The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Essay Example

DRAFT Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” explores the psychological tensions and the struggles of selfhood and identity, which define the life and the difficulties experienced by the female narrator. The story is rendered in first person point of view, which makes it vivid and involving. Some of the stylistic devices that enhance the flow of the story include symbolism, imagery, and allegory. The author also uses various linguistic techniques to create meaning and improve on the quality of the story.

In terms of theme, the short story focusses on the struggle for female liberation from the stranglehold of patriarchy. The short story could be analyzed along the ideology of feminism. There is an evident psychological struggle against the oppression of the male-dominated world. The narration of the story follows the course of the disintegration of the mind of the narrator from a point of unease to the extreme end of mental disintegration. There is the mention of the psychological conditions that afflict the patient and the eventual but which degenerate into a heightened state of madness, as she increasingly gets obsessed with some disturbing pattern in the yellow wallpaper.

The author adopts a language that effectively brings to the fore details of subjugation of the female subjects and the psychological impacts that result from such treatment. Evidently, the choice of language effectively renders the story in a perspective that unites the purpose and meaning of the story in a sense of balance and symmetry of facts. Essentially, some of the details of the story are built around the need to develop the thematic aspect of the story in a way that aligns with the kind of disconnection that the author felt in the world in which she lived.

The plot of the story effectively condenses the different meanings of style and moves in a sequence that enhances the readability of the story. In essence, the story begins with the description of the relationship between the narrator and her husband. This part of the plot provides important highlights on the kind of discomfort that the narrator felt from the overwhelming care and control that her husband subjected on her. The part of the plot also helps in illustrating the element of characterization.

The preliminary parts of the story are intended to build on the characters of the main characters. For instance, the reader gets to know about the domineering character of the narrator’s husband from the kind of treatment and perspective he projects towards the narrator. The plot develops towards the definitive part of the story where the narrator falls into a kind of lunatic obsession with the strange pattern she observes in the yellow wall paper. In this regard it might be argued that the author manages to combine the different aspects of story into a sequence that effectively provides guidance into the central concerns of the story.

The determination of the merit of the plot towards the development of meaning could be assessed from the point of view of the main characters.