How does Charolotte Gilman use gothic conventions to create text in "The Yellow Wallpaper"?The gothic conventions she uses are: - idea of...

Certainly you could write an essay on the use of any one
of the Gothic conventions you have highlighted above, and in a sense it is important to
realise how all of them are inter-related through the excellent story that this author
has created. I will limit my answer to refering to the wallpaper and the description we
are given of it, whilst highlighting briefly how it is linked to some of the other
Gothic conventions you have outlined.

Certainly, from the
very first introduction we are given of the wallpaper, the impact it will have on the
narrator is foreshadowed. Note how it is described:

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It is dull enough to confuse the eye in
following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you
follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit
suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of
contradictions.

The
description clearly foreshadows the internal violence and madness into which the
narrator will descend as she contemplates this wallpaper more and more. The violence of
suicide and the "unheard-of contradictions" both suggest the powerful way that the
wallpaper is linked to the narrator's mental state. This is something that is developed
through the story as the narrator comes to see a trapped woman in the wallpaper, which
obviously links in to the idea of entrapment but also the divide between insanity and
sanity, as the woman is a projection of herself. Thus it is at the end that the narrator
comes to identify more with this woman than her own self, walking around the edge of the
room and waiting to get behind the wallpaper.