User:Callmejcole/sandbox

In Paula A. Treichler's article "Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in 'The Yellow Wallpaper," she places her focus on the relationship that is found in the short story between women and writing. Rather than write about the evident feminist themes which view the wallpaper as something along the lines of "...the 'pattern' which underlies sexual inequality, the external manifestation of neurasthenia, the narrator's unconscious, the narrator's situation within patriarchy," Treichler instead explains that the wallpaper can be a symbol to represent discourse and the fact that the narrator is alienated from the world in which she previously could somewhat express herself (62). Treichler illustrates that through this discussion of language and writing, in the story Charlotte Perkins Gilman is defying the "...sentence that the structure of patriarchal language imposes" (62). While Treichler accepts the legitimacy of strictly feminist claims, she writes that a closer look at the text suggests that the wallpaper could be interpreted as women's language and discourse, and the woman found in the wallpaper could be the "...representation of women that becomes possible only after women obtain the right to speak" (64). In making this claim, it suggests that the new struggle found within the text is between two forms of writing; one rather old and traditional and the other new and exciting. This is supported in the fact that John, the narrator's husband, does not like his wife to write anything, which is the reason that her journal containing the story is kept a secret and thus is known only by the narrator and reader. A look at the text shows that as the relationship between the narrator and the wallpaper grows stronger, so too does her language in her journal as she begins to increasingly write of her frustration and desperation.