Research Paper on:
Theme of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Analyzed 2

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crafted as a work of art rather than journalism, because the motif of the yellow wallpaper itself serves as a metaphor for the disintegration of the protagonists mind. In this  paper, we will see how Gilman accomplishes this. The narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" has no name. Generally, when the protagonist of a first-person story remains unnamed throughout the work,  we take this to mean that the character represents all humankind. In this story, however, it seems more likely that the main character is unnamed because the experience she is  undergoing robs her of her identity. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery with the barred windows, she is treated like a combination inmate and child -- denied her writing that gives  her solace and lends meaning to her life, denied stimulating companionship that could distract her from her preoccupation with her meager surroundings. Denied any kind of healthy stimulus at all,  she is forced to provide her own. We can see that at the beginning of the book, our protagonist is not too far gone. She is a little paranoid (worrying  that the reason the rent is so cheap is because the house is haunted), and she does tell us that she finds writing exhausting, although she seems to tolerate it  well enough to write some thousand words at a stretch. She describes the view from her window quite lucidly, as well as the pretty bedroom downstairs that she originally wanted  -- the one that opened out onto the piazza and had roses at the windows. In this first section she also describes the yellow wallpaper for the first time, and  because she has described the layout of the gardens and the rose room downstairs so plainly, we are willing to take this description of the wallpaper at its face value.