Yellow Wallpaper

Danielle Johnson

COLI214B

Response Paper 1

The Yellow Wallpaper was very interesting, to say the least. With every turning page, you are left wondering what is going to happen next. Is this woman crazy? Or is there something more to her madness? It draws you in right from the beginning due to the fact that it is written in a first person narrative. It creates a strong connection with the woman on an emotional level and you immediately empathize with her thoughts and feelings because it seems like no one understands her. She knows there is something seriously wrong with her although her husband and her brother believe she is just “nervous.” She feels as though she isn’t in control of her own happiness. “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.” She disagrees with the rest cure shes under and instead believes that being able to express herself will make her feel better.

In general, the story is a metaphor of gender roles. The house, more specifically the wallpaper, represents a woman who wants to be free from others telling her what to do. During the 19th century, women were expected to be aesthetically pleasing, but not have a personality of their own. This is exactly the point of the wallpaper as well. Wallpaper is just supposed to make a room look “nice” but it can also ruin the way the room looks and it makes one want to “escape it” just like the women in the walls. There is something wrong with the house, yet the narrator can’t tell exactly what it is. This is how she feels about herself as well. She keeps finding more and more reasons to dislike the house, and it all has to do with the wallpaper; the look, the smell, and eventually the way it moves. This contributes to her increasing “hysteria”, which is how women like her were characterized. Being caged in for so long would cause anyone to go crazy. Eventually, she figures it all out. The narrator identified herself with a woman that was trapped. She...