The Significance of Sentence Fragments in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Carol M. Davison’s decision to describe Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” as “a truly new and radical diagnostic manual as it charts, from the inside, women’s ambivalent experience under patriarchy” (61) indicates the importance of female representation in literature and its defiance against androcentric societies and their discriminatory practices. It is a well known fact that women have been subject to centuries of oppression as men were largely in support of the patriarchy and ascribed to numerous misogynistic ideologies.

However, understanding the extent to which 19th century women, in particular, struggled with stigmatized psychological illnesses is a topic not well recognized. Gilman, a victim herself to the cruel and unusual diagnoses and treatments of ‘female hysteria’ took it upon herself Io write a short story fueled by feminist ideologies in the effort of dispelling the mental health stigma associated with postpartum women.

Her decision to write about such a personal matter is not an easy feat, as she must find a way to accurately depict an illusioned state of reality and hysteria.

However. by reflecting an individual’s delusional frame of mind through her writing, Gilman is prioritizing an ideal, resulting in a successful portrayal of the sensitive topic. The incorporation of literary techniques such as fragmented sentences support Gilman in her writing as she works to emulate intimate psychological experiences in a way that any audience is able to sympathize and understand the crushing weight of female cognitive sickness. By mimicking the protagonist’s psychological disorder through the integration of fragments in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”.

Get quality help now

Bella Hamilton

Verified

Proficient in: Disease

5 (234)

“ Very organized ,I enjoyed and Loved every bit of our professional interaction ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

Charlotte Perkins Gilman successfully writes a conceptual piece in response to the stigmatization of mental illness and its labelling as ‘female hysteria’ during the late nineteenth century.

Not only does the wallpaper radiate an eerie paranormal power, but with closer analysis do we come to understand how it “deploys the supernatural for political ends” [Davison 48). The shon fiction form provides an author with ample opportunity to write any story, no matter how skewed its reality may be, in a fashion that is completely comprehensible and relatable. The decision to write about an ideal is not one to be taken lightly as it requires an author’s uunost attention to detail if they wish to accurately narrate an unnatural and far-off reality in an intelligible manner. The literary techniques that accompany the shon story form such as fragmentation facilitate a writer’s narration of any concept, no matter how delusional it may be. These brief phrases cause the text to “illuminatelsl beyond itsellfl” (Gabriela Tucan 5) in such a way that they imitate an individual’s intimate perceptions of their surroundings, enabling readers to step into their reality and experience the narrative from a more sensitive perspective. In sum, it is these brief sentences that provide the audience with the opportunity to probe deeper within a text and uncover its underlying themes and motifs.

Gilman’s decision to portray the protagonist’s dwindling mental condition by briefly describing how she sees the wallpaper containing “absurd unblinking eyes,..everywhere” (583) provides the reader with the opportunity to interpret the story through a perspective poisoned by illness. The mentioning of how the wall is ”unblinking” indicates how it is obsessively watching the protagonist in ways that an overbearing prison guard or stalker might do; limiting the woman’s personal freedom and right to privacy, undoubtedly causing her to go insane under the intense, inescapable surveillance. By describing the wall with brief adjectives, the writer is leaving much of the interpretation up to the audience while establishing a general sense of wariness and alertness. Although the meaning of the eyes is never explicitly stated, the audience is aware of its eerie presence and must come to their own conclusions on its significance. much like the protagonist as she “watchIesI it always” (Gilman 587) in her attempt to uncover its purpose. By describing the room in a way that emulates the protagonist’s own concerns, the audience is encouraged to question why they feel so wary of such harmless wall decor, leading to a closer analysis of the text and eventual realization of the metaphorical significance of the “phantasmagoria screen” and “her sense of her situation” (Davison 60).

With close reading does the audience realize Gilman’s use of the wallpaper as a symbol of the patriarchy and its chokehold it places on women. Although. in reality, the room is likely covered in old and harmless paper, to the reader and the protagonist, it is only ever known to contain watchful eyes and elude a strong aura of malignity. By limiting the reader’s true understanding of the wallpaper. Gilman is successfully transporting them to a conceptual world where mental illness takes the stage. Similarly. Gilman’s decision to introduce another character, a “strange. provoking. formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that…design” (584), further contributes to the illusioned world of the protagonist and consequently, the audience’s interpretation of the story. The descriptions of the unknown woman are often brief and lack many details; the audience knows nothing of the woman except that she is a “faint figure” that “seemlsl to shake the pattern“ (Gilman 586), By refraining from giving the woman a strong personality or appearance, the audience regards her less as an individual and more as an apparition, a product from a bout of hysteria.

The limited accounts of the woman are what pushed them to “discover a potentially new story” by “excit[ing] the reader’s imagination“ (Tucan 4); resulting in their eventual understanding of how the “image of strangled women provides a fairly explicit representation of the narrator‘s crisis” (Davison 62), The crisis. in this instance, being the intense restraints imposed by the patriarchy on the protagonist‘s personal autonomy and freedom. Realistically, the woman did not actually exist within the paper, but to the protagonist and reader. they only ever knew the room to contain another woman in distress. Gilman’s decision to write a conceptual piece enabled the audience to understand and experience the protagonist’s hallucinations from a lessjudgmental and rational perspective, leading to a more profound understanding of her mental situation as she continues to stmggle with postpartum illness. Gilman’s prioritization of an idea] when writing her short story.

“The Yellow Wallpaper”, is not an arbitrary decision, Her emic approach to mental illness is what enables readers to comprehend the injustices imposed by a male-dominated society on women suffering unobservable and oftentimes, unrelatable, illnessest The incorporation of fragments is what ultimately shapes the narrative from observing a victim of mental illness to experiencing Lhe sickness firsthand. This difference in perspective is what separates reality from illusion, leading to a more profound understanding of what it means to be a woman shackled by illness and the patriarchy, By providing the audience with brief illustrations of the protagonist’s cognitive state, Gilman is encouraging them to analyze the text’s metaphorical aspects, such as the yellow wallpaper. in ways that force them to understand how in “br[eaking] free of this internal prison…she has essentially released herself from the external bars and rings that John (or all nineteenth-century men“) used to restrain her“