Text Review

In many different text reviews and projects for this class I have chosen the story The
Yellow Wallpaper. The reason that I find myself doing this is not only because I really enjoyed
the story, but also because of how many layers there are to this piece. The more I explore and
research this text, the more layers I am able to peel back and the more realizations I have. The
first thing that I am going to evaluate from this text is the point of view. I think the point of view
plays a huge role in the story and the first time I read this I didn’t even notice its importance.
This story is written from the woman’s perspective, the main character. Because of this, we as
the reader are able to see her personal thoughts and feelings, we are able to be in her mind
and live the story through her shoes. Since we know her feelings, we get to see that she is
unhappy throughout the story. She wants to change rooms; she is not allowed. She wants to
write; she is not allowed. She wants to explore the wallpaper, and again she is not allowed. The
reader gets to see time and time again how the woman is denied the things she wants to do,
and instead has to listen to what John thinks is best for her. If the story was not written from
first person point of view from the woman’s perspective, it would be really hard to see and
understand a lot of the obvious themes in the text. Since she is denied all these things and
simply has to listen to John, we can see the clear issue of gender roles. Also, because we get to
experience her symptoms firsthand, we are then able to see her struggle with postpartum
depression. If John was telling this story, I do not think the reader would be able to grasp all
these concepts and critical themes from the text. Instead, we might just think he actually knows
what’s best, since it would be his thoughts. Due to all of these reasons, I think the point of view
was an extremely effective element of the text that made the story what it is. A larger
implication that I have taken away from this text would be how medicine is constantly
changing. As a nursing major, I think this is a very valuable thing to understand since I will be
surrounded by medical issues and treatments. I think that being a nurse does not only mean
helping people, but it also means using your instincts to identify issues. If no one had noticed
the problems with the treatment for postpartum depression back when this was written, then
today millions of women would not have been able to recover from this illness. These
treatments were normal in that time period, but someone along the way realized this was not
working and something needed to change. I believe that every single person in the health care
field needs to understand that they are not there just to heal people, they are also there to
advance the profession and develop new and better ways to help the patients around them.
Through my study and research on The Yellow Wallpaper, I was able to see lots of different
components to this text that I would not have been able to see on the first read through. Being
able to construct papers, analyses, and this text review helped me to see the bigger picture and
deeper meaning of this classic text. I will carry this story and its meaning with me for a long
time.