The Yellow Wallpaper Critical Essay

The Yellow Wallpaper is a novella written by Charlotte Perkins Gliman. It talks about a woman who is oppressed by her husband. She is going through a temporary depression. Her husband who is her doctor is trying to treat her, so he decides to take her to a new house and prevent her from contacting people and even from thinking and writing. He thinks he is helping her this way. The narrator then tries to get out her feeling and thoughts through writing although she is forbidden to.
She hides her diary and writes what happens with her everyday and what she thinks about.She is sick from her husband’s worries and oppression. Then she identifies herself with a woman whom she imagines is creeping and trying to escape from the cage in the yellow wallpaper in her room. The narrator is also trying to escape then she succeeds to by escaping to insanity. She succeeds in escaping from the reality that she was suffering from. For she couldn’t bear being oppressed by her husband. Also, according to Freud, the famous psychoanalyst, the author of the story is trying to reveal her thought through writing.
A work of literature, he believes, is the external expression o the author’s unconscious mind.Accordingly, the literary work must then be treated like a dream. Applying psychoanalytic techniques to the text to uncover the author’s hidden motivations, repressed desires, and wishes. According to what Freud claimed, Gliman is trying to reveal her repressed desires to escape from such a society and life and her wishes to prove that such a treatment will never help but in stead it makes everything worse. The author herself went through mental breakdowns and depressions and was advised to be sent to Weir Mitchell who leads her to her breakdown. She mentions his name in her novella.In applying Freud’s theory, Gilman has repressed anger which she can’t reveal except through writing.

This process works unconsciously because according to Freud these repressed feelings are stored in the unconscious in a way or another. These suppressed feelings are being redirected and reshaped into acceptable social activities and are presented in the form of images or symbols such as the women who are creeping in the yellow wallpaper. This signifies that the narrator and the author herself are trying to creep and escape from their own reality and life.All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision! This line shows that she thinks (the narrator) that she succeeds in freeing all women from other’s control, and so she wants. so that I had to creep over him every time! This line shows that the author wants to really creep over her husband and to be out of his control. I’ve got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her.
In this line she thinks she is not under their control any more. She also thinks that she is going to control that woman in the wallpaper.