I am eager to post a blog about the Yellow Wall-Paper story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This story overall was such an interesting and captivating read. I love how this one is in an unreliable narrative. It gives so much insight to the thought processes and confusions of a patient who may be delusional.
When she first talks about the figure she sees inside the wallpaper, I immediately related her illusions to her. She said, “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.” This is just like her situation, she is stuck inside the house because of her husband and all she wants to do is to get out of the house.
She also described the patterns on the wallpaper as bars. She feels like she is stuck there and can not escape. Her only escape is through writing in the diary that we are reading. When she tries to confide in her husband, he ignores her. “It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise. ”
What I really want to bring attention to though is the passages at the very end. I feel like she eventually turned into the girl in the wallpaper. “I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did.”
As I did? Did she feel like she was in the wallpaper and now she has finally escaped?
“It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please”
She is creeping around like she describes the figures in the wallpapers does!
When John finally gets his way in, she says, “I’ve got out at last.”
It gets extremely spooky in the end when she says. “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”
He was no longer her loving husband, and she is now the figure in the wallpaper…
AMAZING READ!
