Yellow Wallpaper Madness Of Women
Essay by 24 • November 7, 2010 • 904 Words (4 Pages) • 2,137 Views
As her madness progresses the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper becomes increasingly
aware of a woman present in the pattern of the wallpaper. She sees this woman struggling
against the paper's "bars". Later in her madness she imagines there to be many women lost
in its "torturing" pattern, trying in vain to climb through it. The woman caught in the
wallpaper seems to parallel the narrator's virtual imprisonment by her well-meaning
husband. While the narrator's perception of the wallpaper reveals her increasing madness, it
effectively symbolizes the struggle of women who attempt to break out of society's
feminine standards.
The narrator writes furtively in her room, having to hide her writing from her family. They
feel that her only road to recovery is through total R & R, that she should not have to lift a
finger, let alone stimulate a single neuron in her female brain. While she appreciates their
concern she feels stifled and bored. She feels that her condition is only being worsened by
her lack of stimulus, but it is not simply boredom that bothers her. She is constantly feeling
guilty and unappreciative for questioning her family's advice. This causes her to question
her self-awareness and her own perception of reality. "I sometimes fancy that in my
condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus; but John says the very
worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel
bad." She also faults herself for not taking care of her home and family. Like Dickinson,
she is caught up in the cobwebs of her society's ideology.
She has an immediate dislike for the wallpaper and at first studies it with the eye of a
critical interior decorator. The pattern fascinates her and she becomes increasingly obsessed
with uncovering its secrets. Eventually it becomes the center of her life and her only
concern. On the most basic level, it is apparent that anyone who becomes obsessed with
wallpaper and believes it to hold a world that people inhabit is insane. Looking deeper into
what the narrator reads into the wallpaper, we can understand her more clearly. The woman
she sees in the wallpaper struggling to break free of the bars seems to reflect and reinforce
her own desire to leave the house. When she first writes of the woman shaking the
wallpaper at night, trying to escape, this coincides with her attempt to convince her husband
to take her away from the place. Neither woman is successful in breaking away and the
narrator begins to read even more into the pattern. While outwardly and on a conscious
level she accepts John's refusal to leave, she seems to be projecting her real anger and
resentment onto the wallpaper; The pattern "slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and
tramples upon you."
After this incident, and following description of the "torturing" pattern, she begins to be
protective of the wallpaper. She becomes paranoid of anyone infringing on her territory; "I
know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that no one shall
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