The Yellow Wallpaper

           

      They yellow wallpaper is a very strange and unusual story we read in class. Her husband, John, is the narrator’s physician and as a couple they don’t have a good relationship. She appears to be depressed. She was restricted to bed rest in a yellow wallpaper room. She hallucinates and sees images and a lady trapped inside the wallpaper. She stared at the yellow wallpaper for long hours. Thus, she felt anxious and more depressed. She was also restricted from working and writing which led to her having a secret journal. On her journal, she described the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom as it spins around her. She also mentions details of the wallpaper and the room in general. She sees a figure behind the wallpaper. The figure was described as a woman who stoops down and creeps around, shaking the bars at night, and creeps during the day. The narrator, John’s wife, also mentions that she creeps around sometimes. This statement made it clear for me that theirs a connection and also that she resembles the woman in the yellow wallpaper. She felt like John and Jennie (his sister and her nanny) kind of had an idea about the wallpaper therefore she peels it off.  However, in her head she felt like she freed the woman who was trapped in the yellow wallpaper. Once she destroys the paper, she felt like she herself come out of the trap. John faints when he catch a glimpse of what she has done to the wall. The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, left the ending open. Personally, I think she killed him but we can’t tell from the story.