Monday, September 17, 2007
The Yellow Wallpaper
Interesting story! Perhaps the wallpaper that boggles her mind and disturbs her relates to her sickness. The inconsitency of the walls design relates to the nervous sickness that she possesses. Like the narrator ,the ghost she sees is confused and stuck in the pattern, just like she is which results in me believing that the lady in the wall is a mirror image of herself. Despite of what her husband thinks she keeps a journal to give herself piece of mind. Her husband also her doctor does not want her to write so she can not truly let him know what she feels in her heart. Although her husband didn't REALLY help her in the ways she wanted i think he did in a sense. She wanted the wallpaper to come down because how it was disturbing her but he refused because he didnt want to give in to her neurotic thoughts. If John had taken the wallpaper down she would have never been able to releases the "ghost" from the wall and come into terms with herself by "releasing" herself from the wall.
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When in such a situation as John is ... is it best to give in to the neurotic behaviors or best not to ? I think that in a way he DID help her by not giving in but in another way he made it harder for her.... neurosis is not easily eliminated. sometimes i think for a person in her mental state the wallpaper NEEDS to be torn down to get some piece of mind.... he's in a tricky situation but I still think his course of action was not completely in her best interests...
I think that John may have wanted to give her an outlet to let all of her frustrations out on. As he said in the story, towards the beginning, that if he took down the wallpaper, she would then start with other things that she didn't like about the room. So I feel that by keeping the wallpaper up, John let her keep her focus on that instead of other things that could have also been a bother to her.
But the most important outlet she may have had was writing... and he denied her that... i dont think there is a right or wrong on the issue of giving into her neurosis... but in my opinion it is def. a wrong to deny her creative freedom...now THAT will drive a person totally nuts.
I had the feeling that John was not to be trusted. His wife really didn't trust him and I'm not sure the reader should either. Did he leave the wallpaper to make his wife more obsessed about it? He did not want her writing and that confused me. Why wouldn't he let her write and have someplace to voice her feelings? Why did she feel that she had to hide her writing when someone came in the room? Why didn't she just tell him that she wanted to write?
Maybe he was in denial regarding her condition. Maybe he was naive and did not know the right way to help her. Back then psychology/psychiatry was a completely different field.. they used to lock people up and throw them into institutions when they were showing signs of depression. Or maybe he was just a fragment of her imagination... maybe all of it was... maybe im getting ahead of myself... who knows... but I do know that the author wrote this story while herself battling mental illness.....
The short story was written in 1899. What would be the roles defined for women at that time? Think about the gender roles at that time and if John and the narrator are performing the roles.
This is a really interesting discussion you are all into, very perceptive and depends on scrutinizing details of the story, with, obviously, no easy answers---whether it was (morally, scientifically--i.e., psychologically)--right not to take down the paper, to disallow the journal (ironically, the wall is still "paper"...)--and the extent to which gender role behavior, and positivist scientific discourse, might be conditioning this...wow! Keep it up!
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