main character, the narrator, in a mysterious way. Using the first person narrative, the author enables the reader to become acquainted with the protagonist. With the opening sentence, “It is very...

Similar Essays