Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Yellow Wallpaper, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mental Illness and its Treatment
Gender Roles and Domestic Life
Outward Appearance vs. Inner Life
Self-Expression, Miscommunication, and Misunderstanding
Summary
Analysis
The narrator is determined to remove the top pattern of the wallpaper from the one she sees underneath. She has discovered something that she won’t tell the reader, since ‘it does not do to trust people too much.’ John seems worried or suspicious, and asks Jennie about the narrator’s welfare, but the narrator claims to have seen through his loving disguise. She now believes that the wallpaper is secretly affecting John and Jennie.
Now the narrator has turned completely inward, away even from the diary, hiding her discovery as her last desperate means of self-expression becomes this mission to free the figure behind the wallpaper. We see John’s worry, but the narrator is beyond making any attempt at communication with him.
Themes
Quiz
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