The literary style of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is that of the "unreliable narrator." The story is told from a first-person perspective, with only one point-of-view, and so there is no way of telling if the reader is getting the whole truth. Without a second point-of-view, or even a third-person narration style, the story can only be seen from one angle: the narrator, who is suffering first from post-partum depression and then from an increasingly severe mental breakdown.

This style is seen in many stories, from realistic crime fiction to fantasy and space opera. By re-reading the story with an understanding of the narrator's unreliability -- not dishonesty, but instead the inability to speak objectively -- the story can develop multiple meanings and interpretations. As "The Yellow Wallpaper" is deliberately a story about gender roles and cultural conventions, its interpretation usually remains the same regardless of the reading, but there could be a case made for the narrator's mental instability legitimately requiring her isolation, in another context. 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is told from a first person point of view narrative. This means that the unnamed main character serves as the narrator. However, since this narrator is slowly descending into a mental breakdown, we cannot venture to say that the story is objective, nor reliable: everything we know is told by a woman who is undergoing a series of terrible circumstances as a result of her post-partum depression. Yet, the story is effective in style, combining an allegorical title with a daring and challenging topic for treatment.

The title of the story is allegorical to the narrator's mind. The woman, who is supposed to be taking post-partum rest for her depression in a remote house, spends her day inside a room in which the wallpaper begins to annoy her. She believes that there is a woman trapped within the paper and she slowly increases her obsession with it. In the end, she tears up the paper and finally breaks down. This is a symbol of the magnitude of her desperation; of being trapped inside a room with no intellectual respite, and with no way of expressing her real needs and emotions.

Finally, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is unique in that it addresses a real issue which had not received enough attention (during Perkins Gilman's society), which is the psychological health of women. Women, in their socially-imposed roles of wives, mothers, and nurturers, were never analyzed under the light of psychology. If anything, a post-partum depression would have been classified as "hysteria" or plain "nostalgia". Little was known during this time about the effects of hormonal imbalance, or about the effects of childbirth in women; women were expected to give birth, no questions asked.

Hence, we can conclude that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story that breaks the mold in terms of the topic that it treats, and that it effectively tells the story of a woman in need by using her as first person narrator. This helps us look inside the mind of a woman about to break down, and teaches us how society has forgotten to address the true needs of females.

What genre is "The Yellow Wallpaper"?

Genre is never something that can be cleanly simplified to a single classification—a story or novel can and usually does fit multiple genres, all at the same time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is no different.

First, I think it's safe to classify it as a work of epistolary fiction. Epistolary fiction is fiction which is told through a sequence of documents, usually produced by characters within the story (to give an example, one of the most famous works of epistolary fiction is Bram Stoker's Dracula). Given that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is told as a sequence of diary entries written by its main character, it qualifies as such.

In addition, given its thematic content, we can classify this short story as both a work of feminist literature and a work of psychological fiction. These are just a few examples of classifications which we can apply.

What genre is "The Yellow Wallpaper"?

When this story was first published, people weren't really sure how to interpret it, and many read it as a work of Gothic horror (with strange or supernatural happenings, scary settings, and dark characters). Most people did not understand that Gilman meant to criticize the medical establishment and the common practice of failing to take women's illnesses seriously or consult the patients themselves in their treatment. The doctor referenced in the text, Weir Mitchell, was a real-life doctor who created the "Rest Cure" for women who suffered from some nervous disorder or "hysteria." This was a sort of catch-all diagnosis for women with depression or other mental illnesses. In fact, Mitchell once treated Gilman for what we would now probably call post-partum depression, the same ailment from which the narrator of this story seems to suffer. Now that most readers are savvy enough to understand what Gilman was doing—she was certainly ahead of her time in terms of her feminist criticisms of society and medicine in general—we can more accurately term this work one of literary fiction.

What genre is "The Yellow Wallpaper"?

"The Yellow Wallpaper" could be classified as psychological fiction, social realism, short fiction, or women's literature.

What is the literary style of "The Yellow Wallpaper"?

This story is a work of literary realism. Realist texts typically reflect the social and cultural practices and attitudes of the time period in which the piece is set. Diction ought to be natural rather than poetic or highly rhetorical. Events are plausible, though there is more emphasis on character than on action. Characters are rendered in rich and complex ways, and their relationship to their social class is typically of note.

We see these elements play out in the text. It was common during Gilman's time and during the era in which the story is set for women, especially post-partum (or after having a baby), to be diagnosed with "hysteria," a sort of catch-all term for any and all nervous or depressive ailments that affected women. The narrator actually references a real-life doctor, Weir Mitchell, who pioneered the rest cure for women—evidently the treatment the narrator is receiving—where a woman must have complete rest without any social or mental stimulation; this treatment was used to cure her of her hysteria. Ironically, the treatment meant to cure the narrator actually pushes her well-past the postpartum depression from which she probably suffers toward an actual psychotic break in which she no longer recognizes her own identity. The narrator's level of diction is somewhat higher than usual, but this seems designed to show us how clearly intelligent and imaginative she is because depriving her of stimulus seems all the more cruel. The narrator's husband has rented this "house" for the summer so as to hide her hysterical condition from friends and family: a good indication of her social class and the unacceptability of her illness.

What is the literary style of "The Yellow Wallpaper"?

One literary style in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the epistolary story. Written as the short diary of an unnamed woman, it can be seen as a recovered document, never meant for public eyes, or as a direct plea for help aimed at anyone who is willing to listen. Since it is written by only one narrator, it is a monologic epistolary story.

An epistolary story aims to feel more realistic and possible than a typical story. By allowing the reader into the private mind of the writer, directly seeing and understanding her innermost thoughts, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is able to show the slow deterioration of the narrator's mind with her own words, even if she doesn't directly realize it. Her story breaks off when her husband approaches, and does not include every little event, but only what is on her mind at the moment; in this fashion, the reader is given access to a "secret" account, something that her husband never sees.