Essay on Janes Search for Self-identity in The Yellow...

Janes Search for Self-identity in The Yellow Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late nineteenth century, explores the dark forbidding world of one womans plunge into a severe post-partum depressive state. The story presents a theme of the search for self-identity. Through interacting with human beings and the environment, the protagonist creates for herself a life of her own. Charlotte Gilman, through the first person narrator, speaks to the reader of the stages of psychic disintegration by sharing the narrators heightened perceptions: That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I dont care--there is something strange about the house--I can feel it (304). The conflicting†¦show more content†¦. .I can see a strange provoking, formless sort of figure. (305-6) Its like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. . . .just as if she wanted to get out. (309-310) Is this the narrators attempt to understand the self or soul? To regain an essence of power and understanding of who she is becoming or has become? Is there a larger question here which the reader, through the narrator, must ask? Does not the narrators disintegration or depression become but a symbol of her search for self? There is a belief, one I personally share, that depression is part of the souls cycles--a place or time where opposing forces struggle with reason. In Care of the Soul Thomas More explains this place of struggle: Depression may be as important a channel for valuable, negative feelings as expressions of affection are for emotions of love (138). In essence, the depression becomes a vehicle of self-discovery. By tearing the wallpaper, thereby releasing the confined woman within (a representation of self), the narrator frees herself by freeing her soul. Ive got out at last, said I, in spite of you and Jane. Ive pulled off most of the paper, so you cant put me back! (314) Although she may be considered insane at the end of the story, I believe the narrators freedom is a development of the sense of self-identity and a chance for her to begin to recreate a life of her own. The Yellow Wallpaper presents a description of