Blog Response # 1 “The Yellow Wallpaper

I have read the story a few times over and I wish that we’d also been able to read this story from another point of view. While I understand that that’s not the point of the story, I still would’ve liked more information from someone other than the narrator who was suffering from mental illness. Being that the narrator was not clear headed, I believe that this would have helped the reader understand more of what others thought the narrator was experiencing. I wonder how story was interpreted back when it was originally released because of the thought provoking content which was not well understood at that time. I found this story to be very captivating due to the rise to madness that the narrator experienced and seemed to be unaware of.  I’m unclear about the ending of this story, at some point she begins to talk of the rope she has hidden in her room. I thought this was indicating that she would commit suicide and then it just ends with John fainting. Her account of what was happening could not have been all there was because we can see how she turned mad. So much so that she thought she was the woman trapped in the wallpaper and she thought removing the wallpaper would free her. It left me wanting to know if there was something she wasn’t saying or something she didn’t say simply because she was so obsessed in her own world that there was no way she could understand how things seemed to everyone else. For all we know, she was in a mental hospital and there were bars on the window for her safety, Jennie was her nurse and John was simply her doctor. I think that this shows how society has been conditioned to tell people who suffer from mental illness that “it’s all in their head” and “there is no reason to suffer.”