Analysis Essay
Answer the following question with at least 3 well-developed paragraphs. Paragraphs must have at least 5 sentences. Use details and specific examples from the text to support your answer. Please go beyond the literal answer and dig deep to analyze what it all means to the bigger picture of the world.
Identify what has driven the narrator to the brink of madness.
The narrator feels that she is in a prison-like facility. The man presents the domestic sphere as a prison and she feels trapped. She also feels like she is reminded to clean or take care of children. The immovable beds and unclear windows look as if it was made for someone crazy. The wallpaper gives her ideas of her being watched and surveillance like in a jail cell or something.
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John makes it feel that the sphere is a jail to the narrator. He also makes it seem that her important personal issues and life problems aren’t a big deal to him anymore. All that right there brings madness to her. Jenny and Mary assume her identity as wife and mother which makes her feel more imprisoned. The narrator has no identity because the one from society has been taken from her.
It also bothers the narrator that besides her, Jennie and Mary don’t think of it as a prison-like place. Her husband John and towards the end of the story are both on each other's bad sides because the narrator feels that he is taking away everything she cares about.
How does she try to free herself from this element?
The narrator has the ability to free herself from everything going on in this story. Writing is a huge tactic to help her not concentrate on her condition, but like it was said as the story goes on the narrator’s condition worsens and she gets insane.
She felt like the wallpaper in her room could help her because to the narrator the wallpaper was driving her crazy. She was trying to figure out the pattern before anyone else, she was obsessed with it, and she would kill for it. At the beginning of staying in the nursery, John would find her secretive journal, she was forbidden to write or anything of that nature.
As time went on she would get better at hiding her journal so no one would find it. It was the narrator’s only way to have peace. There was barely anyone to talk to or express her feeling as if it was a getaway. John would treat her as if she was stupid and had no respect but she didn’t really mind because, in that time period, women played a role where they were not as important as the men folk.
So the only thing to free her was her journal, her journal was the only thing she had left. It was the only thing that kept her free, she had written in it just about every day.
What is her greatest desire?
When she got to the nursery, she was assigned to a yellow room where the windows were bare and the bed was immovable. She had thought it was meant for babies, it was made for mentally insane people but she didn’t know. The yellow wallpaper in the room was torn and had pieces missing, but the wallpaper had designs on it.
Time goes on in the nursery where she put and she studies the wallpaper every day. Remember she is at a mental institution and her illness gets worse day by day. So as days go on and she studies the wallpaper she seems to become obsessed with it in some type of way. As the obsession grows she starts to see things in the wallpaper such as a pattern, then she smells something, and then the narrator sees a woman inside the wallpaper. At that point, she tries letting that woman in the yellow wallpaper out and during the process, the insanity is growing.
That was her desire at the end of the story, to let the women in the wallpaper out. She tore the wallpaper, picked every spot, and studied every spot of the wallpaper. Her desire was to get the women out of the wallpaper. Another little desire of hers was to escape or leave, just to have freedom. The wallpaper symbolizes the lives of domestic women, the deeper you get and the more you get stuck. The color yellow represents illness or weakness.
What is the central irony of the story?
Her condition gets worse because her husband and doctor do not understand her sensitive and artistic nature. Those two are more like a negative than a positive in her life. The crazy fact in the story is that if the narrator were empowered to recover, in a way she could’ve cured herself.
She feels different about her cure when she is prescribed fresh air and exercise and no ‘work’ till she is fine again. To escape her depression she writes; however, because she has to do this activity secretly to not suffer “ Heavy opposition” she becomes overwrought. John told the narrator to not think of her condition but it would be a good thing because she can think of what she wants to do for herself. Instead, she is assigned to a place she does not want to be.
As she stays at the nursery where John makes her stay, it worsens. When she asked John to change the wallpaper in the room he wouldn’t. The wallpaper makes her feel crazy and she is stuck in her prison-like room. Lastly, she’s put into a mental hospital and she is going crazy over the course of time, she thought the room was for a baby but it was made for insane people. Her husband John is a doctor but he makes her condition worse another ironic fact.
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