The Yellow Wallpaper Character Analysis

Intro: “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Gilman,

The different types of elements help show the reader what the author is trying to say in their story. Character is a big element in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. There are many different characters in “The Yellow Wallpaper” including: John, her brother, John’s sister, Weir Mitchell, the woman in the wall and Jane. Most of these characters are not mentioned, but once in the whole story and they still make an impact on the meaning. The narrator's brother is a physician just like her husband, John, she listens to what her husband says, because her brother agrees with him and she can’t go against either one of them. John’s sister is their housekeeper and she doesn’t like the narrator writing, because she thinks that's what made her sick. The woman in the wall is someone that the narrator sees while she is staring at
She chose “Harriet Beecher Stowe as her role model”(“Gilman”) being that she is her great-aunt. Gilman’s marriage and motherhood took a huge toll on her. “She broke down, depressed and hysterical, mortified that she had given up her freedom”(“Gilman”). The story she wrote was based on actual events that happened in her life. In her life she had “feeling the need to ‘serve’ by writing full-time, gave up motherhood.”(“Gilman”) Gilman was big in women’s political issues and “helping to organize a Woman’s Congress in San Francisco”(“Gilman”). Treichler, a feminist, believes that “first, through her discussion of diagnosis, she works toward a definition of ‘patriarchal discourse’; and, second, through her close reading of the story she problematizes the image of the wallpaper, thereby calling into question the notion of women’s discourse” (Gauthier 2). Seeing that the events that happened in the story were true events that Gilman went