The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis

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In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Gilman, the story show it can hard to love someone who is sick and can be a terrible burden. There is an underlining meaning in the husband, John, actions as he cares for his wife, the narrator, who suffers from a nervous condition. Throughout the story, John’s reactions to his wife’s new disorder and dismissal and resentful towards her condition. As the narrator slowly slips into madness and away from the love, the fear of being a burden to her husband continues to build. The concepts throughout the text that show the narrator is a burden on John are he makes her dependent on him like a child, he loses compassion for her feelings towards her care, and he threatens her with treatment that assist her.…show more content…
He would tell her that he saw improvement in the short time that they had been that the house. After the narrator had stated she may be better physically but left the sentence open to say she was not getting better mentally, John’s reaction was negative and oppressive. He could not be bothered with her silly notions of how she felt. “He sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word…’There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours'” (p 382). Since he felt that she was getting better, John spent more time away from the house to avoid her all together. “John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious” (p 377) Even though John did not feel that the narrator was sick and that she was getting better from the fresh air, he threatened her with sending her to a facility in Philadelphia was specialized in nervous diseases. “John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall” (p 379). At the end of the story, the burden of his wife’s condition came to him all at once. He may have felt her a weight down because she insisted that she was no better and that caused stress on the household and the family. When John comes home to the narrator locked in the room, he faints at the sight of her. As a medical professional, there should have been no reason for his fainting at the sight of his wife, but as a husband, the burden that weighed on his shoulders from the months of stress and trying to convince her she was okay caused him to faint at the sight of her
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