The Yellow Wallpaper

I thought that Greg did a fine job at clarifying the bridge between the wife in the short story, and her husband. She feels guilty for the resistance towards her husband’s helpful guidance, but secretly knows that he is oppressing her, and telling her not to trust herself. I thought that the images that the woman saw were all reflected images of herself being oppressed and breaking free of that oppression coming with the ending of the short story, and tearing away the “cover” that patched over all of the problems that she knew she had. The reader witnesses the grim details of her gradual decent into becoming completely odd. Her husband faints, femininely, from the sight of her “broken chains” or torn wallpaper.

It is not fair that the woman must feel guilty from feeling the way she does, reflected by her husband, and sister-in-law. They offer friendly guidance, which masked by the wallpaper, makes her feel guilty for her strong feelings of attachment towards the wallpaper, and ill feelings. This story generally reflects the author’s viewpoints on the medicine, which must “cure” her ills, and her general dislike for her husband. It was mentioned that she had a divorce, which was not entirely common. As a woman, she has a right to dislike someone for a reason unknown, or at least not obvious. The fact that her husband would not let her into the room of her choice, and repeatedly tells her that she is not ill, but suffers from a nervous depression, which was believed to be found only with women, reflects the underlying hatred, and imprisonment that she shows throughout the novel. It is not obvious at first, but towards the end of the story, I felt that the husband should be held responsible. Maybe she is not entirely psychotic, but either developed a sense of fear and drove herself to insanity, or she in fact was feeling the way she was, and was ill.

It becomes even harder for her to recover when she is told that she is not ill, and no one has ill intentions towards her to lie to her about something like that. It would be a lot easier if the intentions towards her were foul so she would have an excuse. In the end she must rely on her own feelings, and learn to listen to them. She becomes relieved in the end with ripping away the patches over all that is real. Instead of pretending that no human has problems, she breaks free and admits to herself and her husband that she is who she is. She does not belong in a loony bin, but she does have issues.

I thought that the underlying issues were very well hidden, but this might have been necessary due to the time in which the short story was written. It might have been way to controversial to bring up the open self-destruction that the husband was doing to the wife. It was already controversial that the author had a divorce, but she mentions faintly in the story a possible reasoning behind it. The husband did not want to admit that his wife was sick because he was fearful for her. He wanted to hold on to her because she was “all he had”. He wanted to deny the realities that were obviously in front of him and his sister. His sister is obvious of her problems as she confronts her to why she has yellow wallpaper on her clothing. The husband must face the reality in the end when he notices the torn wallpaper, and faints (femininely), from the shock of the reality of her sickness. Denial is a harmful thing. With all the denial the husband was doing, he could have saved her from a fate worse than death. Even though he was underlying enemy in this respect, she was also an enemy to herself displaying her inner psyche outside slinking around, and within the walls. She needed to stop playing the victim, and save herself from her oppression, which she eventually did. This short story has a happy ending in this respect, since the reader sees her success with conquering over her husband, and herself. (706)