Trapped

Earlier this week we discussed in class the inescapable image that Perkin's portrays as the nursery. Although most of her focus and indeed most of the readers' attention is on the yellow wallpaper itself, there are several other, equally disturbing references to the room. In fact describes the windows as "barred," the bed as "nailed down," and the bedstead as "fairly gnawed." From her imagery we can gather that the room is quite ugly and uncomfortable and in some sense somewhat of a jail room.

But all of this imagery, I believe, becomes completely embodied in the women the main character finds creeping behind the wallpaper. When she first becomes obsessed with the wallpaper she does nothing but study the patterns and the color. Slowly, however, she notices that the patterns move (perhaps to her own imagination) and that the reason it moves (in her own opinion) are because of the women who skulk behind its veil. Perhaps the most interesting part of the entire realization though, is that she believes that they are not only moving but "shaking" the wallpaper. In her own words, "And she is all the time trying to climb through, But nobody could climb through that patter--it strangles so..." (right, 5).

In many ways the women of the wallpaper are just as trapped as the main character who notices them. For she too, is trapped. Not only in a room in which she is unsure of whether she despises or likes but also in a society that looks down upon her, in a marriage where she is the lesser person, and in her own mind where she is unsure of her own illness. The room (not only the wallpaper) is what traps the main character mentally.