JaniceAntal

"They call me mellow yellow"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper was about a woman who was kept in a yellow wallpapered room by her husband because she was ill. After reading this work I thought to myself, "She was not ill at all in the beginning, but later on I believe that she started to become sick." I believe it was her husband and his ways that made her stay sick all the time. In my opinion, it didn't even look like he made an attempt to make her well. This woman is almost completly isolated and she wants to have a friend, keep a journal, or take a walk outside. All three of these request by her are denied by John, her husband. She stills keeps the journal which I find to be very interesting because she is going againest his wishes for once. This sign was the first sign that she was going to over come him and the situation of her sickness. In the beginning, she tries to blame the way she feels towards him due to her illness. “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.” As time proceeds, she begins to get worse and is pleaing with John to leave the house, or even just the room. He once again tells her no. So now that she can't do anything she wants to except write in her journal, which one sees less of, she becomes infatuated with the yellow wallpaper. She sees shapes in it and these shapes become a woman. She frees the woman by peeling off the wallpaper. I belive that this woman trapped is her and she is trying to free herself. But she does not become free. So she finally cracks and decided that she cannot take it anymore. She has a rope that she uses to escape her prison. John is now scared because he has no control over his wife anymore. He faints and she now sees him as the burden he once saw her as. "Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!" Lori's blog has a good insight to this work. Her views are a little different from mine own, but still very interesting.