Imagery in The Yellow Wallpaper

The word “derision” refers to the act of mocking or ridiculing. The narrator returns to the imagery she employed previously and states that these grotesque figures “shriek with derision”—a phrase which suggests that the wallpaper’s monsters laugh maniacally and torment her. The imagery of the phrase illustrates the sheer and utter terror the wallpaper induces in the narrator.

“Grotesques” are depictions of mythical creatures, often used as architectural decorations. The grotesque-like caricatures in the wallpaper converge through a disordered interplay of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines—then suddenly disperse “in headlong plunges.” In the narrator’s mind, the images in the wallpaper become more and more turbulent, then suddenly disappear as maddeningly as they appeared.

The word “fatuity” means foolishness and idiocy. To illustrate the chaotic nature of the breadths of the wallpaper, the narrator personifies them as waddling, or clumsily walking, up and down along the wall. They move in tremulous patterns and in “isolated columns of fatuity,” a phrase which suggests that the breadths move idiotically and illogically.

Here, the narrator begins to imagine seeing another person behind the wallpaper—someone she characterizes in grotesque language. In grotesque decorative art, human and natural forms transmute into ugly, distorted, and absurd shapes. As the narrator peers into the wallpaper, she sees a human whose image is grotesque, distorted, and malformed.

Through personification, Gilman writes that the wallpaper looked as if it were mocking her. One spot on the wallpaper takes on the appearance of a face, as if two eyes attached to a loosely tethered neck were staring her down. The wallpaper takes on increasingly more grotesque imagery, as these eyes appear to move and crawl along the wall.

The adjective “lurid” has a variety of definitions, all of which add to the overall gruesomeness of the yellow wallpaper. In its first definition, “lurid” describes something or someone that causes revulsion; second, it refers to someone or something with a ghastly, pale appearance; and finally, it describes the orange glow of fire when observed through smoke. Although seemingly contradictory, these three definitions demonstrate the changing nature of the wallpaper. At one moment, the wallpaper looks pale and yellow; in the next, it looks as though it is “smouldering”—burning with smoke—and tinted in an orange glow.

To describe the yellow wallpaper, the narrator combines visual and olfactory imagery with consonance. The first technique—visual imagery—is seen through the “unclean yellow” and “orange” that has been “faded by the slow-turning sunlight.” The olfactory imagery arises through her precise diction, specifically the words “sickly sulphur,” which references the pale yellow nonmetallic element that smells noxiously when burned. Finally, the narrator combines the unsavory consonance of both r and s sounds to illustrate the grating nature of the yellow paper. She employs words like “repellent,” “revolting,” “smouldering,” “slow-turning sunlight,” “lurid,” and “sickly sulphur.” When combined, all of these techniques contribute to a sense of corrosion and decay, and evoke the ghastly nature of the yellow wallpaper.