The Yellow Wallpaper Gothic Elements Essay
English The Yellow Wallpaper Essay
By Jon Karkafiris
The Wallpaper is a well-written novel by Charlotte Gilman. It portrays a young married woman who is trapped in a home due to her sickness and follows the development of her intolerance to the wallpaper in her room. The narrator generates fear and intrigue in the reader with a variety of different language patterns used throughout the text. The intense vocabulary leaves the reader in awe and with a feeling of uncertainty as to what will eventuate or happen next. She does this by emphasising how dark and dreary her situation was throughout the text. These gothic elements in the text leave the reader sensing the narrator’s situation and coming to terms with her predicament. Gilman uses descriptive tones throughout the text yet also leaves many unknowns to build suspense. She also creates uncertainty through the relationship with the wallpaper and leaves the reader unsettled throughout the novel and even the ending leaves us bewildered.
The author utilises gothic elements throughout the text. The reader can see this when the narrator states “That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care- there is something strange about the house - I can feel it. “ This type of description in the novel emphasises to the reader that something in the house makes the narrator feel uneasy and perturbed. This leaves the reader uncertain and a strong desire to continue to read through the text, to find what the narrator is finding difficult to comprehend. We can also see this type of gothic writing when the narrator writes, “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! ” The narrator emphasises that at night the wallpaper transforms and resembles dark, vertical bars. These bars have a heavier meaning in the text, relating to the entrapment of the narrator in the home. The bars ultimately express the repressed narrator and how she feels resentment to
By Jon Karkafiris
The Wallpaper is a well-written novel by Charlotte Gilman. It portrays a young married woman who is trapped in a home due to her sickness and follows the development of her intolerance to the wallpaper in her room. The narrator generates fear and intrigue in the reader with a variety of different language patterns used throughout the text. The intense vocabulary leaves the reader in awe and with a feeling of uncertainty as to what will eventuate or happen next. She does this by emphasising how dark and dreary her situation was throughout the text. These gothic elements in the text leave the reader sensing the narrator’s situation and coming to terms with her predicament. Gilman uses descriptive tones throughout the text yet also leaves many unknowns to build suspense. She also creates uncertainty through the relationship with the wallpaper and leaves the reader unsettled throughout the novel and even the ending leaves us bewildered.
The author utilises gothic elements throughout the text. The reader can see this when the narrator states “That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care- there is something strange about the house - I can feel it. “ This type of description in the novel emphasises to the reader that something in the house makes the narrator feel uneasy and perturbed. This leaves the reader uncertain and a strong desire to continue to read through the text, to find what the narrator is finding difficult to comprehend. We can also see this type of gothic writing when the narrator writes, “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! ” The narrator emphasises that at night the wallpaper transforms and resembles dark, vertical bars. These bars have a heavier meaning in the text, relating to the entrapment of the narrator in the home. The bars ultimately express the repressed narrator and how she feels resentment to