Compare And Contrast The Narrator In The Yellow Wallpaper

Register to read the introduction… On the other hand though, we know all about her husband, John. He is a successful doctor who is the stereotypical husband of the nineteenth century. Although he was loving and caring for his wife, he was very controlling, insensitive and over bearing. In the beginning of the story we are told that the narrator is ill. John doesn’t take her illness too seriously; he diagnoses her with temporary nervous depression. John took his wife to a get-away cottage for her to get better. John’s high stature is shown when he does not let the narrator stay in the room that she wishes. He insists that she resides in a large, open room upstairs with windows that are barricaded and a bed that had been nailed to the floor. The walls are intriguing to the narrator. They are a patchy and yellow, patterned, ripped and torn in certain areas. Although the narrator tells us that she does not like the room at all, she does finds interest in the wallpaper that is surrounding …show more content…
She says, “I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper.” (Gillman 1125) She originally believes that she sees a figure in the wallpaper that is sulking and she is determined to decrypt its meaning. As days go by, the wallpaper becomes more clear to the narrator and she eventually recognizes the figure to be a woman faintly behind a pattern. This is where her obsession really grew, and began to lose her sanity. She noticed that the pattern of the paper changes as the light of day changes. During the day, the pattern is still, so the narrator takes advantage and sleeps much during the day. At night on the other hand, she is up studying the walls. It became clear that the pattern that the woman was behind was bars; these bars are trapping a woman and she is shaking them to trying escape. John’s wife is slowly crawling out of her illness the more she studies the walls and she believes that it is the wallpaper that is causing her to improve. It’s like it gives her meaning to live; she really looks forward to decoding the walls and being the only one to do …show more content…
It goes back to the time-period when this was written and how females were viewed. David Herbert Donald once wrote in his book “An Excess of Democracy” that, “Females were subordinate to males, and in which the wife found her full being only in her husband.” (Donald 14) David Donald is telling us that women are of lesser importance, and their own identity is overshadowed by their husband. We can guess that the narrator of this story has not been given a name in this story to give the idea that she is merely John’s wife, and that is all. In today’s society, John would be viewed as more of a paternal figure rather than a husband. His need to constantly watch over and care for his wife is noted when the narrator wrote how he “hardly lets me stir without special direction.” (Gilman 1119) Sure, husbands obviously are supposed to be caring towards their wives, but the way John does so, is totally overbearing, just like husbands of the nineteenth century