Wednesday, October 7, 2009
My thoughts on "The Yellow Wallpaper"
One of the first things I noticed about the narrator is that she had a very creative mind. She is obviously suffering from some sort of psychological disorder that is much more serious than her husband, who is also her doctor, expects. The narrator feels that it would help her if she could assume normal activities such as writing and being with her child, but her husband tells her she must not or her condition will worsen. So instead she "rests" in her room where she begins to mix fantasy and reality. She develops an obsession with the wallpaper in the room. As her frustration grows her imagination runs ramped. Without being able to use her creative and imaginative abilities her mind finds another way out.She develops a hatred for the wallpaper and she begins to see prison bars within the wallpaper. The narrator sees a woman who wants to be set free from the restraints of the wallpaper. She is really seeing herself and I believe the prison bars represent the restrictions put on her by her husband and his treatment. When she identifies herself with the woman inside the wallpaper she tears down the wallpaper and symbolically sets herself free. Her husband enters the room and realizes how sick his wife was and faints. The narrator continues to lap the room and climbs over his body every time she passes him; symbolically rising above the restraints of her husband.
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this a nice brief of the story and I agree with your interpretation of the ending that she is rising above him because at first while reading the story I thought it was bit odd that it ended that way. The prison bars do seem to be all these restrictions on her, I mean how does isolation help anyone?
ReplyDeleteyes--this question of "treatment" is an interesting one--what this means from a conventional medical POV, and what such "treatment" misses or doesn't see/account for. It is hard to take the ending completely literally...
ReplyDeletei blame the paper. she was already creative like you said, did the paper have to be so darn appealing? or was her mind already so deteriorated from the hours of inactivity that was forced upon her?
ReplyDeleteI really think her restriction from everything was the MAIN cause of her insanity. Anyone put inside a room with crazy wallpaper and nothing else to do, would probably end up dellusional also.
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