If there is one story that we have read so far that has had a tremendous impact
on me, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is definitely it. I read the story in high
school, however I really didn’t remember too much about it. I saw the story as
one woman’s journey into madness however; I also saw it as more than madness.
It made me very upset when not only her husband but also her brother, both
physicians, shrugged her “sickness” for lack of a better word off as nothing
because it was something they could not understand. I think a lot of this has to
do with the fact that they are indeed men. I also think that part of her
“madness” is due to the fact that she is kept in a room in which she detests
the yellow wallpaper. In a way, I guess I see it as an almost claustrophobia. I
used to suffer from claustrophobia and the one thing I noticed to be similar is
that it is terribly easy to pick one part of the room and obsess about it. The
yellow wallpaper was a symbol of her entrapment. However it is not only he
physical entrapment but also a mental entrapment, she has an unbelieving husband
(according to her) and she recently gave birth and she must be feeling some of
the emotional strings connected to such an event. She must be feeling extremely
overwhelmed and used. She feels as though her husband is not truly there for
her, he constantly belittles her by calling her “little girl” and the like
and he does not pay any attention to her ailments. He keeps telling her that
she’ll be fine as long as she eats right, and gets plenty of rest and
exercise, however he lacks the ability to understand that her problem are not
physical. The end of the story confused me totally. I really didn’t understand
where she was going with the woman creeping around in the room. I totally
didn’t understand what was going on when she became the woman that was
creeping. Was that her final decent into her madness or was it related to
something else?