A Second Look

Within the text of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' rooms are mentioned quite often, which I had not thought of the first time that I read this story for my English Lit class. While reading the text for this class, I realized that the woman was being secluded in a very isolated room of her own. She was placed there in order to recover from her "nervous condition" (1). This room had once been a nursery. Its bed was nailed to the floor and its windows were covered by bars. How oppressed and helpless this woman must have felt shut up in this room all day long! The irony is that her husband, John, believed that she would feel much better as a result of staying in this room. He was the one who told her that she needed fresh air and exercise, but how would she get those needs met if she was upstairs all by herself? I feel that maybe the narrator's description is biased.

Because the narrator is placed in this room for the majority of her day, it is no wonder that she starts to obsess over the wallpaper: its texture, pattern, color, and smell. She even says that she gets "quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper"(2). Nevertheless, she still manages to obsess over it, and by the end of the story, it appears that she likes the paper because she wants to free the woman from behind it. She says that she "declared to finish it today" (6) meaning that she would peel all of the paper away in order to set the woman free. But why does she find the need to set this woman free? Is it because she sees herself reflected in the woman's oppression by some other force, or is it simply because she is suffering from a nervous condition and feels the urge to peel wallpaper?