For this assignment I chose to review The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The yellow wallpaper was about a lady with what is said to be a temporary nervous condition and her husband traveling to the country for the summer and for the healing powers of being away from writing which seems to worsen her condition. The people in the story rent a house for three months and the main character in the story is tormented, she stares at this wallpaper for hours on end and thinks she sees a woman behind the paper.
“I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman. ” She becomes obsessed with discovering what is behind that pattern and what it is doing. “I don’t want to leave now until I have found it out”. The plot of the story was boring, going from one thing to another just to have the woman lock herself in a room and pull all the wallpaper down at the end. The rising action would lead you to believe she completely went crazy there was one part where she explicitly says she wanted to burn the house down because of the smell from the wallpaper.
It sounds as if she is suffering from far more than a nervous depression when you hear things like that. There was one big thing thats repeated throughout the story and its the fact that she keeps saying no one wanted her to write because it is supposedly the cause or one of the reasons her ailment continues. The other characters in the story are distant from her like everyone is trying not to see the problem this woman is delusional, psychotic, maybe even completely insane. There are hints of this all throughout the story, she doesnt go anywhere nobody wanted her to write. Im thinking there is more going on in the story, something between the lines maybe shes being abused and that is the real root of her illness. When you get to the root of the story its really about this woman being dominated by her husband.
She is almost running scared of him she doesnt dare do anything around him, she doesnt mention it but I believe she would be disciplined in some way if she was to get out of line by defying him some way. From the beginning of the story her husband and other influential men in her life direct her so that she will recover quickly and I believe this to be signs of her life being run by them. There is an angle that is not really thought of through this whole story why cant the woman just leave this man. He does nothing but leave her in the house to suffer from this so called illness, I think its all in her head and if she was allowed to go out and do something other than stay relaxed all day she would discover this.
The over all feeling of the story doesnt give an indication that he wanted her to stay all that bad, they seem to be a very affluent family with there being two doctors her brother and husband. I was relieved when getting to end, she finally lashed out and locked herself into the room that he left her in, all of a sudden hes concerned about what she doing he want to care, she ripped down all the wallpaper and released some of the stress. I think here she gets a little control of her life back and this then threatens the husband. Overall this story was quite interesting the story is a complete cover-up of this woman being oppressed and influenced by her husband.
I still cannot figure out why they had an issue with her writing unless there was a fear that she would have diary of how she was being treated and one day it would be discovered.
