The end...

I finished my analysis of  The Yellow Wallpaper and it’s high time to finish work with my blog. Truth be told, I have never thought that it is such an interesting thing. I am very grateful for our teacher and course of “Stylistics” for that great opportunity. We’ve made a big deal.
Frankly speaking, I’ve changed my impressions after making a deep analysis of the story. I can say for sure that Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an excellent writer.  There are so many hidden and unimportant elements to the first sight.And now, no matter what kind of book I read, I try to pay attention to all the details, to all expressive means and stylistic devices.

The use of expressive means and stylistic devices

In order to describe the setting, reveal the idea and render the general atmosphere of the passage vividly and convincingly the author of the analysed passage resorts to some expressive means and stylistic devices.One should say that Charlotte Perkins Gilman brilliantly uses lexical means to describe in a precise way the events of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and to create vivid images.It must be noted that almost every paragraph of “The Yellow Wallpaper” sounds ironically. We can here find situational, dramatic and verbal irony. In the story we cam find: epithets, metaphors, repetitions, personifications, similes, parallel constructions, polysyndeton, anaphora, asyndeton, gradation, exclamatory sentences, rhetorical sentences, parenthesis, antithesis, parallelisms,   alliteration, assonances, and emphatic constructions.  

Let's get acquainted with the characters

Characters

Narrator (Jane): A young woman suffering from a nervous disorder because she has no outlet for her active and highly creative mind. Near the end of the story, she speaks of a woman named Jane in an apparent reference to herself.  
John: Narrator's husband, a physician. He prescribes rest therapy for his wife even though it is inactivity that unnerves her. He forbids her to engage in any kind of activity, including her favorite pastime, writing. Unfortunately, she follows his orders without protest. 
Narrator's Brother: He supports John in his approach to the narrator's treatment.  
Jennie: John's sister, the housekeeper.  
Baby: Child of the narrator and John. 
Mary: Baby's nanny.  
Henry, Julia: Relatives of the narrator and John. 
Mother, Nellie, Children: Characters whom the narrator mentions without providing additional information. 

Things to remeber

TONE · The narrator is in a state of anxiety for much of the story, with flashes of sarcasm, anger, and desperation—a tone Gilman wants the reader to share

THEMES · The subordination of women in marriage; the importance of self-expression

SYMBOLS · The wallpaper

The plot of the story and types of speech employed in it

From the point of view of presentation the text is 1^st person narrative. As the main character’s fictional journal, the story focuses exclusively on her own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. Everything that we learn or see in the story is filtered through the narrator’s shifting consciousness, and since the narrator goes insane over the course of the story, her perception of reality is often completely at odds with that of the other characters.

The types of speech employed by the author of the analyzed extract are mixture of narration, description, meditation and dialogue.

I believe that the plot grows out of a conflict that is an external struggle between the main character and her husband, the circumstances she lives in, over the nature and treatment of her illness leads to a conflict within the narrator’s mind between her growing understanding of her own powerlessness and her desire to repress this awareness.

The plot of the story runs as follows:

                     Exposition (we get to know about the main characters and the mansion they rent for summer);

                     The development of the plot (the author shows us her ‘gray days’ in the mansion and we get to know about protagonist’s postpartum depression and whose illness gives her insight into her (and other women’s) situation in society and in marriage). Here we may speak also about rising action (The narrator decides to keep a secret journal, in which she describes her forced passivity and expresses her dislike for her bedroom wallpaper, a dislike that gradually intensifies into obsession);

                     The climax (The narrator completely identifies herself with the woman imprisoned in the wallpaper). Here takes place falling action (The narrator, now completely identified with the woman in the wallpaper, spends her time crawling on all fours around the room);

                     The denouement (Her husband discovers her and collapses in shock, and she keeps crawling, right over his fallen body).

The setiing of the story

The events in the analyzed text take place in the late 1800s in an upstairs room of a mansion rented for the summer by the narrator and her husband. The setting of the events in the given extract is realistic and fantastic at the same time. It is presented in a specific way. It provides a background for action and contributes to our understanding of the characters and embodies the main idea. The author makes use of great variety of epithets and metaphors in order to describe the mansion, especially the room the protagonist spends her time.

After reading more and more times

It must be noted, that The Yellow Wallpaper is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's physical and mental health. The Yellow Wallpaper examines the role of women in 19th-century American society, including the relationship between husbands and wives, the economic and social dependence of women on men, and the repression of female individuality and sexuality.
After reading this short story for 3 times, I can say that it is worth spending your time. Without a doubt, every woman should read it in order to see that our society has really changed and women and men are equal. It is not as it was in 18 or 19 century. We don't have such problems nowadays. We are free to do what we want. Moreover, the author also touches upon such themes as:

·        Freedom and Confinement

·        Madness

·        Gender

·        Literature and Writing

·        Society and Class

I believe that James Brown's song " It's a man's world" is a good example of changes in our world beginning from the middle of the 19th century

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