The Yellow Wallpaper

When the narrator speaks to her husband John about her lack of progress, he hints at sending her to “Weir Mitchell” (136). Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell was a neurologist who practiced in America and whose influence was widespread. He invented the rest cure, which required patients undergoing this treatment to live away from friends and family and to remain confined to their beds, often without the ability to read, write, nor talk for up to eight weeks. During this period of confinement, the patients were fed a high-fat diet based on milk, which was intended to promote weight gain, a sure sign of improving health according to Weir Mitchell. The doctor prescribed this cure to women much more frequently than men, and eventually, many women who took the rest cure balked against the isolation and the state of infantilization they experienced while undergoing the treatment. Eventually, many of his patients and their doctors observed that this treatment was worse than the conditions it was meant to treat, and feminist scholars interpret the rest cure as an example of patriarchal oppression, as it forced women to submit to the guidance of men in the guise of a health treatment.

There’s irony in the narrator’s early comment, which describes the house as “haunted” while dismissing her own intuition as fanciful and “romantic” (131). Something is haunting or lurking behind the shadows, but it is internal more than external; eventually, the dark side of the narrator’s psyche breaks free of the internal, just as the narrator’s alter-ego breaks free of the wallpaper.

Dramatic irony is also observable as the narrator’s revelations suggest that as she loses her grip on reality, the reader must bear witness to the mental breakdown. Because the story is written in the form of personal and private diary entries, the reader is aware of the narrator’s state of mind before any other character in the story. The madness of the narrator renders her unaware of her own decline, which puts the reader in the uncomfortable position of knowing about the danger the narrator is in but lacking the agency to tell anyone, much like how the narrator herself lacks agency to discuss her worsening condition with someone who can actually offer her help. 

The narrator’s powerful imagery activates both the visual and the olfactory senses. From the early descriptions of the lush gardens to the repetition of phrases relating the color and the pattern of the wallpaper, the visual imagery of the ten diary entries proves that the narrator has a uniquely powerful faculty of language. Just as powerful as the visual imagery employed to bring the story to life is the olfactory imagery; the descriptions of the odor in the house that smells “yellow” enable the reader to understand that the sinister effect of the wallpaper has infected the entire house. Just as smoke or fog can move in and out of spaces freely, the yellow smell “[lies] in wait” (142) for the narrator, just as omnipresent as the control John has over his wife, the narrator.