Narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" 

By: Nicole Nelson

“I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.” In this excerpt from "The Yellow Wallpaper", the narrator is telling the story as if it is her own. In fact, the very definition of narrator, according to Literature Across Cultures, is the voice that tells the story. In other words, “The narrator is a technique that writers use to create a particular point of view from which they will tell the story, present the actions, and shape the readers’ responses” (LAC 927). In this short story, the narrator is telling her story through her neurotic thoughts, her husband's incessant controlling suggestions, and the overall behavior of a deeply disturbed individual.

By telling the story in a first-person fashion, the reader develops an in-depth insight into the narrator’s views and feelings. In actuality, the narrator is the main character in the story itself. She is a woman suffering from mental illness, which is compounded by being oppressed by her husband. As a poignant example of her repression at the hands of her husband and mental illness, “He [John] says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try” (Gilman 299). The aforementioned quote shows her husband’s constant belittling and her compliance with his forced suggestions. All of her suppressed feelings and internal thoughts are expressed through the narrator, much of which is hidden from the other characters in the story. Specifically, the narrator speaks of hiding her affinity for writing and also hiding her sadness from others. She speaks of her enjoyment of writing and the fact that she has to hide it from John, as he discourages her writing because it will lead to "excited fancies" (Gilman 299). Also, she cries often but intentionally does so only when she is alone. The narrator is able to draw the reader in and present the main character as a generally likable and passive woman; this helps evoke understanding and sympathy for her on the reader’s part. Furthermore, an intimate relationship is formed between the narrator and the reader, as we are allowed a glimpse into the character’s innermost thoughts and feelings. By narrating the story in the first-person perspective, the reader was able to observe the unraveling of the main character from the inside. In other words, we were able to move with the character through her various stages of mental illness. It is noteworthy to mention that this story was drafted as if it were the character's writings in her personal journal or diary, which further creates intimacy between the character and the reader. In addition, this point of view conjured a feeling of anxiety in the reader by expressing the pent-up frustration of the narrator/main character. In the end, we experienced the breaking point first-hand when the narrator exposed the fact that the woman in the wallpaper was representative of the main character herself. In point, the story talked about the woman who crept during the daytime and then changed to, “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!” (Gilman 307). The story would not have had the same efficacy had it been told from the third-person perspective, since the digression of the character would have been an outside observation. In short, the character development and ultimate descent into madness was expressed as an intensely personal narrative.

In addition, the narrator did an excellent job of describing the setting in great detail and also set the tone of the story. For instance, the mansion they rented was called haunted, queer, delicious, beautiful, and long untenanted (Gilman 296-297). All of these adjectives create an image of an estate in the Southern United States, which is partially beautiful and, at the same time, exists in a dilapidated state. The narrator gives these conflicting descriptions and is able to effectively portray the combinations of beauty and ugliness, peacefulness and horror. This same theme is extended in the description of the wallpaper that both makes the narrator crazy and also keeps her enthralled for days on end. To this end, the character sums up this feeling by saying, “I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps because of the wall-paper” (Gilman 301). It is this dual complexity that keeps the story interesting, and also creates anticipation in the reader regarding how the character will morph throughout the plot. As an aside, the narrator also uses proper dialect, which represents an educated person of a century ago. Again, the narrator told the story in this manner because it was from the viewpoint of the main character. In addition, in 1891, when "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written, this type of proper English was commonly in use. By using this proper English, the narrator is able to enhance the periodical setting and also amplify the character’s air. Moreover, the narrator appeared to be an intelligent, well-off woman by her use of fancy terms and her husband having the prominent career of a physician, which made it more difficult to dismiss her as a complete wack job.

Moreover, according to the Biography website, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was known to condemn doctor's commonly held attitudes toward women during the 19^th century. Women of the time were stereotyped as hysterical or irrational, and their suffering was dismissed by physicians on the whole. Furthermore, Gilman was ahead of her time in the feminist movement, although she was still able to have her story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," published in The New England Magazine in 1892, which allowed her voice to be heard nationwide. Specifically, her work was important in exposing the ridiculous stereotypes surrounding mental illness in women. In addition, the main character spoke of her baby that was cared for by a nanny named Mary (Gilman 299). This knowledge makes it easy to draw the conclusion that she suffered from post partum depression; however, this was not even a concept in the 19^th century, and women were simply labeled by physicians as having a nervous condition or hysteria. 

In summary, the narrator was able to introduce us to all the characters, create a sympathetic tone, and deepen our understanding of the character’s complexities. Also, by telling the story in the first-person perspective, the narrator created a sense of intimacy between the reader and the main character that would not have existed had the narrator been an outside observer. Another intriguing component to this story is found in Gilman's own history of depression and subsequent treatments. According to Biography, Gilman was unsuccessfully treated by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, whom she mentioned in "The Yellow Wallpaper" in attempts to deter other women from seeking his care. By incorporating her personal experiences into the story and having the narrator speak from the first-person point of view, Gilman was able to write an enthralling story and also make a social statement about the mistreatment of women with mental illness. To this end, the narrator was both the main character and the story-teller, and this made the story believable, thought-provoking, and also alarming.

Works Cited

"Charlotte Perkins Gilman." Biography. 2009. Web. 29 Oct. 2009. 

Gillespie, Sheena, Pipolo, Tony, and Terezinha Fonseca. Literature Across Cultures. 5th ed. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2008. Print. 

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." 1891. Literature Across Cultures. Ed. Heidi Jacobs and Matthew Wright. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2008. 296-308. Print.

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Also see Gilman's Biography at: Charlotte Perkins Gilman