Friday, August 8, 2014

What is the mood of "The Yellow Wallpaper"?

The mood or atmosphere of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is eerie
and ominous, foreboding. 


The woman is suffering from
post-partum depression and kept prisoner in her room--she's not even allowed to see her
baby.  No one listens to her or takes her ailment seriously.  She seems doomed from the
start. 


The mood is established by the woman herself--the
first-person narrator--by her description of the setting.  The isolated spot the couple
venture to for her cure is "ancestral," maybe "haunted," at least
in her imagination.  There is "something queer" about it.  It "came cheaply," and she
speculates that there must be a reason for it.  Her husband laughs at her, and she
suspects that she is taking so long to get better because he is a
physician. 


All this combines to create the eerie, ominous,
and foreboding mood. 

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