Response to The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” was a very strange story. I won’t lie. It kind of creeped me out. It was in its creepiness, though, that I actually became somewhat fascinated.  Seeing the way that this woman was repressed naturally made me sympathize with her. I figured that things would start to get to her being alone in a room for so long, but I had no idea to what extent her problems would grow. The room’s yellow wallpaper is an interesting sort of metaphor. The wallpaper shows what it going on in the woman’s life. She is caged up, unable to escape from her room, her mind’s prison, and express who she is. She watches as the woman in the wallpaper becomes progressively more restless and itches more and more to try and get out. I wonder if she didn’t see her own shadow doing some of the creeping she described. Things got rather creepy when it appeared that the woman in the wallpaper had escaped and started leaving evidence around the house. I was kind of disturbed, unsure what to think of it. After all, if there was a real wallpaper woman then the story would take a whole new twist. I resolved to think that the wallpaper woman was the main character, which is what she resolves herself to be in the end as well. I find it interesting to see how oblivious her husband is to her problems the entire time. I would think that a physician would have some observation skills and see her problem worsening. Besides, the man barely spent any time with the woman and thought he knew her entire life. I don’t understand how one gets under the impression that they can learn everything about a person from only a few encounters. I find it just fascinating in the end, when the main character truly takes on the persona of the woman in the wallpaper and almost loses her human functions. It scares me to think that things like this can really happen.