[Sandra Yun]

The author narrates her novel that takes place in the 1800s. The unnamed narrator recently has given birth, and doctors have diagnosed her with a nervous condition and prescribed her to stay in bed to rest as a cure being isolated in a mansion where her husband, John, and a physician stay for a short period. Her husband removes her from everyone she knows alongside to help her cure faster, eliminating all stimuli that included interactions with people, reading, writing, and her baby. Her husband treated her as an infant and controlled her, putting her in a nursery- giving her orders that she must obey. With his physician background, he believed that putting her in isolation would help her cure. The narrator and her husband got help from two helpers, a maid which is also John’s sister, and child care. Even though the narrator was not allowed to write, she still wrote in secret, telling her story about the confinement and what was going on around her and her experience of being isolated located on the second floor of the mansion with barred windows. The narrator explains in her writing that there is a yellow wallpaper that is distracting and irritating. As weeks passed, she became more paranoid; her anxiety and depression grew more and more to the point that the smallest responsibility became overwhelming. Because of her paranoia, the narrator asked her husband, John, to leave the house, but he does not think they should until the stay is over. As time went on, the narrator becomes more obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in her room. She would stare at the wallpaper for hours at a time tracing the patterns. More time went by, and she started to become paranoid with the color, the smell, and pattern of the wallpaper, that she was convinced that the wallpaper had a woman trapped in it. Sometimes, she sees many women.
Her stay at the mansion with her husband and baby was coming to an end. Before she leaves the mansion, she felt obligated to help the woman escape before leaving the mansion. She started locking herself in the room and ripped more of the wallpaper. After she was done ripping all the wallpaper, she began to identify the women that were trapped in the yellow wallpaper as herself. When John finds her in that state where she went mad, he faints. The isolation did not help her cure, and him giving her orders did not help. The story narrates that she needed to rest and do as little as possible to help her cure faster and improve her mental health, but instead, it did the opposite- it deteriorated her mental condition. Her isolation led to an obsession that turned into hallucinations making her insane. The yellow wallpaper symbolized the narrator’s isolation and confinement, which traps and fixated her thoughts and xenophobia-cultural anxiety.
The wallpaper pattern was described as a woman trapped and imprisoned because it looked like bars trying to get out. The need to tearing down the wallpaper, the narrator felt that the women/woman should be free, her desire to feel free. The mansion symbolizes that no matter how big her home was, she was still isolated and her desire for physical and mental freedom as a woman. The moon symbolized women’s menstrual cycle. As time went by, the moon changes, and with the moonlight, it reflects and shows the wallpaper’s patterns that look to her as bars and the woman trapped, which connected to her. Seen unnoticed during the day but was active at night and the only time she has to herself. As a patient and a wife to her husband, a physician, she needed to obey his orders. John controlled her and as a wife and a woman to society, she accepts her role. Her needing to become healthy and cured was never a success. It was unhealthy for her to stay isolated and in a confinement. In 1800, society was restricted for women, and women must obey men’s orders. The narrator tells a story about her being in confinement having to obey, showing the limitations and the mental decline resulting from what happened and what can happen.