Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper

To start with, let us take a look around your room. Isn't this Yellow Wallpaper simply enchanting? Charlotte, the protagonist of the novel, found it repulsive. She was obsessed with its color, its disorder, its incongruence. She even said she could feel a yellow smell in the house. Can you believe that? What nonsense! Of course, you don't have to worry about your mental health. Charlotte was a grievous case. Her state deteriorated rapidly. You see, she suffered from postpartum psychosis, meaning she had hallucinations, delusions, fancy ideas, nervousness, irritability.. One could observe extreme switches in her mood.

Her thoughts were weird from the first moment, though. Hardly had she occupied the room when she noticed the oddity of the wallpaper. She personified it already then. Other parts of the chamber were flawed as well, but only the wallpaper bothered her. A peculiar love and hate relationship developed between them. She discovered a subpattern which changed with the light, and since this continuous transformation twisted her challenge even more, she was all the more perplexed. Still, her determination to make out some kind of order did not subside.

Her words sometimes foreshadowed her imminent collapsion; for example, she characterized the pattern as if it had delirium tremens, wich later turned out to be her own syringe of self-destruction.

Much as the mystery of the pattern wearied her, she couldn't stop focusing on trying to figure it out. The same obsession overcame her about writing; she had to keep expressing her thoughts. Strange to say, parallelly with her sane self pouring down on the paper, her insanity crept out of the wallpaper to dominate her.

With time, her fixation altered into a form of self-torture. She enjoyed getting lost in the disharmony of the wallpaper, especially because it made her feel strong and chosen. She fancied that no one but her could endure this ordeal; the fact that only she can see behind the front pattern made her feel unique.

As the days passed, she was falling deeper into dementia. The mere act of thinking tired her, and she stopped talking about her preoccupation taking it as a sign of her wisdom. By the time her husband, John said that her state is improving, her entrapped self had taken over control. With her hand on the wheel of Charlotte's sanity, she was leading her towards the edge of derangement. Another sign of her mental derailment, her relationship with her husband was affected severely. In the beginning, she didn't want to worry him. Later, she started to be afraid and suspicious of him, nurturing mistrustful feelings instead of tender ones. Furthermore, her senses became confused as well. She imagined feeling a "yellow smell" lurking around in the house and crawling into her hair.

Finally, when she saw the woman from her delusions creeping in the garden, Charlotte felt empathy towards her. This proves that they were equal, and the woman's state of mind degenerated into that of the ex-prisoner of the wallpaper. Enhancing the paradox, she tied her just unleashed personality so that she wouldn't escape; meanwhile she psychologically liberated herself, physically confined herself in the room. Fearing that they would take her out to the outside world, which is green, not yellow.

I partly agree with her. Don't you also think that this yellow color outshines the greenness of the grass, the trees, everything? I'm sure you'll enjoy your resort just as much as she did.. Sleep well.