How To Write An Analytical Essay On The Yellow Wallpaper

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman skillfully uses a simple wallpaper to display as a symbolic reference to the domestic lifestyle many women live on an everyday basis. The main character Jane is depicted as a sickly housewife who has been ordered to bed rest by her husband John and is slowly loses grips with reality in the fantasy of her “Yellow Wallpaper”. During the story Gilman allows Jane to share with the audience through a journal her everyday life, which consist of her being confined to a nursery painted yellow. Throughout the story Gilman displays the wallpaper through a variety of analytical symbolic ties to the struggle of subordinate domestic housewives. Jane first introduces us to the wallpaper in the beginning
The wallpaper places Jane in a place in her life where she is not questioning her reality but is sure that it lies within the wallpaper. “I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern but now I am quite sure it is a woman”. Jane has finally revealed to the audience that it is a woman that is in the wallpaper, the audience does not yet realize the depth of the relationship Jane has gained from her realization. This woman serves as a marker for Jane she is not only a woman similar to herself but a woman who is clearly hidden away only noticed by someone who takes a close look at what is trapping her. Gilman displays Jane’s excitement with “Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be…” this is how Jane gets fixated in her “fancy” she has now realized that she and the woman are more alike than she knew and this now brings something for her to look forward to everyday. Jane has now discovered that she is not the only one trapped, she is not alone in her sad nursery but the woman is there living the same life as her in the same