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Impact of mental illness in romantic relationships
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I have no idea why I’m writing in this but here I am nonetheless. I have high hopes for this new place. it will give John and me more time together! I mean I suppose we shalt be alone very often but it will give me more peace of mind to have him more to myself. but I’m only really going to be taking care of his wife I suppose. I don’t know if I can call her that seeing as I am the one who does all the work in this family. regardless I feel like this shall be good for the poor lady. she seems awfully unsettled. john says it’s just anxiety. I just hope whatever she has doesn’t rub off on me!
I have grown accustomed to the new vacation house. john says it will keep his wife happy and under control. she is taking more meds than I’ve ever seen
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forgive me for my madness but I could swear I almost saw that hideous wallpaper move! I was fixing her bed and about to walk out when I saw it. the figure of a woman’s face lightly gliding underneath it. oh, my I must sound mad! I approached the wall and was almost close to toughing it when she walked in; before I could inspect it further. my god the look on her face! I made an excuse saying the wretched thing had been making a mess staining all their clothes and furniture! which it had but those were the least of my concerns! I pray she doesn’t know. oh, I must keep these things to myself before I am stuck in that horrid room with …show more content…
she has been nothing but smiles and even laughed a little the other day. but the weather has been terrible lately. all but sunshine and clear skies. just foggy with muddy clouds for a week. and it's causing this atrocious smell throughout the house....mostly in her room. but it is too pungent and spreads too far for it to be her! oh, thank god you are nothing but dead paper for I must be sounding as mad as that woman! it has a smell that feels almost like the sight of that peculiar wallpaper. a foreign, yellow scent. and as I walked by earlier this afternoon I could swear I had seen her studying it. moving along each curve, tilting and slighting her head and hands in the strangest of ways. if only John had seen! he has already warned her of Weir Mitchell. and my the stories that come from that place! perhaps I should speak to John of my discoveries. but we haven’t been alone together in weeks. I hope he won’t send me there
The wallpaper in her bedroom is a hideous yellow. "It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others" (pg 393) The wallpaper is symbolic of the sickness the author has by the end of the story. Yellow is often a color associated with illness. It’s been suggested that she herself was clawing at the paper during moments of insanity. But there are many times when she is sane, and sees the marks on the wallpaper, and she writes about how others who had spent time in this room tried to remove the paper as well.
Until she sees a woman creeping behind the pattern one night tempting her to go see if the wallpaper is actually moving which is when her husband catches her. He always seems to talk down to her treating her like a child in this particular instance calling her “little girl”. In spite of this she sees this as an opportunity to talk to let him know her concerns informing him that she is not getting better as he so adamantly believes. Nevertheless, her attempts are futile for he dismisses her once more putting his supposed medical opinion above his wife’s feelings. The story takes a shocking turn as she finally discerns what that figure is: a woman. As the story progress she believes the sole reason for her recovery is the wallpaper. She tells no one of this because she foresees they may be incredulous so she again feels the need to repress her thoughts and feelings. On the last night of their stay, she is determined to free the woman trapped behind bars. She begins to tear strips of the wallpaper and continues to all night by morning yards of the paper are stripped off. Her sister in law Jennie offers to help but at this point the narrator is territorially protective of the wallpaper. She locks herself in the room and is determined to strip the wall bare. As she is tearing the wallpaper apart she sees strangled heads in the pattern shrieking as the wallpaper is being torn off. At this point, she is furious and even
The wallpaper, at first, is her nemesis. She begs John to repaper the room; it scares her. "The paper looks to her as if it knew what a vicious influence it had" (Gilman 494). In her perception, the paper has eyes and exerts some sort of power over her.
The narrator's husband, John, is a cause of her increasing madness. While she claims that "he loves [her] very dearly" (371), John treats his wife as a child rather than an adult in need of medical attention.
Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!"
Her use of sensory words to describe the wallpaper and how is she is seeing things within the paper show she is not in her rational mind. The woman claims the wallpaper smells yellow (Gilman); a color cannot be smelled. Her senses are heightened because of this wallpaper. In her depiction of the wallpaper’s design, the narrator writes in great detail the images she is discovering. The curves of it “commit suicide”, the patterns “crawl” and “creep”, and there are “unblinking eyes are everywhere” (Gilman). In her mind, she is animating an inanimate object. The wallpaper becomes a terrifying object for both the narrator and the reader. Strangely, she also sees a woman trapped inside of the wallpaper, shaking invisible bars. Possibly due to her own circumstances, she is imagining herself as that very woman inside the wallpaper. Like the woman trapped, she also feels imprisoned and helpless. She repeatedly asks, “What is one to do?” (Gilman) as if she has no choice on what she wants to do. Her use of physical words to illustrate the wallpaper allows the readers to first feel her negative emotions but then sympathize with
Her husband, John, keeping her away from others because of her nervous condition is one cause of her feeling trapped
body and seemed to reach into her soul.”. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the wallpaper wild and
This suspicion is further developed when she describes the wallpaper as being “in great patches around the head of my bed, about as far as [she] can reach” (534). This implies that former mental patients were being tied up to the bed, so they would scratch the wall above them, thus explaining the
The narrator becomes obsessed with the wallpaper which causes her to believe the paper is moving. She states, “The front pattern does move – and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” The narrator believes there are many women behind the yellow wallpaper, but only one can crawl around, the woman strangles to climb through the yellow paper due to the pattern of it. Sh...
While it may seem as though the speaker is becoming deranged, her bold action of tearing down the wallpaper is symbolic of her finally breaking free of the stereotypical roles of a woman. The author illustrates this in the last lines of the story, “I’ve got out at last, said I, “in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper so you can’t put me back!” (pg. 167)
The narrator's detailed description of the wallpaper makes the reader understand the woman is well educated and has a keen eye for detail. The wallpaper evokes an emotional response from her, such as her statement, "It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study . . . " (793).
Upon moving in to her home she is captivated, enthralled with the luscious garden, stunning greenhouse and well crafted colonial estate. This was a place she fantasized about, qualifying it as a home in which she seemed comfortable and free. These thoughts don’t last for long, however, when she is prescribed bed rest. She begins to think that the wallpaper, or someone in the wallpaper is watching her making her feel crazy. She finally abandons her positivity towards what now can be considered her husband’s home, and only labels negative features of the home. For example, the narrator rants about the wallpaper being, “the strangest yellow…wallpaper! It makes me think of… foul, bad yellow things” (Gilman). One can only imagine the mental torture that the narrator is experiencing, staring at the lifeless, repulsive yellow hue of ripping
Ever since she has been entrapped in her room, the narrator’s vivid imagination has crafted fictional explanations for the presence of inconsistencies in the wallpaper. She explains them by saying “The front pattern does move! And no wonder! The woman behind shakes it” (Gilman 9). In the story, the narrator explains the woman mentioned creeps in and about the old house she and her husband reside in. Venturing towards the conclusion, the narrator becomes hysterical when thinking about the wallpaper, explaining to her husband’s sister Jennie how she would very much like to tear the wallpaper down. Jennie offers to do it herself, but the narrator is persistent in her desire-”But I am here, and nobody touches that paper but me-not ALIVE”(Gilman 10)! The narrator has realized the apex of her mental instability as the story
Then she thinks that it could be “a small rose leaf”, and later it “project[s] from the wall”, and then a “crack in the wood” (2146-2148). She takes this meandering train of thought that both tries to tell her what the mark may be, but pulls her away from the reality. On page 2148, she says, “I must jump up and see for myself what that mark on the wall really is”, but she doesn’t, possibly because she is enjoying the chance to sit and think. I find myself doing this often, hopefully not away from some truth, but imagining the possibilities. It is an experience that many can relate with, I believe.