Protagonist

Protagonist: the leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text. In the yellow wallpaper the protagonist is Jane and throughout the story she faces many things that destroy her mental capacity.

      In The Yellow Wallpaper, Jane, the main character and the narrator of the story is the protagonist who faces many struggles throughout the piece. The first antagonist she faces is her husband, John. When this story was written it was believed that those who were sick with a mental illness should be locked away (ParrishCo.).  Since she was diagnosed with a nervous disorder, John brought her to a house in the woods for the summer to rest. At this house she was forced to stay locked a room on the second floor with bars on the windows. Being trapped in this room for such a long time she came into contact with her other antagonist, the yellow wallpaper. Throughout the story Jane develops an obsession with her yellow wallpaper. After staring at it for so long it it began to drive her insane. While reading, Jane constantly mentions the wall paper and house the color, patterns, and even the smell urks her. As the story goes on her fascination for the wallpaper gets worse, and worse. Even to a point where at night she continuously crept around her room, pressing herself against the wall paper until there was a mark left from her shoulder. Throughout the story these are the antagonists that drive our protagonist, Jane insane (Gilman 5). After reading background on the author of The Yellow Wallpaper- Charlotte Gilman- we begin to assume that the main character, Jane is based off of herself. Throughout the story she makes relations between Jane and herself, such as not having her own child, someone always watching over her, and even suffering from a disorder (Gilman 1).

http://parrishco.com/academic/a-literary-analysis-of-the-yellow-wallpaper/ : It gave me an example of a Literary Analysis and included background information on the time period of when The Yellow Wallpaper was written.

http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-p-o-v-story-told-describe-main-character-311685 : This web site gives a variety of reasons suggesting why Jane is the protagonist of the story.