CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN’S “THE YELLOW WALLPAPER”
Sometimes people need specific concepts to convey their feelings and thoughts. Sometimes
these concepts are certain symbols that society can understand, sometimes the meaning of a
feeling or thought is conveyed to any object. In other words, those feelings and thoughts apart
from symbols such as flags or colors are conveyed to the reader through other objects. In this
way, the reader receives the message and emotion that a story, novel or essay actually wants
to convey, more strikingly and effectively. As in the story of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The
Yellow Wallpaper”, which was symbolized and the story was conveyed to the reader through
the yellow wallpaper. The story of a woman with a mental disorder meeting the yellow
wallpaper and which deals with the character’s later processes, while making the main
character think, it also gives a feminine perspective. The most crucial and striking parts of the
story are, the fact that a woman slowly goes crazy after meeting the yellow wallpaper, on the
other hand, the yellow wallpaper reflects the main character and actually symbolizes all the
oppressed women in the world.
On the one hand, Charlotte Perkins Gilman demonstrated the symbolization clearly and
effectively, by tying the main character with yellow wallpaper in story and by the yellow
wallpaper reflecting the main character. After a certain time, the main character has
established a bond with the yellow wallpaper. The wallpaper, which looked pale and ugly
before, later became interesting. Especially the interestingness of the yellow wallpaper, which
emerges gradually, shows the mind and psychological disorder of the main character. For
example, the wallpaper that initially only consisted of lines, later moved and finally revealed
certain silhouettes. Although this situation is caused by the loneliness of the main character,
actually the wallpaper forms the mind of the main character in a way. On the other side,
towards the end of the story, the main character’s willing to crawl like the woman on the wall
and putting herself in that woman’s shoes clearly shows the main character’s search for
freedom. In other words, at the root of all these psychological disorders, there is purely and
simply the desire for freedom in the mind of the character. At the end of the story, the
character’s free crawling on the wall and her happiness indicates that this the main character’s
only escape round and she found it. “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and
right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”(Charlotte
Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper in the Perrine’s Literature – pp.656). So at the end
of the story, it is inferred that loneliness is the worst treatment that can be applied to a person,
loneliness causes an individual’s psychology to worsen. At the beginning of the story it is
clear that the main character was willing to go out, meet and write but later unfortunately she
loses her desires because of her interest in the wallpaper. In a way she dead to the world.
On the other hand, women were oppressed in every society from time to time in history.
Their ideas are ignored and marginalized. So being a woman has often become a problem.
From time to time, women only came to the fore with their fertility and sexuality. Although
such thoughts are decreasing in the world we live in today, they still exist in some societies.
Especially in the middle east, women are still marginalized and their thoughts and ideas are
trivialized. On the other hand, in our society, there are many oppressed women, whose voices
we may not hear. Although women’s freedom has become a matter of society, unfortunately,
this kind of mentality cannot change suddenly. Charlotte Perkins Gilman clearly and
strikingly demonstrated the suppresion and trivialize of women in her story. For instance, the
lack of attention to the main character’s ideas and thoughts, her husband’s indifference to
these ideas and his belief that he knows best, clearly shows this. On the other hand, the main
character being confined to a room and isolation from society is a complete example of this
idea. The most important point is that the character sees female silhouettes behind bars on the
wall. This is actually the most crucial point of the story because the female silhouettes on the
wall, especially the fact that they are imprisoned behind bars, symbolize women whose
freedom is restricted in the world. “ Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind,
and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.
Then in the very ' bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of
the bars and shakes them hard.” (Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper in the
Perrine’s Literature – pp.654)
As a result, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper” story, she reflected the inner
world of the main character with yellow wallpaper and symbolized the issue of women and
freedom with yellow wallpaper. Gilman gave readers not only a feminine perspective but also
an awareness. It can also be said that Gilman has been a cry and voice of women whose
freedom is restricted.