Literary Devices in The Yellow Wallpaper

Due to the narrative structure of the short story, readers cannot fully see the narrator’s behavior from an outside vantage point. Instead they glean information from within the narrator’s personal perspective. She frequently employs the words “to creep” and “to crawl,” allowing readers to imagine how the narrator anomalistically moves around the room.

The parallel structure and use of the pronouns “I” and “she” confuse and unite the narrator and her mirror image. As one performs one task, the other follows suit. Demonstrated through the use of the pronoun “we,” the two—or rather, one—peel off the wallpaper.

Although the narrator claims not to know, readers should recognize that the narrator is responsible for the “funny mark” on the lower portions of the wall. As she creeps around the room in her frenzied state, she forms a streak or “smooch” along the wall. The narrator states that she has become very dizzy—presumably from circling the room. The repetitive use of the word “round” demonstrates how frequently she has circled the room and how unhinged she has become.

Through a combination of second-person narration, personification, and simile, the narrator conveys how the wallpaper tortures her. With the second-person point of view, readers can understand firsthand the sort of mental unhinging the narrator experiences at each glance. Through personification, readers can grasp the figurative violence the wallpaper inflicts on the narrator as it “slaps,” “knocks,” and “tramples” her. Finally, the last phrase—the simile that likens the wallpaper to a nightmare—demonstrates the anxiety and unease it causes her.

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.

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.

Notice how Gilman does not attach specific dates to any of the journal entries; rather, each entry follows the next without a break, leaving it up to readers to follow the passage of time as signaled—or not signaled—by the narrator.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is formatted as the narrator’s journal entries. She takes up writing whenever she needs relief and often writes in the second person, as though she were speaking to a friend. However, her husband disapproves of this practice and chastises her whenever he sees her writing. The narrator, in turn, must write in secret. This circumstance lends her writing a tone of abruptness and curtness. Everything she writes is in one or two sentence increments and she often signs off when she sees her husband approaching. The brisk nature of these sentences demonstrates her anxiety and precariousness. She fears her husband’s “heavy opposition” and must write quickly and furtively. The format of these sentences also demonstrate how she dismisses her own thoughts, just as her husband does. The narrator will start with one thought and never finish it, instead cutting herself short as she begins the following sentence. In other instances, she will abruptly end a sentence by imagining how John would dismiss her.

The narrator’s inability to differentiate between phosphates and phosphites demonstrates her addled state of mind and her inability to make sense of her reality. She employs the literary tool of polysyndeton—the repeated use of conjunctions without commas—to highlight her husband’s ineptitude. Since he is a so-called wise physician, he believes that he will be able to cure his wife. He prescribes her various medications, advises her not to work, and forces her to exercise. None of his instructions cure her; instead, his iron fist stifles her.

The unnamed narrator of the story repeatedly intersperses her journal entries with rhetorical questions. In the first several paragraphs alone, the narrator asks herself, “And what can one do?”, “What is one to do?”, and “But what is one to do?” Using variations of the same refrain, Gilman hints at the narrator’s sense of confinement and her inability to think for herself. Each time she poses this question, the narrator cannot come up with an answer. In this environment—secluded in the nursery of a Gothic home on rest cure—the narrator cannot formulate her thoughts. Thus she is forced to repeatedly ask the same futile questions.

Gilman personifies the wallpaper through her use of a saying drawn from Proverbs 18:24 in the King James Bible: “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” This biblical allusion illustrates how closely the wallpaper sticks to the wall and how difficult it is to tear away.