The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” slowly sinks into insanity as she narrates, allowing the readers to go along for the ride into madness and cultivate a certain amount of sympathy for her and her plight as they read along. At every point, she is faced with relationships, objects, and situations that seem ordinary and normal, but that are actually quite strange and even oppressive. As the narrator obsesses more and more over the wallpaper she starts connecting it to her current life situation, comparing it to how other women are forced to creep and hide behind the domestic “patterns” of their lives just like her.
The tangible setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper" reinforces all of the intangible feelings and attitudes expressed in the story. …show more content…
The way that John treated the narrator’s depression went particularly wrong, but his intentions were to actually help her not make it worse. The narrator states that “he loves me dearly, and hates to have me sick.” telling the reader that even she knows he wants to help her heal (7). But since John knows no other than the male “superior” role, being her husband and doctor, he believes he has that authority over her, where he chooses what is best for her without even asking her for an opinion over her own health. John declines the narrator’s smallest wishes, just like when he refused to switch her bedrooms when she asked. Although he never intended to do her any harm, his ignorance is what ended up harming her, which comes hand in hand on why he is not an actual “villain” but his mentality and unequal relationship brings him to not understand her or her problems fully. By trying to help her and looking at her as his “wife” instead of as a person with own rights, he ends up destroying her, even when that was his last wish.
Gillman writes The Yellow Wallpaper in the mode of horror so that the reader can understand that the ugly truth is genuinely horrifying. The narrator is in a state of anxiety for much of the story, with flashes of sarcasm, anger, and desperation, a tone Gilman wants the reader to fully understand almost as if they lived it. The horror of this story is that the narrator must lose herself to understand herself. She has untangled the pattern of her life, but she has torn herself apart in getting free of
The tangible setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper" reinforces all of the intangible feelings and attitudes expressed in the story. …show more content…
The way that John treated the narrator’s depression went particularly wrong, but his intentions were to actually help her not make it worse. The narrator states that “he loves me dearly, and hates to have me sick.” telling the reader that even she knows he wants to help her heal (7). But since John knows no other than the male “superior” role, being her husband and doctor, he believes he has that authority over her, where he chooses what is best for her without even asking her for an opinion over her own health. John declines the narrator’s smallest wishes, just like when he refused to switch her bedrooms when she asked. Although he never intended to do her any harm, his ignorance is what ended up harming her, which comes hand in hand on why he is not an actual “villain” but his mentality and unequal relationship brings him to not understand her or her problems fully. By trying to help her and looking at her as his “wife” instead of as a person with own rights, he ends up destroying her, even when that was his last wish.
Gillman writes The Yellow Wallpaper in the mode of horror so that the reader can understand that the ugly truth is genuinely horrifying. The narrator is in a state of anxiety for much of the story, with flashes of sarcasm, anger, and desperation, a tone Gilman wants the reader to fully understand almost as if they lived it. The horror of this story is that the narrator must lose herself to understand herself. She has untangled the pattern of her life, but she has torn herself apart in getting free of