The Yellow Wallpaper

I guess the biggest question I had after reading this story is this: Was the main character crazy or not? I think she definitely has symptoms of mental illness, and does not act as a mentally healthy person would, but there are two things that are making me question whether or not she is completely crazy. One is when she says the following: “There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even smooch, as if it had been rubbed over and over” (11). And then later, she says, “But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way” (15). It’s just bizarre that the mark should be level with her crawling on the floor; what’s it there for? Could it be there because somebody else made it for the same reason, made it because they were creeping around the room and didn’t want to get lost? That lends credibility to her theory that the wallpaper was really driving people crazy. Except she thought that it was driving Jennie and John crazy, but they weren’t the ones crawling around the room.

The second thing that made me question whether or not she was crazy: She mentions that people tried to take down the paper before: “The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother – they must have had perseverance as well as hatred” (5). It’s almost like she’s not the first one who has found herself entranced by this paper, who has found that she has to take it down, to creep around the room. Even though I really think the story is about her going crazy – there’s obvious symbolism in the woman trapped behind bars in the paper, her feeling trapped in her life – these two things make me question whether or not this hasn’t happened before, and if it has, how that can be reconciled with the “feminist perspective” mentioned on the back of the book.

I’m reminded of books like The Awakening. Even though I haven’t read that in awhile, it was written during the same period and featured a woman who was also unhappy in her life. She eventually committed suicide. I think that book was also feminist.