In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman Perkins describes
how she lived her life in her upstairs bedroom. Her husband John is a physician
and it seems he treats her as if she is not all there. Throughout the story,
the narrator appears to be normal but at times she seems quite unreliable. For example, in the beginning she describes
how she is trapped in her bedroom and seems to have a logical explanation for
being there. She explains how her
husband has her there due to a nervous condition. In other words, the logical explanation is a
medical illness. Her husband John thinks
that if she gets out of the house into the real world that her condition will
only get worse. And she agrees her husband that is why she stays home all day, every
single day with no job and no responsibility of any kind. She talks about some
lady that takes care of their baby. I assume her husband doesn’t even trust is
own wife with their own child. The only thing that makes her feel any better is
writing. She writes and writes but has no one to share her writing with and she
feels the need to sly behind her husband’s back to write a single word in her
journal. I think this lady is getting worse and worse as the days pass by and I
would partly blame it on her husband for keeping her inside the house all by
herself. He is ruling her life and she is doing nothing to stop him. She
listens to his reasoning on why she must stay at home. I feel like the more he
tells her the more she believes his nonsense. And that what’s really must have
caused her to get ill in the first place. She starts to believe there is
something evil in the house but she’s not sure what came over her and he just
told her she was felling tired so he closed the window to the bedroom. She does get angry with John and I would
imagine after being treated the same way for so long she definitely has all the
right to be angry with him. After getting angry with him she then decided to
blame it on her nervous condition as well. When the author begins to share what
she sees when she look at the yellow
wallpaper in the upstairs bedroom she s been cooped up in, she says, “There is
a recurrent spot where the pattern looks lolls like a broken neck and two
bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Gilman 57). She is discussing how she
sees a pair of eyes staring back at her through this wallpaper, after this
point she definitely becomes unreliable, from this pair of eyes she goes into
further details and is still stuck on describing this yellow wallpaper over and
over again. However, soon after this statement she talks about how she never
would imagine anything like that out of any other object. As a child she would
lay in her room staring at an empty room with blank walls and get more entertainment
and eel more scarred than another kid going in a toy store. “I remember what
kindly wink the knobs of our big old bureau used to have, and there was one
chair, that always seemed to be my friend” (Gilman 567). After this statement I felt fooled as if
maybe she really wasn’t all there even as a child and this whole time I was
thinking it was her husband’s fault! I am totally unsure now and don’t even
know what to think anymore.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteSome interesting points emerge from your post. You speculate about the origins of her condition; many critics have pointed to post-partum depression as the cause. This also connects to your quote from paragraph 57. Critics have indicated that the two eyes staring upside down suggests an image of a child being born. The wallpaper is symbolic on many levels, but the color yellow is often equated illness. With the birth image, Perkins may also be providing readers with an idea of the cause. Finally, the quote that you include about the narrator's fascination with the furniture may indicate that she has always had a vivid imagination one has an affinity for personifying household objects.
I really thought that you had some valid points about this woman having a nervious condition, medical condition. It seems as though in the beginning of the story this is what she wants the reader to believe because that is what is told to her from her husband. But then as the story goes on I felt as though she was losing her own identity because her husband wouldn't allow her to do anything thus she ended up becoming so crazy that she peeled the wall paper off so that she could creep out. To me this is a story of how women were treated in the 19th century.
ReplyDeleteThis story is a twist. It reminds me of M.Night Shyamalan's films. I think maybe it's the person's fear because maybe she is observing another person who is probably experiencing. After I read the story the second time, then I interpret the story as the wife was once a trophy wife. her husband showing her off, but not fully showing his affections for her as if she was a robot. Women before the industrial age were submitting to a male dominate reality, and even today's age it's still a man's world, women has the decision to allow themselves to make their own decisions and proved were equally smart as men. But back then, women didn't have a choice. Regarding the women in this story was probably bored out of her mind and felt sick how she was being treated.I think that's how she went crazy. Having a child and being married for the sake of society's demands doesn't keep a person sane. Personifying household objects is a strong supporting factor to the wife's mentality. I do like how you interpreted this story. Great work!
ReplyDeleteIn your response you made really some interesting points about the narrator, and about how she is unreliable due to her mental condition. You made a good point when you said that writing is that the only thing that makes her feel better because she felt writing was an outlet for her, even thou her husband disapproved. She had no voice. The narrator made readers believe that her husband had made her that way. And as the story progressed it seems the narrator gets more lost in her husband’s shadow and doesn’t know what to do or how to handle it. So her peeling off the wallpaper was a sense of rebellion and she felt it was a way for her to get out and from behind his shadow. Her peeling the wall paper was her voice.
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