One of the elements of “The Yellow Wallpaper” that interested me most was the narrator’s relationship with the creeping woman, especially at the end. The scene in which she tries to free the creeping woman is so compelling. The narrator is very isolated and trapped. She isn’t allowed to have company, her husband is almost never home, and when she tries to say what she feels and wants, she is dismissed. The way she is simultaneously ignored and monitored, abandoned and imprisoned, is extremely claustrophobic. She’s just as trapped as the woman in the wallpaper. When they were tearing the paper down, I really hoped that maybe it would mean the narrator was going to get to escape, too.

The narrator’s last line of dialogue was extremely interesting: “I’ve got out at last…in spite of you and Jane.” When I first read that, I skimmed over the name “Jane” as “Jennie.” When I went back to it, I realized that “Jane” is probably the narrator’s name. When she says that she’s escaped in “in spite of…Jane” she means that she’s free in spite of herself. Jane and the creeping woman have both a sympathetic and antagonistic relationship. The creeping woman terrifies Jane even though Jane also pities her. I think this means the idea of freedom terrifies her, because she’s been taught to be submissive and respect the way things are organized. The rules of her world upset and trap her. If the creeping woman represents the part of Jane that wants to be free, then front pattern on the paper represents the rules of society. The pattern is disgusting, incomprehensible, exhausting, and claustrophobic, just like the world Jane lives in. The creeping woman is the opposite of all this. She is constantly upsetting things, making herself seen, trying as hard as she can to escape. This scares Jane, because she’s been taught that it is her that is wrong, not society, that she feels the way she does because she is sick.

Scared Jane’s last piece of resistance comes when she hides the rope in the bedroom and tries to tie the creeping woman up after she frees her: she wants to let her out, but she doesn’t want to let her have free reign. The creeping woman triumphs when she takes Jane over. It’s extremely sad that the narrator has a total psychotic break at the end of the story, but in a way it’s also a happy ending, because she escapes the confines of her life. By going totally insane and becoming the creeping woman, she steps out of her own life and into another. She finally has power. She locks Jennie out, she makes John faint, she banishes her scared self, and there’s no one left to trap her.