The Yellow Wall-Paper

I thought The Yellow Wall-Paper was a very interesting book. I found the narrator to be a likable character because her naivety is prevalent throughout the story. She almost gives off a childish vibe as she explains what is happening around her. Because the reader follows her into a web of insanity, it is hard to know exactly what is really going on. When the narrator exclaims, “I’ve got out at last…in spite of you and Jane!” (p. 36), it is clear that John and Jane weren’t actually keeping her locked up behind the wall-paper. The reader must assume that she is going insane after considering the fact that a person cannot literally be kept behind the bars of wall-paper. Because of this, much more insight is needed in order to get a clearer picture of the actual happenings in the book. It is almost comical reading about what the narrator is thinking as she describes the women “creeping” outside or trying to shake the bars in the wall-paper.
It is interesting how the narrator went from simply trying to figure out the pattern in the wall-paper, to thinking that she is stuck inside of it. There is a clear difference in where she was mentally in the beginning to where she was in the end. I believe that her post-partum depression was the beginning of the mental journey in her mind. Ironically, John’s request that she stay inside the room and sleep, only made the situation worse. She began to see herself as being “locked up.” When she noticed the women in the wall-paper, it made her realize that she was just like them; she was barred from the outside world. When her husband and sister-in-law forbid that she write, she felt the need to “creep” in a literal sense. The women in the paper were creeping because they were trying to hide the fact that they had gotten themselves “free.” When the narrator was writing, it was her freedom. Basically, my belief is that the women in the paper reflected what the narrator was feeling. She had to be locked up and was forbidden to do what made her feel free to express herself.
“I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere” (p. 16). This is one of my favorite quotes because it really captures the effect the wall-paper had on the author. Instead of simply noting that there was ugly wall-paper in the room, she allows it to envelop her in anguish and frustration. This is part of the book where she is just beginning to relate the wall-paper to living things. At first, before I realized that the woman was going insane, I thought of her simply as a figurative writer. I assumed that the “unblinking eyes” and the woman behind the bars were metaphors, not what she thought was actually there. It wasn’t until the part where she says, “But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!” (p. 27), that I really began to realize that she was going crazy.
Something that I questioned about was the character, John. The narrator identifies him many times throughout the book as her husband; it seems that he must care about her a lot: “He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well” (p. 23). I wonder if he noticed the mental state she was in and was just in denial about it. She mentions many times that he said that she seems to be getting better. I want to know what he actually is thinking throughout the book as her situation gets increasingly worse, mentally. Did he realize what was happening, or was it not until he caught her “creeping” that he realized it?