Is John a good husband? While the relationship between John and the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” can be interpreted different ways, Rula Quawas the author of “A New Woman’s Journey into Insanity; Descent and Return in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’” describes John as the narrator’s “jailer, policing every move and forbidding her to affirm her creative self. He denies her an autonomous existence as he tries to reshape her in accordance with all that being a wife/patient entails, including being submissive, childlike, and subservient.” Quawas also calls John patronizing, even if he has good intentions, by treating the narrator like a child who is incapable of knowing what is best for herself. This interpretation of the relationship between John
…show more content…
In Loralee MacPike’s “Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’” discusses how the story is a “very fine illustration of realist symbolism.” Macpike’s explanation of the nursery and the yellow wallpaper is that “the furnishings of the narrator’s room become a microcosm of the world that squeezes her into the little cell of her own mind, and the wallpaper represents the state of that mind.” This is a different analysis of the symbolism in the story than the other critics have made. MacPike considers that the prison like room that the narrator calls a nursery signifies her standing in society. The narrator is essentially a child in a social, economic, and philosophic aspect who is under the authority of her husband, John. John forbids her to work because it jeopardizes her status as a child and endangers his control that he has over her. The barred windows come to symbolize the narrator being perpetually confined in childhood. The bed is a symbol of the narrator’s sexuality. It is nailed to the floor and therefore prevents her from expressing herself. The three symbols- the nursery, the barred windows, and the immovable bed- according to MacPike convey the narrator’s mind and the condition of the world the helped shape the narrator’s mind. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes the narrator’s state of mind and also becomes that state of mind, and with the rescue of the woman behind the wallpaper the wallpaper then becomes another symbol of her confinement and her free will. The debate on whether the story is realism or not is something MacPike also mentions in her article. She claims that “The Yellow Wallpaper is in fact realism but is real in the viewpoint of the author since it was inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s first marriage. This however cannot be objective reality due to the fact that there is no objectivity on one’s own
In Loralee MacPike’s “Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’” discusses how the story is a “very fine illustration of realist symbolism.” Macpike’s explanation of the nursery and the yellow wallpaper is that “the furnishings of the narrator’s room become a microcosm of the world that squeezes her into the little cell of her own mind, and the wallpaper represents the state of that mind.” This is a different analysis of the symbolism in the story than the other critics have made. MacPike considers that the prison like room that the narrator calls a nursery signifies her standing in society. The narrator is essentially a child in a social, economic, and philosophic aspect who is under the authority of her husband, John. John forbids her to work because it jeopardizes her status as a child and endangers his control that he has over her. The barred windows come to symbolize the narrator being perpetually confined in childhood. The bed is a symbol of the narrator’s sexuality. It is nailed to the floor and therefore prevents her from expressing herself. The three symbols- the nursery, the barred windows, and the immovable bed- according to MacPike convey the narrator’s mind and the condition of the world the helped shape the narrator’s mind. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes the narrator’s state of mind and also becomes that state of mind, and with the rescue of the woman behind the wallpaper the wallpaper then becomes another symbol of her confinement and her free will. The debate on whether the story is realism or not is something MacPike also mentions in her article. She claims that “The Yellow Wallpaper is in fact realism but is real in the viewpoint of the author since it was inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s first marriage. This however cannot be objective reality due to the fact that there is no objectivity on one’s own