The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

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The Yellow Wallpaper

Summary

John’s wife, Mitchell is the voice of narration in the story. She keeps a journal that she secretly updates with the events that develop her around suffering. Through the journal, the revelation that she is nervous depression patient is made. Her husband John, who is a medical doctor, uses his medical expertise to counsel and help her out with the ailment that has beleaguered her health. The nervous depression drives the narrator into an obsession with a yellow wallpaper, and her fixation reveals to her a pattern that projects a woman trapped in a cage. At one time, she even startles the nurse, Jennie, who was also exploring the wallpaper.

As her conditions worsen, she starts smelling the paper everywhere around and outside the house. That goes to the extremes as she starts imagine that the woman crawls around the house at night, when yet still trapped. Significantly, she idealizes heads of strangled women who had been befallen by that fate in their attempt to escape from the cage. In the long run, she suffers what is seemingly a nervous breakdown as she starts imagining that she is the woman trapped in the cage and starts to crawl around the room. Her husband collapses upon the revelation of the on goings in the room when he comes in to find out what had caused the fuss. The narrator then starts crawling around him.

Analysis of the Story

Human nature in the story is succinctly explored through varied themes that have been employed by the writer (Edelstein, 2007). Patronization of women is evidenced in the story as the plot develops to project the feeling of superiority that is exhibited by John toward his wife. In a sense, she is relegated to a lesser figure that can barely expr.............