The Yellow Wallpaper
Being deprived of imagination and freedom by her husband, the distraught narrator’s gradual obsession of the wallpaper ultimately portrays a reflection of her own trapped, hopeless life.
At the beginning of the short story, the unnamed narrator first explains her unique predicament: Her husband John, who is also a doctor, diagnoses her with “temporary nervous depression.” As a result, John puts her on medication and they move to a vacant house for three months. John also encourages her not to promote any thoughts of imagination or “fancies.” The narrator further explains the practical personality of John: “He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures” (508). Even at this point it is evident that the narrator has no form of freedom in her life; her husband is constantly controlling her with procedural instructions. Needless to say, John is the one who initially provokes the narrator’s obsessive nature. The strict methods of his “cure” ironically lead the narrator to seek some sort of diversion from her dull life, which came to be the symbolic yellow wallpaper.
When the narrator starts writing about the wallpaper, it is initially described as dull and distasteful. The narrator explains why she is so disgusted: “The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (509). As her husband rejects her request of removing the paper, the narrator only gets more repulsed, yet intrigued, by the sight of it. Her life of solitude allows her to dig even deeper into the abstract illustration of the wallpaper; she begins noticing patterns that seem to evoke some special interest in her. The narrator describes, “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (511). This detailed imagery of a seemingly ragged wall of paper implies how psychotically deprived her husband has made her. When the husband tries to control her life by keeping her inactive, he is only stimulating her imagination even more.
This increased stimulation of the narrator’s mind leads her to become enchanted, almost possessed, by the peculiar wallpaper. John’s ignorance for her plea to leave the house only augments to the fact that he is the primary reason of her imminent insanity. The wallpaper slowly begins to take over the narrator’s mind: “I start, we’ll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion” (512). With this sense of determination, it is obvious that the narrator realizes some significance in the wallpaper pertaining to her own life. Since John essentially thinks and acts for her, it is as if her subconscious is gradually revealing the true essence of her dominated life. Eventually, her imagination unveils the final depiction: “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be” (515). Although the narrator sees the full picture, she has not yet related it to her life. Instead, she thinks of it has her own little puzzling secret that she will progressively solve by herself.
At this point of delusion, the narrator actually claims that she is feeling much better because of the wallpaper. This is because John is not in control of an aspect of her life; she finally has a tiny spec of individualistic thoughts that no one knows about. At night, the narrator anxiously continues to watch the barred woman in her desperate state. She explains, “And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads” (517). In this observation, the impenetrable “pattern” is symbolic for all of the things holding her back from freedom. Her daily medication, her life of solitude, and especially her controlling husband all combine to form this invisible barrier. The attention brought upon this unyielding pattern is when the narrator finally starts to try and free the woman, or more specifically, herself. Near the end of the story, the narrator’s mind has completely succumbed to the monotonous thought of doing absolutely anything to liberate the barred woman. The narrator lets the reader know how determined she is: “I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path. I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anybody come in, till John comes. I want to astonish him” (518). When the narrator implies that she wants to astonish John, this foreshadows the forthcoming climax when she finally claims her independence from him. But since John isn’t coming home until night, the withdrawal of his controlling nature allows her to uncontrollably rip off the wallpaper that is holding her back. Thinking of the arrival of John, the narrator realizes, “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!” (519). This is one of the first quotes where the narrator has finally merged her life with the one of the woman in the wallpaper. She is explaining that once John gets home, she must submit back into his firm grip in order to keep deceiving his perception of her. But at his arrival, the narrator disturbingly proclaims her freedom and John faints at the sight of her psychotic nature. The narrator then has to “creep” over his limp body, indicating that she has finally conquered what has been holding her back. Ironically, her journey to becoming consciously free has ultimately led her to become psychotically insane.