We're all mad here.

The Yellow Wallpaper is honestly one of my favorite short stories. Gilman beautifully paints a gruesome picture of an oppressed woman’s violent decent into madness; what more could you want in a short story?

I love how the story is told from a first person point of view; the protagonist is so unreliable (as she is going mad) that it keeps you guessing what is real and what is not. Cerebral stories and films of this kind are so entrancing; they make you question the very fabric of your own reality. For example, the movie Donnie Darko is incredibly mind-bending. You can watch it over and over again, but find something new and intriguing every time. The famous book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is equally fascinating. Alice was thought to be descending into madness in many interpretations because of the nonsensical depictions of Wonderland.

After reading the story, I was playing around with some ideas about what was actually real and what wasn’t. She describes the room with that lurid yellow wallpaper as queer; “It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was 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." Although the story takes place decades ago, this sounds odd for a child’s nursery. The room is clearly beaten up and in a squalid state, with violent scratches at the walls. This made me start to wonder if the protagonist was even sane at this early point in the story. It’s possible that the entire story is simply a fevered dream or memory of the protagonist, and she is actually in a mental institution (or a ‘rest cure’ hospital) the entire time.

Even beyond interpretations, this was a wonderful story to read. It as was captivating and entrancing as the yellow wallpaper; I felt myself getting sucked into the topsy turvy world of the protagonist. Her obsession with the wallpaper (smelling it, clawing it, creeping alongside it) was so artfully described. Although I felt bad that the protagonist was so oppressed by her husband and by society in general, I wanted her to continue down her path of insanity. I wanted to see what her breaking point was, how long she could be subdued and trapped in the room, before she lost her already weak grip on reality.

“‘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!’ Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”

The last lines of the story end it perfectly. She reaches that breaking point and escapes her entrapment through one of the only ways women could in that time period: unbridled madness and delusion. It is ironic that she can only find freedom once she essentially traps herself in her own head.