The Yellow Wallpaper Response
Katie France
Mrs. Brandi Martinez
Short Reader Response 2
February 16, 2018
The Yellow Wallpaper
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an excellent example of how characters who lack power are depicted. The narrator tells us that her husband, John, has taken them on a vacation for the summer to a marvelous, but old, house because she suffers from a nervous depression in her marriage. John is not only her husband, but her doctor as well. She complains that he demeans her illness and general thoughts and tells her that her treatment requires her to do nothing active, and she is forbidden to write or work. She believes that freedom and working will help her condition, so she responds to this lack of power by writing in a journal …show more content…
Her primary goal and entertainment is to figure out the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. Over time, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper becomes clearer to her: it resembles a woman “crouching down and sneaking” behind the main pattern, which looks like bars of a cage. Whenever she asks John if she can leave the house, he dismisses her, causing her fascination with the ugly wallpaper to grow. Soon, the obsession has taken over her mind and she is possessive towards the fact that she wants to be the first one to figure out the odd …show more content…
When he sees what she has done and how crazy she was, he faints in the door way. “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!” (insert citation). In this story, the narrator’s perception of the woman behind the wallpaper convinces her that it is right. She goes on to think that the wallpaper is a normal thing, but to everyone else, they see a mentally ill
Mrs. Brandi Martinez
Short Reader Response 2
February 16, 2018
The Yellow Wallpaper
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an excellent example of how characters who lack power are depicted. The narrator tells us that her husband, John, has taken them on a vacation for the summer to a marvelous, but old, house because she suffers from a nervous depression in her marriage. John is not only her husband, but her doctor as well. She complains that he demeans her illness and general thoughts and tells her that her treatment requires her to do nothing active, and she is forbidden to write or work. She believes that freedom and working will help her condition, so she responds to this lack of power by writing in a journal …show more content…
Her primary goal and entertainment is to figure out the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. Over time, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper becomes clearer to her: it resembles a woman “crouching down and sneaking” behind the main pattern, which looks like bars of a cage. Whenever she asks John if she can leave the house, he dismisses her, causing her fascination with the ugly wallpaper to grow. Soon, the obsession has taken over her mind and she is possessive towards the fact that she wants to be the first one to figure out the odd …show more content…
When he sees what she has done and how crazy she was, he faints in the door way. “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!” (insert citation). In this story, the narrator’s perception of the woman behind the wallpaper convinces her that it is right. She goes on to think that the wallpaper is a normal thing, but to everyone else, they see a mentally ill