The Role Of The Narrator In The Yellow Wallpaper

At the end of the story, the narrator locks herself in her room and continues stripping the wallpaper. She hears cries within the wallpaper as she tears it off. She anticipates jumping out of a window, but the bars prevent that; in addition, she is afraid of all the women that are creeping about outside of the house. As dawn comes around, the narrator has peeled off all the wallpaper and creeps around the perimeter of the room. John kicks down the locked door, and eventually breaks into the room. Unfortunately, the narrator does not recognize him. She notifies him that she has peeled off most of the wallpaper so that now no one can put her back inside the walls. John faints suddenly, and the narrator continues creeping around the room over him.
This is part of the reason of her mental breakdown. While researching the story, we find out that our narrator is a new mother. In the time, no one knew of postpartum depression. This is essentially what is the cause of our narrator’s cessation. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" the treatment that the narrator receives has the harmful impact, making the narrator's condition worse. The irony is illumined when one considers what might have happened if the narrator had received no treatment at all. Would she have been able to see her baby? Would she have been better off? She then states, “I am glad my case is not serious" when in fact, it is more serious than she could ever envision. The other form of irony is that her husband is a physician who endorses the wrong type of treatment. He isolates her instead of letting her be free. He ignores her instead of listening to her