The Yellow Wallpaper Rhetorical Analysis

Where She Stops Everyone thinks about the time when they will no longer be able to care for themselves and will require the assistance of others to get through a day. This is particularly true of independent people. The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is such a person who does not want to be a burden on others, particularly her husband and her sister-in-law. She declares, “It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way! I meant to be such a help to John . . . and here I am a comparative burden already! (2)” Her statement reveals her consternation at not being allowed, due to some vague illness, to handle her own affairs and to perform her wifely and motherly roles. She is also vulnerable to his criticisms and full of self-doubt, because John KNOWS there is no reason for her to suffer; “But John says that if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself – before him, at least, and that makes me very tired. (2)” The shame of her mental condition causes her to internalize her fears and desires as she begins descending into a sort of sane/insane hell. Also, in her inactivity the reader feels she is searching for something that has been lost and must be found. Why does she see people crawling? She is shut up on the top floor of the house and can look
“He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me. (6)” The reader witnesses defiance overwhelming shame as she refuses to open the door to John and tosses the key through the bars. Finally descending into madness, she begins crawling around the room in circles over and over again, repeating the monotony of her life. John, if he wants to get inside the room, must do as she tells him. He must crawl in the dirt to retrieve the key from under the plantain bush. In other words, “Get it