thony Welsh
27 September 2017
Fiction Paper
Professor
“The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a short fictional story. This particular story contains a few different elements of fiction and one of the main elements is setting. Setting plays such an important role and is the driving force of the story. The setting in this story helps to develop the plot, describe the character, and helps the author deliver her message to the reader. The story is also written in first person allowing the audience to see events the way the main character did.
This story takes place in a house located in the country, a few miles from the nearest city. A woman is locked in the nursery of her home. Her husband has put her there hoping it would help her overcome setbacks and suffering of postpartum depression. Being that the main character has a mental illness, it is hard for the audience to determine if everything she says is believable. The author uses the setting to help develop the story for the audience. Setting of the room has great effect on the woman’s well-being throughout the story. When first entering the room, the woman dislikes it and dislikes the wallpaper. She finds the yellow colored wallpaper on the walls disgusting. This yellow wallpaper helps to portray the woman’s mental condition and gives the reader the full psychological effect. The wallpaper is the connection for the audience to see within the woman’s mind and experience just how ill she is.
Another setting of the story which is significant to the development is the structure of the house. The description of the house in the story does sound beautiful but small details about it like the locks and the bars on the windows can lead one to believe that it could’ve been an insane asylum in the past. The description of the house helps to make the reader feel the isolation and restriction that the woman herself is feeling
