Discussion Topic

Interpretation of the conclusion of "The Yellow Wallpaper."

Summary:

The conclusion of "The Yellow Wallpaper" can be interpreted as the narrator’s complete descent into madness. She believes she has become the woman trapped in the wallpaper, symbolizing her struggle against the oppressive forces in her life. This ending underscores themes of mental illness and the impact of patriarchal control.

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What is your interpretation of "The Yellow Wallpaper"'s unusual ending?

The story's end is indeed ambiguous and puts the onus on the reader to interpret possible meanings.

A way to read the story overall is that a woman has been infantilized, closed into a converted nursery and forbidden to write by her husband and brother. If this story were written today, readers would quickly surmise that she is suffering from postpartum depression, and instead of being isolated, she should be treated with therapy and/or medication. Her slow psychological unraveling as the story progresses builds readers' sympathy, especially because she is so often left on her own with no one to understand her struggle.

She comes to identify with a woman stuck in an ugly, imprisoning place: behind outdated yellow wallpaper. By torturously removing the wallpaper, she releases the woman, a projection of her own psyche. She conceals the process from her husband because she knows that he or his emissary (Jennie) will prevent her from freeing herself.

One way to read the ending is that she has succeeded in freeing herself, but when she reveals what she has done to the world, represented by her husband, he cannot handle such a revolutionary act and loses consciousness.

Another way to look at the story is that the woman has completely lost touch with reality and regressed to crawling in a destroyed room. Her husband's "rest cure" has ironically backfired and driven her mad.

These two possible interpretations of the story's end offer two opposing moods. The first is more optimistic, though her victory has come at great personal cost and suggests that society will be less than accepting. The second pessimistically observes that women trying to free themselves will likely lose their minds because of the persistent obstacles of society, symbolized by John's prostrate body.

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What is the meaning of the narrator's concluding words in "The Yellow Wallpaper"?

This is a really interesting question. I think the answer is a combination of both—I think it's important to the arc of the story that John does literally faint, particularly given the background of the narrator's health issues. John, as a doctor, and as a dominant male, has set himself up as guardian of his wife's health: he has disregarded her words because of a feeling that she is too feminine and weak to understand herself, and has decided what is best for her is to be cooped up here in this house. Fainting had (and indeed has) strong associations with femininity: fainting is an indication that a person is not physically strong enough to cope with what is going on. For John to faint here, then, represents a victory for the narrator. Instead of she being the weak one, it is he who is physically overcome by the situation—he has been proven wrong. He is domineering and he thinks himself rational; but he can't cope with what he is seeing. It literally floors him to realize what has happened to his wife, and that it is the opposite of what he thought would happen and intended to happen.

Then there's the point at which he faints, and the subsequent comment that she has to "creep over him every time," suggesting an ongoing pattern. This part, I think, is symbolic—he faints in response to her victorious assertion of dominance over him: she has "got out at last," "in spite of" him, and now he can't "put [her] back." So, it's important to end the story here, because it represents a symbolic victory for the narrator: she has knocked down, as it were, the domineering figure of her husband and now will continue to trample over him, keeping him down, as it were. It's as if by going mad, she's actually able to be herself for the first time ever. She has defeated him by proving that his medical science was the opposite of what she needed, and now because she is beyond rationality, he is unable to reach out to her any more or make any attempt to "put [her] back" into his prescribed boxes.

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