I’M GOING SLIGHTLY MAD: NARRATIVE VOICE IN THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.
The first person narrative point of view in the yellow wall-paper provides many examples of how a limited narrative voice can clearly indicate such things as setting, time, thoughts, feelings, and dialogue and still be considered unreliable. The story being in a first person point of view is signified by such sentences as; “and I am tired out”. It can be found literally in the story that the reader is provided with a written account; “I don’t know why I should write this”, and is further shown by the division between lines 104 and 105, fragmenting the account that the reader is presented with. Before examining the reliability of the persona and its connection to the thoughts and feelings in the story, the setting, and time will be dealt with.
The general setting of the story is the U.S.A., this is most obvious when it is said that; “the Fourth of July is over”, and further reference can be got from the naming of the American doctor and psychologist, Silas Weir-Mitchell. More specific, the setting would be a bedroom in a house of which the story tells us that it has a garden and a porch with roses.
The setting in time would be the second half of the nineteenth century which can also be derived from the naming of the American doctor who lived from 1829 to 1914. Since it has been established that this is a written account the direct passing of time is the amount of time needed to write such a length of text, no more than half an hour, indirectly, though, more time has passed, up to a week in the passage. This can be determined from the beginning of the passage, where “the Fourth of July is over” and “The people are all gone” that had been there “for a week”. Combining this with her remark that she is still “tired out” makes it clear that she has not had enough time to completely recover from the holiday.
That the persona is an unreliable narrator is revealed in a number of subtle ways. Her accounts of events appear to be accurate but there is no way to establish whether they truly are accurate. She expresses her feelings directly on the paper; “Jennie is good” and “I’m getting really fond of the room” are but two examples, which are abundant in the story. The same holds for the thoughts she puts down on paper where “I determine … that I will follow that pointless pattern” as well as “it is such an undertaking” are among the more obvious ones. Her interpretation of events and her actions mark her as an unreliable narrator. She doesn’t say this herself but it can be concluded from many hints. Such hints include her compulsive behaviour; “for the thousandth time … I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of conclusion”, if the pattern is “pointless” then following it would be an exercise in pointlessness. Moreover, the “wallpaper dwells in my mind” signifies that she is giving an inanimate object qualities that they simply cannot have.
The narrative voice used in the Yellow Wall-paper is a very effective one in the aspect that its first person point of view is not only limited but unreliable as well. The entire process of going mad is therefore very deeply embedded in the story. Though events themselves are accurately described this accuracy certainly does not hold for the persona’s inner mind, she’s on the brink of madness and proceeding rapidly, all this can be found forged, as it were, into the entire account.
04 Nov. 99
