| Character List
Narrator: The narrator, whose name we learn at the end is Jane, is married to John and dominated by him. As she recuperates with neurasthenia in a room in a rented mansion, he does not allow her to do anything but rest, and especially forbids her from the creative work of writing. She finds solace in her journal and, as her stay wears on, the yellow wallpaper in her room. At first the wallpaper's ugly pattern irritates her, but she later sees the figure of a woman imprisoned in the bar-like pattern. Her earlier concerns - about not being a good wife and mother - fade away as she exercises her creativity in decoding the wallpaper, which seems to her almost like a literary text. She soon identifies completely with the woman, who tries to break free from the domesticated prison of the wallpaper by moonlight, the time when women are free from the oppressive regularity of masculine sunshine (a motif Gilman develops throughout the story). The narrator's growing insanity - realistically rendered by Gilman's increasingly choppy prose style - somewhat offsets her developing awareness of feminist liberation and masculine oppression. However, the story's final image of her "creeping" around the room while she peels off the wallpaper suggests progress: while feminists may have to hide in the shadows for now, eventually they will rise up and tear down the shackles of domesticity.
John: John, a practical physician, is married to the narrator, but he treats her more like an infant. He patronizes her, frequently refers to her with the diminutive tag of "'little,'" and acts as if she cannot make any decisions on her own. Modeled on Silas Weir Mitchell, the doctor who prescribed Gilman an ineffective "rest cure" in 1887, John forbids the narrator from working on anything creative while she convalesces. Instead, he believes in a strict, paternalistic divide between men and women; men work outside of the home, as he does, while women like Jennie, his sister, and Mary, the nanny, tend to the house. John's oppressive regularity and practicality associates him with sunlight. While the sun is out, people must conform to the rigors of the workday and must not daydream. While the more feminine moon is out, however, jobs are not as relevant and the subconscious runs wild. Only at night, then, can the narrator liberate herself from her dominating husband.
Woman in the wallpaper: Although the narrator eventually believes she sees many women in the yellow wallpaper, she centers on one. The woman appears trapped within the bar-like pattern of the wallpaper, and she shakes the pattern as she tries to break out (and eventually succeeds). She symbolizes female imprisonment within the domestic sphere. Unable to break free from the room, like the narrator, the woman in the wallpaper has only the symbolic option of tending to the house, not of getting an intellectual job in the outside world. That the wallpaper is yellow associates her not only with the oppression of masculine sunlight (see John, above) and with jaundiced illness, but also with discriminated against minorities of the time, particularly the Chinese. The woman's habit of "creeping" about suggests that she, and other early feminists, must hide in the shadows for now while they plot their strategy, but soon will be able to stand tall.
Jennie: John's sister, Jennie is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper who wants nothing else out of life. She supplants the narrator as a surrogate wife for John, taking care of everything in the house while the narrator lies in bed. She symbolizes the happily domesticated woman who does not find anything wrong with her domesticated prison.
Mary: The nanny, Mary takes care of the narrator and John's baby. With her name a possible allusion to the Virgin Mary, Mary is the perfect mother-surrogate for the narrator, an idealized maternal figure whose only concern is her child. Like Jennie, she also symbolizes the happily domesticated woman.
ClassicNote on The Yellow Wallpaper
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