What do the details about the room suggest about its function?
What do the details about the room suggest about its function?
The Yellow Wallpaper Questions
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What do the details about the room suggest about its function?
The lines below are the narrator's first observations of the room. She had preferred another, but this was her husband's chioce -
'It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.'
'It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.'
Source(s): 'The Yellow Wallpaper' Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The bars on the windows are meant to keep out and hold in. The rings could have been some sort of holding device, torture? The narrator suggests a stagnant room, long since used. The "smooch" along the floorboards excluding the area around the bed may have been urine from a male sort, marking his territory. The room represents confinement and desolation encouraging the mind to depict shapes and images in a peculiar way.
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