Summarise the story The Yellow Wallpaper in your own words.

Ans.

The story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is essentially based on the psychological changes created in the mind of Dr. John, who is doing his best for the recovery of his wife after she has given birth to a child. She has been brought to stay in a room of very old and big palatial building, about three miles away from their town. She has been confined within a room at the first floor which is covered with yellow wall paper. It is so old that the walls have gone damp and the children of the families living earlier there, have destroyed some of the paper, there are patches on the walls and the floor has also been dug from place to place. Though the house is surrounded with a beautiful garden but it seems to be haunted and nobody has come there to live for a long time. In fact the whole plot has been developed on the lines of a psychological story but the chief aim of the writer is to show that loneliness, worklessness and seclusion finally creates a mental disbalance. It has been written in the form of diary entry. The lady is confined within that room and has not been allowed to leave the room or read or write. In this way, she is actually a prisoner in that solitude, though she always wishes to do something and come out of it. This aspect has been indicated in the very beginning, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency-what is one to do?” This indicates that symptoms of psychological depression are already present in her which be come serious later on.

In order to remove her loneliness, she tries to write the diary but even this becomes tiresome for her; she always felt “there is something strange about the house-I can feel it.” She feels that she has not seen the paper worse than this and “the colour is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight.” This slowly changed into another conception and she noticed a certain pattern and feature in those torn papers on the wall. She felt as if there were creatures and the pattern like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes staring at her. Slowly things became worse and she felt, “Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, un blinking eyes are everywhere.” These things began to create a feeling of terror in her mind and she was all the more nervous. She says “I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.” She slowly began to take interest in that paper. but actually it was not interest rather the extreme of her psychological depression. She spent a lot of time staring at the pattern and colour of the wall paper which slowly entered her mind. She now began to imagine that like her, there are a number of women confined within it and they are hidden behind the paper. Only sometimes they can be noticed peeping out of it. She realizes this depression herself but she cannot express it before her husband and this be comes even more frustrating for her.

Now she began to feel that these women are creeping behind that paper. She once feels that the paper itself behaves like some animate things, “There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes.” Even Jennie seems to have been influenced by it and feels that the paper leaves its colour on everything. The lady now began to sleep in the day, and woke all the night to notice various changes in the wall paper. She also felt a peculiar smell out of it that spread everywhere. She felt it everywhere “Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it, there is that smell” and it became more effective in the damp weather. She now began to feel that the woman comes out of the wall paper in the day also and is always creeping on the floor. She also felt an urge but checked herself lest she should be seen and face humiliation. She felt “I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country. creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.” At last, the spirit to crawl became very powerful in her and she failed to control it. She stood on the floor and tore away the paper as much as she could. For once, she felt to jump out of the window but it was barred. She began to realize that like those women, she will also have to go behind that paper at night. Now she had completely lost her mental balance. “It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please.” She locked the room and began to creep. When the doctor returned, he was shocked to see her, he opened the door after searching the key and fainted. She was frantically crying, “I’ve got out at last in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” and she kept on creeping by the wall, Actually the story reveals that the women are confined to their narrow world. They have to live satisfied there, no matter they are mentally disturbed. She is not allowed any active life in spite of best efforts and finally she is ruined. What was though useful, actually becomes damaging and leads her to lose her mental balance altogether.