The Yellow Wallpaper Interpretation Essay

Interpretation of “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Domineering and neglectful spouse causes his wife to lose her sanity. This is a story about how a woman’s arrogant husband drives her to insanity by forcing her to spend so much time alone. After spending months in her bedroom looking at yellow wallpaper which she despises, her imagination begins taking over her mind. She believes a woman is trapped inside of it. By the end of the story she actually thinks she is the woman who had been trapped in the wallpaper and has finally escaped from it. In Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator seems trapped both mentally and physically.

Her husband, John, keeping her away from others because of her nervous condition is one cause of her feeling trapped

“The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out”, (195). This quote implies to the reader the narrator is feeling trapped mentally. To escape her mental anguish, her imagination has taken over and she is beginning to think there is something trying to get out of the wallpaper. “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the women behind it is as plain as she can be”, (197). The reader may infer the narrator is feeling more frantic t by the (!) mark she uses in the sentence. And she is becoming more agitated about being alone in her room and the part of the quote, “it becomes bars”, implies she feels like a prisoner. In addition, the quote’s second sentence is more evidence of her illness getting worse; since she now sees a person trapped in the yellow wallpaper who she identifies with. This further confirms supports the facts she is feeling more trapped emotionally and needs to escape from her mental

Because her husband, John, does not take her illness seriously and neglects to get her out of the house, her mind cannot take it and she loses her sanity. It should be clear to the reader, since she thinks she and the imaginary woman has worked together to pull the wallpaper down that she believes the women in the yellow wallpaper and she are both trapped and are both working together to escape. (200) Likewise, when she tells John, “I got out at last”, and, “in spite of you and jane! And I pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back”, By her saying this to John tells you she thinks she is free, because she has torn down the yellow wallpaper. She is no longer saying anything about a woman being in the wallpaper, because in her mind, she is now the