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A detailed analysis of a work of literature always implies the possibility of tracing the relationship between composition and implication. The form of the text should be understood as serving a certain meaning or giving it a particular tone. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is written in the format of a diary, and this form needs to be interpreted in depth. With a detailed analysis of the story, including the restoration of some aspects of the plot, it becomes clear that the diary form enhances the deep semantic content of the feminist kind.
The writer’s backstory strongly influences the interpretation of the plot of the story “Yellow Wallpaper” and also helps to understand the purpose of a diary form. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born into a family close to the suffragette movement, who represented the first wave of the feminist liberation movement that advocated for women’s right to vote. She grew up in the environment of older free-thinking women, and the opportunity to speak for herself was important to her as an inalienable right of a woman (Gilman “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” 2). Its epistolary form is characteristic of both romantic and sentimental literature and the gothic genre, but in this short story it serves. The form of the story is intimate and personal, in this way transcending the literary traditions and broadcasting a feminist worldview.
The growing tension in the protagonist’s diary entries throughout the story’s development serves several plot and formal purposes. Firstly, in this way the epistolary form of the story receives additional intensity due to the increasing anxiety of the content. Secondly, the written form has a certain trust and sincerity in such a way that the reader gets the opportunity to be more emotionally involved in what is happening in the story. “I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time,” writes the protagonist, and the reader tends to empathize with her (Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” 24). Overall, the epistolary form of the story allows the reader to more deeply understand the train of thought of the heroine, arising from the fixed stream of consciousness.
The context of the story and the extra attention to the peculiarities of the written language of the diary further complicate the interpretation of the story. Gilman claims to have lived a similar but less intense experience of insanity herself, and the trigger for her disorder was the restriction of freedom of expression (Gilman “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” 1). The problem of treating neurasthenia in direct and pseudo-rational ways is demonstrated in the story and expresses the real problem of the era. The story thus uses this format to describe to what extent the freedom and mental health of women were underestimated at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The diary format allows one to quickly restore the plot, but also to understand to what extent the narrator is oppressed. The main character is placed in a room with yellow wallpaper, not entirely of her own free will. She describes her routine in which she “takes phosphates or phosphites” (Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” 10) and takes short daily walks. However, the main advice for the reader is to keep track of what she should not do, which turns out to be somewhat veiled in the text. In essence, the narrator is forbidden to read, think and express her thoughts, which is why she trusts them to “dead paper” (Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” 17). The main character is sarcastic, constantly calling her cruel and rational husband “Dear John” (Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” 55). However, as researchers point out, the heroine herself in the story does not have a name (Bristow 319). Given that she cannot even see her child, one can imagine how limited and dystopian her existence is. The author thus demonstrates through the forbidden diary of her heroine how the individuality of a woman was suppressed in the patriarchal society of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Careful interpretation of Gilman’s story shows that the epistolary features of the organization of the narrative give the story a more sharply social interpretation. The horror genre and the form of the diary work for a deeper reading into the text, in which, as if subconsciously, rebellious anti-patriarchal overtones are read. The diary form in the story is a way of self-expression of a woman, with a clear feminist message of liberation from prohibitions, in particular through writing.
Works Cited
Bristow, Daniel. “The Yellow Metonym: “You and Jane” in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, vol. 34, no. 4, 2021. Web.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Virago Press, 1981.
“Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”. The Forerunner, Web.
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