Good Example Of Critical Thinking On How John's Wife Manages To Come To Terms With Her Incarceration.

The “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman concurrently symbolizes both the narrator’s changing condition and the society at that era. The moment when the narrator revealed that the wallpaper had things she alone hand knowledge about and could never reveal to anybody, it reveals that she was silently secretive, hiding her true nature (Gilman 90). She seemed to be defiant since she retaliates against authority. It became “clearer” to her as each day passed. She pretended to be resting and kept her writing activities her little secret despite being restricted by her husband, John who controlled almost every aspect of her lonely life. John claimed that it was bad for her to indulge in imaginative thinking. That all she needed was plenty of rest but in reality, he enjoyed the authority and control over her and as it seems, he would never let her make decisions for herself. He made it clear to the narrator that her imagination or anything out of the norm was forbidden. Since it was unnatural for a woman to be disobedient to her husband at that epoch, the narrator had to keep to herself her passions and thoughts.
At the beginning of the story, the room upstairs with the disgusting yellow wallpaper seemingly represented a solitary confinement area. The narrator states that the windows had been blocked for little kids (Gilman 84). Arguably, the blocked windows denote the metal bars of a prison cell while the rings symbolized handcuffs and chains. The only time John would not control her was when she was in ‘her’ room. As the story progresses, she becomes more comfortable with the wallpaper as her husband seems to be a stranger to her, it depicts freedom from him.
In keeping with Gilman, the narrator desires that her husband would rescue her from the place (Gilman 90). Earlier, she had expressed this to him, and as always, she was ignored. From the start all the way to the middle of the story, the narrator agrees that she was trying to do as her husband have told her. She seemed to feel guilty for not appreciating John’s kindness. When the narrator realizes that her requests ,such as asking to visit her cousin Henry and Julia, to remove the wallpaper, and have company over were ignored, she realized that John not only faked his love and kindness, but also was the main cause of her stress. On realizing this, she suddenly did not care about pleasing John anymore, she did what she wanted. The writer had only been doing what she was told. John and his opinions seemed to matter no more to her. Notably, when John fainted in front of the wife, she was not even shocked. Instead, she had to creep over him each time. Eventually, the writer manages to get her freedom though at the cost of her sanity. She states that, she got out at last and had extracted many papers, and it would be hard to get her back.

Work Cited

Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper.1892.