How Is The Narrator Trapped In The Yellow Wallpaper

In the short story, the Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator chooses to write about a married woman in a new home who ultimately falls down into a spiral of insanity. The Yellow Wallpaper centers primarily on the narrator and her discovery in the room she must stay in to rest. There she sees a yellow wallpaper that soon begins to take the form of a woman who is trapped, and is shaking the wallpaper in order to get out. The narrator continues trying to figure out the wallpaper and its pattern until eventually deciding to rip the wallpaper off in an attempt to free the creeping woman trapped inside. Thus, the narrator in the Yellow Wallpaper suffers a mental collapse by going insane in her attempt to understand the wallpaper which can be attributed

These tonics she takes are known to be strong narcotics; allowing for the production of hallucinogens. In the story, the narrator says, “John says I mustn’t lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics” (Gilman, 553). This statement helps support and infer that perhaps the reason behind why she sees the creeping woman trapped in the wallpaper, is nonetheless seen due to the tonics the narrator takes and the tonics’ production of hallucinations.Another quote says, “So I take phosphates or phosphites-whichever it is, and tonics” (Gilman, 548). The narrator is very trusting of her husband by consuming these tonics without even consciously knowing that she is perhaps seeing figments of her imagination that are not even really there. These hallucinogenic tonics contribute to the narrator’s insanity by creating a creeping woman behind the

The narrator is ordered by her husband, who is serving as her physician as well, that she is “absolutely forbidden to work” and instead get “perfect rest,” and “all the air” the narrator can get (Gilman, 549). The narrator is confined to spend her time in a room which is playing tricks on her mind until she can no longer identify reality from her imagination. Another cause of the narrator’s loneliness is her husband’s rare presence at home due to his work as a physician, “away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious,” leaving the narrator with his sister, who even then also leaves the narrator alone most of the time (Gilman, 550). The narrator falls into a state of insanity because she hardly had anyone with her to normally interact with. The only interaction she did have was that of the yellow wallpaper which constantly plagued her