The Yellow Wallpaper Isolation

Many times in life, we encounter many life changes we can't seem to control. We even break down to the point that we are unsure of what to do with ourselves. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “ The yellow wallpaper” the narrator is very obsessive. It focuses on a woman who’s going through depression and has had a nervous breakdown. Her husband tries to help her by moving her in a home, only to keep her upstairs in room (nursery) covered with a yellow wallpaper. He wants her to be isolated and recover from her depression. As part as a way to do so, her husband John, doesn't want her using her imagination in any way but she resist at the treatment. His plan for her to get better fails. Throughout the story, the narrator came across learning
many new things. She doesn’t like the room, she finds in obsession with the wallpaper and describes her us and as extreme.

To start off, the narrator doesn't like the room whatsoever. It almost feels like the room describes her. When she mentioned “ the room was once a nursery” (Gilman 581). It reminds her that she has a baby that most likely will not be able to hold and see. She also describes the room as a playroom, which indeed tells her that she won't be able to play nor watch her baby play. The room also has windows which when she looks out, she imagines all those beautiful places that she can’t go to because of her husband. “For the windows are barred and there are rings and things in the walls” (581) she stated. To her that room represents a prison that she's trapped in in which her husband has put her there in order to treat her illness.

Furthermore, all throughout her time in the room, she notices a wallpaper.
“ the color is repellant, a smoldering unclean yellow strangely faded by slow turning sunlight” (582). She becomes obsessed with the wallpaper. After a few days, she has an opinion about the wallpaper. She thinks it's starting to change. She starts to see “a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (586). During the day, she would see the woman in “dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden” (589). Whereas at daylight, she would lock the doors before she creeps because she doesn’t want her husband to see and suspect of anything. Regardless of the room, she makes looking at the wallpaper an everyday thing because the wallpaper is the only thing she
notices.

Thirdly, she thinks her husband is very controlling.
She describes him as extreme. Even when she tries to help herself, it fails. It's one of of those situation where she must lose herself in order to help herself. She says “ I tried to have a reasonable talk with him […] I wish he would let me go visit cousin Henry and Julia” (585). He didn't want her to go, he thinks it's best for her to stay in the room. He puts her down and her lack of confidence doesn't really help make the situation any better. Her husband is so sure he knows what's best for her, he doesn't pay attention to her and thinks she must obey him. “What is it, little girl” (586) he says to his wife. She is treated like a child. She thinks he is the reason why she can’t get any better because instead of communicating and working outside the house, he wants her to stay inside.

Lastly, this short story has made me realize that whatever the situation in life, I can always break through. Despite the narrator not liking the room, thinking her husband is controlling and having an obsession with the wallpaper; the narrator had a secret only she could see. She doesn't want to leave the room and doesn’t want others to coming in because she doesn't want anyone finding out the secret. At the end, she rips the wallpaper down in order to break the woman behind it free which represents her escaping her husband misery that he has put her
in.