In spite of the beauty of Gilman’s descriptions of this consuming wallpaper, I can’t help but notice how eerily spooky the majority of this story is. Whether it is autobiographical or not, to have a woman who sees this yellow paper, who allows it to take over her life, and drive her to her wits end. To watch the transformation through Gilman’s words, as the woman in the story goes from “a yellow smell” to seeing the paper as having a “vicious influence” to literally seeing people coming out of the 2D paper, is strangely creepy. How her husband thinks that leaving her allow in a room, all cooped up, will help her feel better is beyond me. This woman, Gilman or whoever, obviously has some sort of problems (in this case I believe its postpartum depression). Her deviation from reality, easily slipping into this dream world of yellow smells, yellow colors, and yellow hues, displays her mental instability. I guess the question then, is… why does Gilman tell us this story? What does it have to do with the role of rooms as a necessity for writing? The way I’ve come to see it, is Gilman is trying to tell the audience that a room that one creates for oneself is the only kind of room that will adequately suit one’s writing needs. In line with Mary Shelley’s telling of Frankenstein, possibly Gilman is attempting to tell the reader something about social discontent in the form of a semi-Gothic, slightly paranormal short story. Either way, it most definitely is an unforgettable read, which I have a feeling, was her intent.
3 comments:
I agree that this piece was very Gothic and creepy. I think that Gilman was trying to explain the difference between a room of one's choice in opposition to a room that represents a prison. In both cases, a woman is given the opportunity to write, but the difference is choice. The narrator in this story literally lost her mind while being trapped inside a "room of her own." Yes she was able to write, but did it serve a purpose?
i definitely agree that this story was creepy, although that was probably one of the things that caught my attention and made me want to keep reading. i found it so intriguing how the narrator's style of writing changed and evolved as the story progressed, and that's what you talk a lot about in your blog. i mean, even just at the end, i was getting majorly creeped out because of how crazy she made herself sound through her writing. the evolution of her character is rather amazing, and just goes to show how awesome of a writer Gilman is.
ya. i know emilee and i talked about the "creepy/eerieness" (sp?) of the yellow wallpaper. i guess i just felt to me like being locked in a room drove her mad. i mean, who creeps around the floor boards ripping off the wallpaper??
at the same time, it seemed symbolic of her attempt to unlock herself and her writing from the bars and walls that her husband/society/man closed about her.
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