"The Yellow Wallpaper", by Charlotte Gilman, was a bizarre but interesting short story that through me to the wall. In the beginning of the story we were told that she is suffering from a nervous condition and feels unwell. Her husband John, who also is her doctor denies that anything is wrong with her but nonetheless she has to “have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day”, weird? Why are her husband and brother denying the fact that something is wrong with her? In my opinion, I think they just didn’t know how to deal with it and kept thinking that she will get better. Why to you think they were so in denial?
As the story progresses, she is more, and more fantasized about the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom. She hallucinates about the women in the wallpaper changing the designs on the wall at
night and also thinks the woman crawls away to fast to see her in the day time. This makes me believe that the woman on the wallpaper is a mirror image of herself for the fact that the woman is trapped, just like she is trapped, not able to do anything about her condition or her
life. This is a story that I hope I never get to relate too or experience!
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About her husband being in denial--see my comments on Richard Capozzi's blog: this may say something about the discourse of science/medicine as is was understood at the time.
You're on the right track in the last paragraph, when you begin to see the protagonist's imaginative involvement with the wallpaper as symbolic of her mental/emotional, as well as socio-cultural, condition. See my comments on other journals, and follow this up in a detailed journal entry.
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