The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper is a daughting tale of a young woman who is a victim of circumstance. She was born in an unfortunate time when cures were often diseases. She begins the story as an average woman who recently had a child. She mistakenly thinks that the visit to her new “home” will be a pleasant one. To her surprise, she looses the bit of sanity she had. The narrator is the young woman in the story who suffers from postpartum depression. She is given the bed rest cure often described for other woman during the Victorian Era. I believe the bed rest cure is a horrific display of masculine control during this time. It is often sad to believe that new mothers had to endure such an unethical “treatment”. It makes me very thankful to know that I was fortunate enough to be born in a generation full of medical advances so I never will have to forgo this barbaric treatment. It does not surprise me that the narrator loses her sanity. It is obvious when she begins to lose her sanity because the way she speaks in no longer proper as it was at the beginning of this short story. Her words and sentences no longer made sense after she started losing her sanity. The yellow wallpaper represents the freedom that not only the narrator needed and wanted but it also represents the freedom that all women deserve. Ironically, the wallpaper could also be seen as a prison. The peculiar thing about this story is that the narrator has a hard time seeing that it is her husband’s fault that she is placed in the room with the yellow wallpaper. The ending is definitely my favorite part of the story because it reveals the complete madness the narrator has become.