At first, John from “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Leroy Moffitt from “Shiloh” seem completely different from each other. John is a physician who only believes in what he can physically see, while Leroy is a man lost in his own life, looking for a purpose. John’s wife is very dependent on him, whereas Leroy’s wife Norma Jean has her own life. However, the two seem more alike than first appears. If we compare John and Leroy, we can see both stories demonstrate how husbands can drive their wives away by being too restrictive of them. The first similarity between these two characteristics is that they have limited views of their wives. Throughout the story John constantly thinks of the narrator as a child. First he puts her in a child’s …show more content…
He brings up going to Shiloh because he believes it’s what she needs to get away. Due to their behavior, both men lead their wives to rebel. John’s controlling behavior causes the narrator to abandon him by going completely mad. First, she questions John’s pronouncements. The narrator believes that congenial work, with excitement and change would do her good (p.297). Next, she focuses on the wallpaper. She describes its negative features noting that patches are gone as if school boys wore it out (p.298). Upset by her husband’s actions, the narrator decides to begin writing in secret. . It reaches the point where the narrator has to hide her writings from him, because he gets upset if she even writes a word (p.298). -After time passes, we see her obsession grow. John seems to be oblivious to the narrator’s conditions, telling her “you know the place is doing you good” (p.299). She notices that the pattern is torturing (p.303). Finally, she begins to see a woman hiding behind the pattern (p.304). Looking for the woman in the pattern gives her something to look forward to (p.305). Ultimately she comes to believe that she is the woman in the wallpaper and wants to free herself. She begins peeling off the paper through the night, and by morning removes all the paper she could while standing (p.307). The narrator even begins to contemplate jumping out of the window, but does not
Her loving husband, John, never takes her illness seriously. The reader has a front row seat of the narrator’s insanity voluminously growing. He has shown great patience with the recovery of his wife’s condition. However, the narrator is clear to the reader that she cannot be her true self with him. In the narrator’s eyes she feels he is completely oblivious to how she feels and could never understand her. If she did tell him that the yellow wallpaper vexed her as it does he would insist that she leave. She could not have this.
The narrator has a natural creativity that when left idol drives he insane. She is forced to hide he anxieties and fears which ultimately drives her to insanity. Even though she keeps a journal writing is in particularly off limits. Creativity was forbidden to her, John constantly reminds her to keep it contained. She even writes: “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.” She longs for an outlet for her repressed mind, going as far as to keep the journal, the one the audience is now privy to. She often refers to the journal as her only source of solace. As her sanity deteriorates, her mind starts to imagine things. The wallpaper becomes her outlet for this creativity. She begins describing the mansion as haunted and starts seeing a woman in the walls. She describes this saying: “The dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder-I begin to think - I wish John would take we away from here!” Her natural eventually becomes so repressed it drives her
As the story progresses, the narrator thinks that maybe she could gain some control over things. She begins to gain mental strength from the wallpaper. Her mind begins to churn and she commits the ultimate crime in John’s eyes . . . she thinks. She thinks that maybe John is not entirely correct about everything. However, she knows that she cannot have John know about it. She has to do it in her mind for now. She begins by analyzing the wallpaper. John has told her that she should not let such things bother her. She focuses on it for that simple fact. She feels she knows something that John does not. This is clear when she says, "there are things in that paper that nobody knows but me" (488). The narrator is certain that she now has some knowledge that her "all-knowing" husband does not. Eugenia C. Delamotte says that the husband "uses his exclusively masculine knowledge as a source of power over his wife" (206). She is now beginning to realize that she has a mind of her own and is able to use it.
With good intentions, John controls his wife's life and makes all decisions for her, whether she agrees with them or not. His wife is full aware of the restrictions that her husband has imposed on her, but she is recessive to his control and often agrees with him. However, she fails to see “signs of her confinement: the bars at the window, the gate at the top of the stairs, steel rings on the walls, and the nailed-down bestead” (Korb). Because she is unable to escape from the isolation that her husband has kept her in, the woman seeks relief from the yellow wallpaper and she creates an imaginary relationship it. In fact, the worst thing her husband should not of done is give his unstable wife an object that is not appealing to focus on. In doing so, he has given her an opportunity to let her mind wonder and create objects that no one else sees. John, however, does not give any thought to this because after all, he thinks he knows what is best for his wife.
In ?The Yellow Wallpaper? it seems that the narrator wishes to drive her husband away, spending the entire time hoping for freedom. She explains, ?John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious? (Gilman). She is glad to see her husband away so that she may be left alone to do as she pleases without interference from her husband. She is frequently rebelling against her husband?s orders. She writes in her journal and tries to move her bed when there is no one around to see. However, she always keeps an eye out for someone coming.
As the story progresses, the narrator thinks that maybe she could gain some control over things. She begins to gain mental strength from the wallpaper. Her mind begins to churn and she commits the ultimate crime in John’s eyes . . . she thinks. She thinks that maybe John is not entirely correct about everything. However, she knows that she cannot have John know about it. She has to do it in her mind for now. She begins by analyzing the wallpaper. John has told her that she should not let such things bother her. She focuses on it for that simple fact. She feels she knows something that John does not. This is clear when she says, "there are things in that paper that nobody knows but me" (488). The narrator is certain that she now has some knowledge that her "all-knowing" husband does not. Eugenia C. Delamotte says that the husband "uses his exclusively masculine knowledge as a source of power over his wife" (206). She is now beginning to realize
The narrator feels very imprisoned in the house and tries to find a way to escape it. During the narrator’s rest cure treatment, she has attached herself to the wallpaper: She would “lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately”(260-261). This was the narrator’s way of escaping the oppression she was in. The wallpaper often seemed confusing to her, but she was determined to figure it out: “I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself”(301-302), everytime John takes of her illness lightly, her interest in the wallpaper grows. This is a direct reflection of her loneliness and isolation from her treatment. The speaker’s rest cure treatment directed her not to do any activities that would make her think intellectually or imaginatively, so she is forced to stay isolated from people, books, and chores. However, as her loneliness grows intensely, she finds relief in writing, something she was told not to do. The narrator would often have to hide the fact that she writes when nobody's around, and when someone comes while she is writing she records “I must not let [them] find me writing”(141-142). The oppression the narrator has been put through has made her stronger mentally, she starts to become more and more possessive of the wallpaper and tries
Analysis: The above quotations clearly display the similarity between John and the Narrator’s relationship to that of a father and a daughter. John controls the majority of the Narrator’s behavior to the point she feels an overwhelming sense of guilt for her incapacity as John’s wife. The Narrator is restricted in her actions and is therefore unable to fulfil her wifely duties, forcing her to consider herself as a burden. When is reality, John treats the Narrator as his daughter and does not permit her to complete her duty. For instance, the Narrator dislikes the yellow wallpaper and wishes to have it removed; however, John does not allow her to do so and acts as if it would feed into a child’s stubbornness. His continued belief in his superiority disregards the Narrator as is wife and instead infantilizes her. He believes her identity exists only through him, which merely encourages his paternalistic
Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, which is also her doctor, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness. Everyday she keeps looking at the torn yellow wallpaper. While there, she is forbidden to write in her journal, as it indulges her imagination, which is not in accordance with her husband's wishes. Despite this, the narrator makes entries in the journal whenever she has the opportunity. Through these entries we learn of her obsession with the wallpaper in her bedroom. She is enthralled with it and studies the paper for hours. She thinks she sees a woman trapped behind the pattern in the paper. The story reaches its climax when her husband must force his way into the bedroom, only to find that his wife has pulled the paper off the wall and is crawling around the perimeter of the room.
Women in the early Victorian Era were very limited in their individualism as they were expected to conform to societal norms. The narrator craves freedom from the society she lives in, dreaming of having a room "downstairs that opened on the piazza and [has] roses all over the window." (Gilman 3) The narrator wants nothing more than to be able to express herself, yet she is held back as she reveals that "John would not hear of it." (Gilman 3) She knows her place is not to question her husband, so she finds other creative outlets that she keeps secret. She knows that these outlets of creativity are found, she risks her husband’s reputation as she would disrespect him. Throughout the narrative, the heroine acknowledges the importance of status in society. Even when her madness drives her to contemplate committing suicide, she says, “I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.” (Gilman 15) Even in the most stressful times, it is the fear of ruining her husband’s reputation that keeps her from obtaining what she wants. Finally, the narrator breaks free of her confinement by tearing off the wallpaper, saying, "I've got out at
Forced to lie in bed all day and take it easy, the narrator becomes obsessed by the wallpaper and is drawn into trying to interpret it. She imagines a woman trapped within the paper. The narrator decides to strip off all of the wallpaper in her room, this is the moment of ultimate rebellion for the protagonist, and she is taking action towards independence. When John comes home to find the door locked, he begins freaking out. When he finally gets into the bedroom the narrator’s actions are so extraordinary and shocking that her husband faints. Through everything that is going on the narrator keeps creeping around the room in circles stripping all of the wallpaper off to free the woman that is trapped within.
By helping the woman behind the wallpaper escape, the narrator herself is able to escape. At the end she tells John, “I’ve got out at last…in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (Gilman)! She had had enough of being put down constantly by the people in her life and she even talks about how “It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work” (Gilman). She loved to write, but nobody allowed her to. She was so thrown into a cell in which women should only do certain things like cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the family. When she wanted to write, the people around her said that she shouldn’t be able to and took that away from her. When she rips of the wallpaper, she is basically freeing herself from the cell that she was thrown into. She was never really sick or depressed, rather she was claustrophobic towards the idea of being thrown into a box that she had to follow and that is the story she tells about the woman behind the yellow
Her descriptions and obsessions with the wallpaper as viewed from her perspective, truly draw readers into her downward spiral to ultimate insanity. Readers follow her in her mind from a nervous condition through her mild subsequent pleadings for alternative treatment to eventually "creeping" through the wallpaper with her--experiences which readers grasp within a powerful narration indeed. Through her, and only her is precisely how readers clearly knew how she felt at the end when she says, "I've got out at last in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" (330). Husband John fainted, he had no idea she had gone that far, but readers did.
The narrator’s feelings of inferiority and powerlessness parallels the female figure she sees trapped behind the pattern in the wall-paper adorning her room. She gradually withdraws from both John and reality by locking herself in the room and ultimately merging with the figure. Through the changing image of the pattern from a “fait figure” (Gilman 46) to a “woman stooping” (Gilman 46) behind the paper and “shaking the bars” (Gilman 46) as if she wanted “to get out” (Gilman 46), we can see her becoming one with the figure: “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.”(51) Her collapse into madness as reflected in her behavior with the “bedstead [that] is fairly gnawed” (Gilman 51) and her “creeping all around” (Gilman 50) is a direct result of her passive submissiveness to John’s control of her life.
She does what John says so that he does not suspect anything of what she is doing. She does get caught a couple of times but she is able to play it off so that John does not get a strange feeling about her. John makes her take pills to control her condition and limits her human interaction to only two people. She evidently lands in a judgeful atmosphere and therefore keeps everything to herself, including the her journal that is the story. Being so trapped, so limited, she needed something to do, and that was examining the wallpaper. So much thought, so much time with it made her over think everything about it. She was obsessed with it. She could not do anything else and consequently, she went crazy over the wall. Over the “woman trapped in it” and what way it flowed in. She went completely nuts over it and led to the events in the end of the story. She was tied around rope and crawling around her room. Before that, she even contemplated suicide but did not because the bars around her window were too strong to move. “I am getting angry enough to do something desperate” she stated because she could not find out what way the pattern flowed on the wall. Even before that she bit off a piece of her bed because it would not move and hurt herself because she could not reach a part of the wallpaper to rip off. These events plus more are what led to the end consequence. Of