Close Reading for "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Step 1:

The speaker is a woman, perhaps in her 30's. Her and her husband, John have rented a summer home. She journals about the house. She has recently had a child and suffers from postpartum depression. Continually, those around the woman tell her that she must rest and do no work, that she must restrain her intellectual activity. These messages especially come from her husband who often uses patronizing language when he speaks to her, such as "little girl." However, this lack of activity only makes her depression worse. She grows entranced by the wallpaper and begins to believe that there are many women hiding in there, creeping around her. At the end, John walks in and is horrified by the site of her imaginations, thought to be real by her. He faints and she must "creep over him."

Step 2:

Just as the narrator becomes deeper and deeper in her head and her imaginations grow into convictions, the tone of the story becomes more and more narrow and the emotions heighten. The reader notices how the woman depression become worse. At first she is in-tuned with the world outside of her, noticing various details of the house. Yet, her disease continues to progress and she turns inward and focuses in on the wallpaper. She makes this secretive and becomes possessive of it. She convinces herself that there are women hiding in the wallpaper. As she "[creeps] over [her husband]" at the end of the story, she becomes likened to these women of her imaginations.

Step 3:

Charlotte Perkins achieves the effects that I mentioned in the previous steps mostly through her use of language and through the narrator's relationship to other characters in the story. In the beginning of the story, aside from the moments when she comes right out and says that she has a nervous disorder, there are subtle hints of her nervousness. For example, she says "I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!" She has some anxious moments like this in which she relates her nervousness to the other characters. However, as the story continues on, her nervousness turns inward. She grows possessive over her imaginations of the women in the wallpaper. She does not want John and her sister in law to find out. At this point she distances herself from them. She goes even so far as to lock the door to keep the other characters out of the room. Rather than finding pleasure in being in communion with other characters, he focus turns to the women she imagines in the wallpaper. In fact, she becomes one of them at the end.  

Step 4:
The narrator has become engulfed by her depression. This has become her world. At the end of the story, she is no longer an active player in the world. Rather, to this world she is passive, a part of the wallpaper. She creeps about, disconnected and isolated.