The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper Questions
1. In Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" the narrator makes constant reference to the paper's pattern. What does the pattern symbolize?
• What does the yellow wallpaper come to mean to the narrator?
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• What role does the yellow wallpaper play in the story?
• The yellow wallpaper plays a horror nightmare and a very hideous paper that symbolizes thedomestic life that traps so many women in the story.
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• Why does she spend so much time studying the pattern?
I think that she spend so much time studying the pattern because she wanted to know what was behind the wallpaper. At the begging of the story she feels attracted to this patterns maybe because she had the feeling that this yellow thing had was related to her. Thenarrator is too depressed to socialize with people, so she studies the patterns.
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• Look at the adjectives that Gilman uses to develop the wallpaper as a symbol and notice how the character of the narrator is tied to the descriptions of the wallpaper.
• Provide textual evidence to support your idea.
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• 2. How does the changing description of the wallpaper reflect thenarrator's changing character?
As the story progresses, the wallpaper changes, in fact, the narrator starts to see other things inside it that couldn’t see before. If the woman trapped there was angry, the narrator was angry; it all depended in which way she felt.

3. Why yellow? Why not blue wallpaper (or some other color)?
I think that the writer wrote about Yellow wallpaper becausethat color symbolizes the mental illness the narrator had, also how weak her life was.

4. Think about the structure and condition of the mansion. How is the mansion symbolic of something greater than itself?

5. How does Gilman use changes in language (diction, tone) to affect the narrator's shift from seeming sanity to madness?


6. At one point the narrator refers to John…"becausehe is so wise and because he loves me so." Do you feel John is wise and loving? Give specific examples from the text to support your views.

I do think that John is wise and loves her, but he is too much overprotective, he controls everything that his wife does. It’s really annoying for her. He knows that she is in a bad condition. We can see that he worries about her, for example in thiscases:
----“Don’t go walking about like that- you’ll get cold”
----“He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule for each hour in the day; he takes all care of me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more”

7. List some instances of contradictory comments about the heroine's room and/or situation.

Some instances of contradictorycomments about the heroin’s room and/or situation will be:

- The narrator says that the wallpaper’s color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. The woman also says that it is a dull yet lurid orange in some places.
- She quotes:
-----“It’s the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things Iever saw-not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.”
-----“But there is something else about that paper- the smell!”

8. What tone is set throughout the story with the repetition and use of the word "creep"? Does this tone change?
The tone that is set throughout the story, for me, is despair because during it, the woman is despair to free her, and do whatever she wants,and she always talks about creeping. Yes, this tone change at the end of the story, were the narrator is not any more despair nor trapped.

9. Looking at the minor characters, analyze the view of women during this time period. Use the text to support your ideas, supplying specific examples.

The women are seen like objects that only have to do the house stuff. They live in a sexist society,...