Donovan Patlan

Mrs. Schenck

Period 2

1/25/21

The Yellow Wallpaper

The author of the story writes about a time where she and her husband moved to a house

that the author did not feel good about, especially one room with a strange yellow wallpaper

coating. She gained a weird feeling almost like a sickness and slowly was turning mentally

insane but her husband didn't acknowledge it and only told her to rest. He did not get her help

because he thought he knew what he was doing. So she went along with it and trusted him

knowing there was not much she could change. She had no freedom when it came to making her

own choices. She did not want to stay in the room her husband had given her and wanted to

move but he acted like he knew best. She also lost the majority of her privacy to her husband's

sister and even her husband. They always entered her room unannounced.

When she arrived at the house she almost instinctively gained a small suspicion of the

area and just the home itself. She didn’t think much of it at first because John, her husband, told

her that everything was fine. Later on she slowly gained a worse feeling about the house so she

told John that she didn’t like the room she was given because that was where the feeling was the

worst. John told her that the “place is doing you good” (Gilman 53) and that he wouldn’t go

through the trouble of renovating a home “for a three month rental” (Gilman 53). So she did as

he said and went on bed rest but it was not working. She tried not to complain in the beginning

because she loved John and didn’t want to anger him.

 Since John was the man of the house at the time she always listened to him because she

couldn’t do much to counter his decisions. He always told her what she should do to fix her

problem without listening to what she wanted. John tells her all the time that she “mustn’t lose

her strength” (Gilman 110) and has her take all this medicine like “cod liver oil and lots of tonics

and things” (GIlman 110) which could make things harder. He also denied her a visit to the

family because he thinks that she can not do many things. She is basically being overpowered by

John because he is a male. She hasn’t been able to make decisions for herself and is trapped

between her mind and John because she is not getting the correct treatment that she needs

because of John.

After a while she started to gain a mental issue and wanted to stay in the room alone often.

John and his sister Jennie were getting worried about her and checked in on her every once in a

while and they noticed the wallpaper had a pattern that has been driving her crazy. She has

noticed that John goes in there often and has “caught him several times looking at the paper”

(Gilman 162). This was when she caught him snooping around in her room without permission

and she caught him just looking. At one point she caught Jennie looking in her room and she was

touching the wall. When she asked her what she was doing Jennie freaked out and came up with

an excuse that the walls color stained everything because she was not supposed to be there.

The story shows that women used to never be able to do things without being told and that

they couldn’t make decisions. Like it is shown John told her how to deal with the pain and that

she was fine where she was. She couldn’t express herself because she didn’t want John mad

because of how much she loved her. This was a problem because women were always stuck and

that's what caused many health problems.