The Impact of The Author'S Writing Style on The Protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper is written in first person narration in the form of a diary. Although the narration and the writing point of view is fixed, there are still changes of writing style in the novella. The writing itself is incoherent because of the contrast in style in the different parts of the story. The writing style reflects the protagonist’s mental situation, and the change of writing style presents the protagonist’s descending into madness. The style of writing at first was rather articulate and has a neutral tone with only little underlying worry, but later in the story, the writing style became confusing, with an aggressive and declaratory tone. Other than direct reflection, the changes from censorship to self-censorship, to “liberation” was shown through the writing also explains the protagonist’s insanity. The subtle but graduate change in the writing style of The Yellow Wallpaper shows how the protagonist slowly descends into madness without other characters noticing.

The writing style in the early part of the story contradicts with the style in the later part. In the earlier and middle part of the novella, the writing is very articulate. Although not able to effectively communicate with others due to her situation, the protagonist delivers well to the readers through her writing of her diary. She questions about the arrangements and provides sound reasons for all of her questionings. Her intentions and thoughts are clearly written, and even contain parent thesis to include details. She “will proudly declare that there is something queer about it (the mansion).” since it was so cheaply sold to them. She disagrees with her high standing physician husband and brother despite their profession since she believes that “the congenial work, with excitement and change” will do her good. She is fair and provides reasons for her queers and ideas. In the contrary, the writing style is rather fuzzy and confusing in the later part of the novella. The writings are in bits and pieces of surreal images put together and does not make much logical sense. Her writing became confusing and difficult to understand.

In the story, she thought of burning the house down just to “reach the smell” of the yellow wallpaper and call it “a yellow smell”. She also treats the smell as if it is a creature “it creeps all over the house”, and if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it — there is that smell!”. Her description of the surroundings became rather surreal and is not quite logically linked. Most of the latter part of the novella is different things and situations happening inside and the wallpaper put together and mixed up, “there are a lot of creeping women, and they all creep so fast!”, “the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!”. According to the line “I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as i did!”, the protagonist is saying that she came out of the wallpaper, which should be the woman in the paper but not her. The writing is unorganized and fuzzy, more and more of the mixing up of reality can be seen towards the end as the protagonist talks about the woman in the wallpaper more and more.

The tone of the writing changes as the story goes. In the early part of the short story, the tone of the writing was neutral, with only a hint of words and despair. The writing of protagonist had a very calm tone at the beginning of the novella. Despite her worries and disagreements with the other characters, the protagonist remained hopeful and understanding. She calmly stated her own thoughts on her situation, “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.”. Although seem calm, it was also hinted that she was worried about her situation. According to the line, “ John is a physician, and perhaps–(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)–perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?” she was queer about the treatment and was worried about it. Soon enough the worry grew into despair since no one treats her opinion seriously. The use of dashes in the story shows her hesitation in both thoughts. The protagonist heists whenever she needs to think further into a situation or into further details because of the encouragement of ditching creative thoughts and best, thinking itself. Throughout the story, the protagonist became more and more expressive, especially in her negative emotions. The use of dashes decreases as she became less hesitant but blunter. Towards the end of the novella, the tone of the writing became aggressive and declarative.

The protagonist often use sentences starting with “I”, “I have watched John when he did not know I was looking,” “I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country”, “I am getting angry enough to do something desperate.” The tone became somewhat aggressive since the protagonist is described to be extremely active and dominant in the situation. The tone is also declamatory, comparing to early parts of the story, the protagonist declares her own situation in a definite manner with no questioning of any kind. The protagonist declared “I’m feeling ever so much better!” and “I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move–and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” without doubt, she no longer tries stopping herself from thinking about something, nor did she question anything despite the lack of logic in the situation. The tone of the writing changes from neutral to aggressive and declaratory as the story goes. It reflects the protagonist’s descending into madness since she went from carefully and calmly thinking about everything to aggressively declaring everything she thinks and did are right and true.

Although the protagonist’s mental situation is almost directly reflected by the change of writing style, the writing itself is rather elliptical. The writing indirectly shows the situation the protagonist was in: from censorship by her partner, to her self-censorship, to liberation through the madness. From the early part of the novella, it is obvious that the protagonist was not happy about the arrangements her husband made for her, including the room arrangements as well as the encouraging of not using creativity. The obvious censorship by other characters are directly written about in the early parts of the story. The constant use of “John said” and the constant reminder of “John” disliking her ideas shows the censorship the protagonist was undergoing. The censorship was obvious and the protagonist still questions the censorship.

However, the later in the middle part of the novella, there are no longer “John said” but more dashes, more “I know”, but less questioning go the situation. Towards the end, there were only babbling of her own thoughts and ideas, the protagonist no longer lets the censorship gets her nor did she censor herself, she lets out all kinds of illogical and surreal thoughts as if they are real and true. According to the lines “I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?” and “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.”, the line between imagination and reality was blurred and the protagonist can no longer separate the two. The letting out of “the woman” is the liberation of the protagonist’s once-censored creativity, but the liberation also cost her sanity.

From the novella, it can be seen that due to censorship of creativity and writing, the protagonist found her liberation through madness. As reflected by the writing itself, the more censorship was forced upon the protagonist, the more she uses her imagination to express herself. However, her self-censoring caused her to mix imagination up with reality, causing a vivid, surreal situation for the protagonist. The situation leads to the woman’s demise, not being able to be liberated through writing and creativity, she “liberated” herself through the madness.

The change of style in the writing is very natural and subtle, it was almost unnoticeable until one examines the text. The writing itself puts the readers in a similar position as the protagonist, both unsuspicious of the protagonist’s growing obsession with the surreal imaginations, not realizing that the protagonist was mixing her imaginations up with reality. Although the readers will witness the protagonist’s demise in the end, the change was unnoticeable till it was too late. This reflects how the protagonist descends into madness without other characters noticing.

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