The Yellow Wallpaper Questions and Answers for Discussion & Assessment | Literature Guides at IvyPanda® (2024)

Looking for The Yellow Wallpaper questions and answers? Emotional and autobiographical, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman leaves many questions unanswered.

This page contains a list of answers to the key The Yellow Wallpaper’s questions. They may be used both for discussion and assessment. If you want to read the full versions of the answers, click on the links.

❓ The Yellow Wallpaper Q&A

By the fourth of July, the narrator confesses that the wallpaper starts to grow on her. This admission confirms the fact that her mental well-being is declining. That is why John threatens her making an appointment with another doctor.

The story shows a gradual mental breakdown of the narrator. She reveals it in her diary and goes mad by the end of the story. The point of view changes to highlight the narrator’s irreversible insanity.

The novel shows the gradual decline of the narrator’s mental state. She reaches the point of complete insanity when she tears down the yellow paper at the end. Having done so, she begins to think that she is the woman who has just been freed from the wall.

When describing the wallpaper, which acts as a symbol of the protagonist’s confinement, the author uses Proverbs 18:24. She alludes to the character’s need for self-reflection. By the quote, the author implies that the narrator needs to recognize her imprisonment and help herself.

The most common theory is that Jane is the unnamed protagonist and the narrator. Gilman uses an unreliable narrator to show her rapid mental health decline. The character refers to herself in the third person, rejecting the social norms and her former self.

Irony plays a crucial role in the story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It emphasizes how the course of treatment chosen by the narrator’s husband aggravates her condition. It also increases the reader`s engagement and facilitates sympathy for the main character.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper takes place between the late 1890s and early 1900s. The main reason is that the story depicts Gilman’s own life. Thus, it is a semi-autobiography.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story by feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The heroine of the story goes through a “rest cure” in a room with yellow wallpaper. She reflects on the wallpaper pattern and keeps a diary where she notes the improvement in her condition. Starting with Chapter 11, the character’s obsessive thoughts about the wallpaper design turn into hallucinations.

The reason for John to faint at the end of the story is his shock provoked by his wife’s mental state. He prescribes the “rest therapy” to eliminate any distressing events that could worsen his wife’s depression. But this approach only leads the main character to insanity, which John observes in full glory in the last chapter.

“Creeping” in the story by Charlotte P. Gilman symbolizes the struggle of women to overcome domestic captivity. The word appears in the text many times. It adds to the story’s creepy air that unfolds around a woman who became a domestic violence victim.

The Yellow Wallpaper is written as the diary of a physician’s wife subjected to a rest cure. She goes through a “temporary nervous depression” after the birth of her child. In modern terms, it seems like she suffers from postpartum depression caused by a stressful pregnancy.

The woman behind the wallpaper in Gilman’s short story represents the personality of the narrator. Throughout the plot, she falls into madness and seeks an escape. That’s why she identifies with the woman presumably kept behind the yellow wallpaper.

The wallpaper is the screen onto which the narrator projects her fears. Its pattern makes her anxious about invisible supervision. At first, her condition is disquiet. Then it turns to obsessive anxiety, and, finally, madness. In the end, we witness an act of aggression.

Gilman uses figurative language like imagery, similes, and personification. The purpose is to achieve the effect of a woman being out of touch with reality.

The Yellow Wallpaper is told through the perspective of a woman who is slowly driven into insanity. First, she lacked human contact. Second, she was unable to distract herself from conflicting emotions. Third, John failed to support her when she needed it the most. Several foreshadowing elements open the story. But they reveal themselves only by the ending.

The narrator finds the yellow color of the wallpaper disturbing and revolting. She doesn’t like the erratic patterns and the fact that the wallpaper is peeling off. She claims it’s the worst paper she has seen in her life.

The creepy culmination of The Yellow Wallpaper has polarized interpretations. The ending is significant since the narrator finally breaks free from the chains of society. But soon, it gets clear that she is not free at all. She has to live with the prejudice patriarchy puts on her as a female. Insanity is the only way to battle this.

The ending of Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is tragic and symbolic. A woman suffering from nervous depression was locked in a room with good intentions. Eventually, she loses her mind. She tears the wallpapers off in an attempt to free an imaginary woman who was locked in the same place.

The Yellow Wallpaper was written in 1892. Back then, women did not have the fundamental right to be responsible for their lives and well-being. Men were the ones to decide what a woman should do or say. Gilman wrote her story to claim women to be independent and their voices worthy of attention.

The Yellow Wallpaper contains several controversies. But the central conflict is the opposition between society and a man. This struggle of two concepts reflects modern problems as well.

The yellow wallpaper is a collective symbol. It represents different aspects of the time when the story was written. It refers to the oppressive social standards of patriarchy. Women had no right to claim their voice, so the symbol represents their striving to gain autonomy and respect.

The narrator loses her mind following months of confinement in the rented mansion. She tears down the wallpaper and goes completely insane, as her husband John faints at the sight of it.

The narrator’s condition and John’s intention to cure her destroy their marriage. John treats his wife, not as a lover. She is an accessory to him. John’s attitude, actions, and words offend the woman, and she feels belittled.

The narrator undergoes a mental conversion that leads her to the revelation about freedom. She fixates on the wallpaper and projects her issues onto this symbol. Her obsession gives the walls additional meaning, and she becomes the “creeping woman.”

🎓 References

1. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – Free Ebook

2. The Yellow Wall-Paper

3. Feminist Gothic in “The Yellow Wallpaper” | – Lone Star College