Who Is John In The Yellow Wallpaper

Analysis: The above quotations clearly display the similarity between John and the Narrator’s relationship to that of a father and a daughter. John controls the majority of the Narrator’s behavior to the point she feels an overwhelming sense of guilt for her incapacity as John’s wife. The Narrator is restricted in her actions and is therefore unable to fulfil her wifely duties, forcing her to consider herself as a burden. When is reality, John treats the Narrator as his daughter and does not permit her to complete her duty. For instance, the Narrator dislikes the yellow wallpaper and wishes to have it removed; however, John does not allow her to do so and acts as if it would feed into a child’s stubbornness. His continued belief in his superiority disregards the Narrator as is wife and instead infantilizes her. He believes her identity exists only through him, which merely encourages his paternalistic

Jane is often irritated from the wallpaper in her room. The wallpaper above her bed is stripped off and this bothers her immensely. She claims, " I never saw a worse paper in my life"(4). In fact, she hates it with great passion by saying "no wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long"(4). She refers back to the children from her imagination, the children that were living in the so-called nursery before her. Towards the end of the story, Jane learns to hate the room as a result of spending so much of her time in there. She is really disturbed from the patterns of the wallpaper. Jane comments on the patterns, as "a constant irritant to a normal mind"(12) because she thinks that she has a normal mind. The color is "repellent," that is, "almost revolting." She says that "it is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide" (4).

35-36) This illustrates how Jane’s decreasing physical state causes her to grow increasingly detached from reality as she grapples with the overwhelming weight of her emotions and the constraints of her environment. This sense of deep worry and losing control resonates deeply with readers, tapping into their fears of losing control and succumbing to one’s darkness within. In addition to her postpartum depression, Jane must endure these symptoms while living as a woman in the 19th century. It is evident how dismissive Jane’s husband is of her condition, shown when Jane describes him in the text, “You see, he[John] does not believe I am sick!

John, Jane’s husband, suggests that she not participate in any stimulating activity at all. She describes his orders in her diary “…we came here solely on my account, that I was able to have perfect rest and all the air I could get.” Since there is absolutely nothing she can do and no one to talk to all day, every day, she begins to get paranoid of the peculiar yellow wallpaper. Eventually, Jane starts to become possessive of the wallpaper. She states in her diary “…and I’ve caught him several times LOOKING AT THE WALLPAPER!

During the late 19th century women, as history demonstrates, were to remain confined to their societal expectations and roles. Women were thought of as the weaker sex, emotional, and fully dependent on their male counterparts, child-like. She was to be a pious woman, living a life of true domesticity. If a woman was not able to function in her role as a mother and submissive wife, then she was thought of to be simply undergoing hysteria. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, written in 1892, we are introduced to an unnamed woman suffering from this “nervous depression” (1). This woman and her husband John, who is a “physician of high standing” (1), are taking a three-month vacation in an old colonial mansion. It is in this haunted house that the reader is able to see the psychological deterioration of the woman as she lives under a demanding patriarchal society.

Her descriptions and obsessions with the wallpaper as viewed from her perspective, truly draw readers into her downward spiral to ultimate insanity. Readers follow her in her mind from a nervous condition through her mild subsequent pleadings for alternative treatment to eventually "creeping" through the wallpaper with her--experiences which readers grasp within a powerful narration indeed. Through her, and only her is precisely how readers clearly knew how she felt at the end when she says, "I've got out at last in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" (330). Husband John fainted, he had no idea she had gone that far, but readers did.

The reader can even sense Jane’s anxiety and concern about removing the wallpaper to free the woman as her departure date comes closer. Gilman shows this as follows: “There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice” (319). As Jane continues to lose her sanity, she draws further into herself and relishes in the thought of setting the woman free. Finally, on Jane’s last day at the rest home, John is absent, and she is able to set the woman free. Jane

Inequality is displayed instantly between Jane the narrator and John who is her husband. With examples of John dismissing Janes well thought out opinions because of her illness or when he speaks of her he calls her his “little girl” which is degrading to a woman. In result, she is given treatment of sitting in a house that she feels uncomfortable, in a room she loathes. Along with being in an isolated environment. Throughout the entire story the narrator sets a very depressed and negative tone to the story.

We sense that ideology is like a curtain upon which our whole world is embroidered, and we know that behind that curtain is the Real” (Tyson 32). This explanation fits like a glove to the story because the other side of the yellow wallpaper can be seen as the representation of the Real while the yellow wallpaper itself is the representation of the trauma of the Real since it “gives us only the realization that the reality hidden beneath the ideologies society has created is a reality beyond our capacity to know and explain and therefore certainly beyond our capacity to control” (Tyson 32). It is understood that the narrator awakens to the Real when she says to her husband and herself: "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back” (Gilman, “The YW” 18). Her extreme psychotic behaviors such as locking the door and throwing the key in order to rip off the wallpaper show that she does these in order to reach the Real, open up the curtain which is imposed upon her by the house, the room and her husband.

Due to her isolation from the outside world and being forbidden to leave causes Jane to distance and alienate herself from everyone in the house and especially her husband. This leads to her start staring at the strange yellow wallpaper that Jane at one point loathed. Eventually her situation pushes on the brink and had a hand in making her become obsessed. Unlike herself, John is free to go out as he pleases, this highlights the imbalance in their relationship and gender inequality. Over the course of her delusions and hallucinations she goes from seeing a pattern of a formless figure to recognizing the shadow of female figure.

She’s obsessed with trying to free the woman in the wall; she realizes that the person within the wallpaper was herself the entire time. She begins to break through the wallpaper and calls the other woman “Jane.” She won’t allow her husband or “Jane” to cause her harm anymore, she feels in control of her life now. Writing down in her diary how she felt every day, helps her break free from what feels like a

"The color is repellant, almost revolting; a shouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sun. "(35) The wallpaper represents imprisonment, which Jane is in denial of that indicates her hatred for the paper; it is also soon to become a metaphorical doorway to freedom that is waiting to be opened. Her hating it shows that she still has a desire to live the way she’s been living under rule of her husband and to fulfill her required gender roles. However the longer she stays under her husband’s rule it leads her to a metaphorical search for freedom.

The narrator sees that the figure “...just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through,” (Gilman 654), displaying a recognition by the narrator that there are restraints of suppression on her mental illness and patriarchal ideals that allow for her to be silenced in society. This figure forms an image that is more personal to her, therefore allowing her to truly come to terms with what she feels and wants, and in the end allows her to no longer see herself and this reflection as separate beings. The narrator tears down the wallpaper that confines her, and says, “‘I’ve got out at last in spite of you [her husband] and Jane? And I’ve pulled off most of the paper so you can’t put me back!’”

Maybe one of the bigger underlying messages in this short story is confinement, which is represented by one of the bigger symbols,the yellow wallpaper. When Jane begins to first describe the wallpaper she says,”The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow,strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight’(Gilman 3). Jane doesn’t seem to understand what is truly eating at her and causing her depression because she feels suppressed but because it is a social norm she continues to go along with it. The yellow wallpaper is weird at first, it repels her, is revolting to her and it is strange because it seems to represent freement of confinement. Continuing on in the story Jane states, ‘There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will’(Gilman 4). Proving that the wallpaper is

The mood of the story shifted from nervous, anxious, hesitant even, to tense and secretive, and shifts again to paranoid and determination. Her anxiousness is evident whenever she talks to John. She always seems to think for lengthy time when attempting to express her concerns about her condition to him. The mood shift from anxious to secretive is clear when she writes “I had no intention of telling him it was BECAUSE of the wall-paper.” (9). She wants no one to figure out the affect the wallpaper has on her and she wants to be the only one to figure out its pattern. The final mood shift to determination is obvious when she writes “But I am here, and no person must touch this paper but me – not ALIVE!” (11). She is steadfast in attempting to free the woman from the wallpaper. She even goes as far as to lock herself in the room to make sure that she is not interrupted. The major conflicts of this story are the narrator versus John over the nature of her illness and its treatment and the narrator’s internal struggle to express herself and claim independence. During the entire story her and John’s views about her treatment conflict with each other, especially when it comes to her writing. He even makes her stay in the room upstairs instead of in a prettier room downstairs that she would prefer. She often keeps her views to herself or writes them down in