Don't think, don't work, don't write, don't feel.

So much to talk about! Never before in this class have I been so inspired to write a reading response.

Turns out postpartum can be a bitch, especially when your husband's dominance over you drives you to a point of suicide. So much to talk about!

I want to talk about this notion of fathering. John treats his wife like a child. He commands her to sleep, to eat, to not think, not to talk, not to write, not to work, not to feel. Appropriately enough, he put’s his wife up in a nursery for three months.

Then there’s this notion of thresholds (so relevant to my own life right now, I can not even emphasize it enough). At the beginning of their three month vacation, the nameless main character see’s her husband’s constant need to control her as his own method of expressing how much he loves and cares for her well being. Then, over the course of the three months the story takes place within, the main character transitions perceptions until she finally recognizes her husbands constant need to control her as wallpaper pasted against a wall, trapping her and barring her in. By the end of the story, her threshold is so exceeded that she cannot help but end her own life. She is now the women behind the bars that she identified in the wallpaper—“‘I’ve got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’”(15). Not wanting to be with her husband at that house turned into not wanting to be with him at all or ever after.

Also, as I mentioned before, I believe our main character to be a subject of postpartum depression. She mentions having a young baby several times within the story, but never with particular enthusiasm or passion—the closest we get is when she writes “Why, I wouldn’t have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds” (8). Eventually, readers would come to understand this plea—she would never want a child of hers to live in this ‘room,’ i.e. exist in her state of isolation and depression.

Nailed bed frames, barred windows, and gated stairways are no coincidence. In fact, with in the very first three pages of the story the plot is laid out for readers. When speaking of the wallpaper, the main character writes "and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide" (3).

I have proceeded through this post acknowledging the ending of this story as a suicide. I believe this to be true, however I would understand if others did not. I concluded that the story ended with suicide as the main character had a rope, spoke about finding some form of furniture to stand on, and constantly spoke of the figures in the wall being strangled by the pattern which “turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white” (12).

All and all, I am so extremely excited to discuss this reading in class and cannot wait to hear the opinions of my peers!