"Yellow Wallpaper"
...statement about her ghostliness being spoiled supports the idea that she felt the house was haunted or something paranormal might be there. This opens an array of thoughts and emotion for this woman. A majority of the story takes place in the bedroom with the yellow wallpaper that she vividly refers to throughout the story. There are numerous elements of the bedroom that indicate a previous functional use other than a nursery as described by her. Although the narrator feels the room functioned as a nursery stating “It was a nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” In addition to the large bed being nailed to the floor indicates a previous use which seems to be more sinister. These elements combined with the floor being “scratched and gouged and splintered” and the walls with paper “torn off in spots” gives the reader a sense that the room perhaps had been used to house the mentally ill in the past. She goes on about the wallpaper saying “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow”, the wallpaper and its old corroded state and strange pattern contributes to her existing illness. It facilitates her mental decline as she fixates on every little detail. Throughout the story she wallows on the appearance of the paper and starts to imagine that she sees “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure”, she is starting to have mild hallucinations of this woman in the wallpaper. This is possibly the beginning signs of schizophrenia. Her husband is a well established physician who strongly believes in the facts. He is a “practical” man and has a hard time with issues not supported by evidence. He thinks his wife is merely suffering from “temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency”. She says “he does not believe I am sick” and in his mind she is not ill, “there is no reason to suffer and that satisfies him”. Because he is a doctor he feels that he can give her the treatment that she needs with complete mind rest, solitude, and “tonics”. She has a passion for writing and her husband suspends this activity until she is better. He believes her writing indulges in certain “fancies” that are not good for the mind. If she wants to write she has to be secretive about it, and in lieu of her being able to write down her thoughts she keeps them bottled up inside and this creates mental anguish. She mentions the wallpaper to her husband and he tells her not to indulge in such imagination and she gets “unreasonably angry with John sometimes”. It is evident that her hallucinations with this wallpaper are signs of deterioration of her state of mind. It makes her annoyed when she tries to express what she is feeling inside and John won’t listen to her. Later on in the story he tells her that she is getting better and that it has been good for her being there. She again tries to explain to him that she does not feel she is getting better and he chalks it up as her imagination. She has just recently had a child and this has had an enormous effect on her physically and mentally. In that time post partum depression was unfounded information. She mentions her baby, “Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” she obviously is feeling sad and inadequate as a mother. She is unable to fulfill her duties as a mother. This only fuels h...