The Color Yellow in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

            The fact that Charlotte Perkins Gilman chose the color yellow for the wallpaper in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is significant.   Gilman could have chosen any color for the ugly, torn wallpaper in the nursery, but chose yellow.  Perhaps it is meant to be ironic.  Or possibly the wallpaper is past its prime, yellowed with age.  Or maybe, Gilman was making use of the psychological moods set by this color.  Most likely, yellow was chosen for a variety if not for all of these reasons.  The yellow wallpaper is an outward symbol of the narrator’s inward self.

            The narrator gives us several detailed descriptions of the hideous wallpaper.  She tells us that “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.  It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others” (298).  Then she gives her first impression, her first feelings upon seeing the wallpaper: “No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long” (298).  I shall point out in a bit the significance of these opinions, but first I’d like to talk a little bit about the color yellow itself.

Under the listing for the word “yellow” in the dictionary, there are several possible definitions.  Most literally: “a color like that of egg yolk”; and more abstract: “craven, timorous, fearful.”  And also “to make or become yellow” as in “The white stationery had yellowed with age.”  I will revisit these classic dictionary definitions more deeply a little later. (Dictionary.com)

            The psychological interpretations of the meanings and moods of the color yellow are also quite interesting.  In an article entitled “Color Psychology – Yellow” written by Kendra Cherry, a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, yellow is describes as being “cheery and warm”.  This short story is in no way warm or cheery; it is, in fact quite the opposite—depressing—as it is about a woman who is going insane from post-partum depression.  If this were the only psychological interpretation of this color, one would assume that Gilman was being simply ironic in her choice.  However, this same article points out many other significant and useful information on the color.  Irony certainly plays a role, but there is so much more than that.  The characteristics of the wallpaper are also those of our narrator.

            One might find it fascinating to learn that yellow is the “most fatiguing” color to human eyes “due to the high amount of light reflected” and if used as a background it can cause extreme eyestrain (Cherry).  Fatiguing.  Does the wallpaper fatigue our narrator?  I dare say that it does—to at least some degree.  She spends what seems like most of her free time now—after being kept in this room—examining the wallpaper, following the lines in the pattern and then she admits that “half the time now [she] am awfully lazy, and lie[s] down ever so much” (302).  This suggests that her eyes are strained and fatigued by following the pattern around the room, but then fatigue is only one of many other feelings: “I get unreasonably angry at John sometimes”(298).  Could the wallpaper be somehow behind this resentment the narrator feels for her husband, the physician?  These feelings can be explained by the psychology behind the color yellow, as Cherry’s article continues:

“Yellow can also create feelings of frustration and anger. While it is considered a cheerful color, people are more likely to lose their tempers in yellow rooms and babies tend to cry more in yellow rooms” (Cherry).

Anger, frustration, and hatred—which was the first emotion she felt regarding the wallpaper, as I mentioned earlier, if you’ll recall—as well as resentment consume her as she is still forced to stay in this old room and follow the pattern on the wall.  The characteristics of the color of the wallpaper show through our own narrator’s personality.

The question as to why she is so obsessively looking at and in the pattern can be answered once again with Cherry’s psychological expertise.  According to her research, this highly visible color “is also the most attention-getting color. Yellow can be used in small amount [sic] to draw notice”.  So, our narrator is physically and psychologically drawn into the worn-out, torn-up wallpaper. 

Our narrator is not only physically trapped in this nursery, but psychologically as well.  Is it that she cannot leave?  Or that she won’t?  Obviously, her husband has some serious control over her, but still she succumbs, not really fighting back.  Earlier, I defined yellow abstractly as “fearful” or the opposite of courage. Cowardice.  I’m sure everyone has watched a film where one character calls another “yellow” because of their obvious lack of courage.  What I’d like to suggest is the Gilman also knew this usage of the word, and that it is not mere coincidence.  The narrator’s cowardice plays a major role in her becoming insane.

The wallpaper itself holds the narrator captive in its yellow blotches and mushroom shapes.  Her eyes are drawn into it, her emotions are displays of it, her behavior results from her psychological reactions to the color yellow.  She realizes that she is a part of the wallpaper and that the wallpaper is a part of her.  The woman she sees among the yellow hues is herself, encaged in the wall.  It is only as her insanity sets in, as she succumbs, not to her husband but to the wallpaper itself, that she is made free.  The woman becomes her, she becomes the yellow.

When the adjective yellow becomes a verb, yellowed, most people would know immediately what that means.  Think of the old newspapers and books and important documents, sitting in glass boxes in museums and how they turn yellow over time.  They are past their prime.  Again, let’s look at the first description our narrator gives us of the wallpaper.  She describes it vividly as “a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (298).  The wallpaper is not only yellow, but it has yellowed and faded.  Since the wallpaper is directly linked to the narrator, this implies that she has also yellowed and faded.  She has gone from who she used to be, before she had her baby, before her post-partum depression, and has turned yellow.  She has turned into yellow.

It is ironic that the color meant to make her warm and cheerful made her angry, hateful and insane.  But just as yellow has many different effects on the mind, the narrator is able to break free from the oppressive, fatiguing yellow, and through insanity, she becomes warm and cheery.  She is yellow, all of it.  Throughout the course of this story she is, each in turn, the hate, the anger, the fatigue, the strain, the warmth, and the cheerfulness.

I suggest that Charlotte Perkins Gilman decided on the color yellow for a significant purpose.   That though there are a vast number of colors that each have emotions attached to them—blue for depression, red for passion, green for life—Gilman chose yellow knowing it’s wide variety of possible meanings. Her choice is precise, yet ironic.  Only the meanings behind the color yellow, only yellow’s moods are reflected in our narrator so perfectly. The yellow wallpaper is the narrator’s imprisonment in herself.

Works Cited

Cherry, Kendra. "Color Psychology - Yellow." About.com. The New York Times

Company. Web. 22 Mar 2011.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Art of the Short Story. Eds. Dana

Gioia and R. S. Gwynn. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2006. Print

"Yellow." Dictionary.com. Web. 23 Mar 2011.