Jennifer Mann
6) There are some clues that indicate that the narrator is reliable though on the contrary there are many that suggest she is not. The narrator tells the story, The Yellow Wallpaper as if she were reading it from a journal, she recaps events that occurred in the beginning of the story which support her statements at the end. Although we are informed that the author is not mentally stable, this is shown to be true at the end of the story when she tears down the wall paper and begins to crawl on the floor as Jane did(insanity). With this statement, the idea that the narrator is recapping these stories is not very reliable considering the fact that we may be presented with every detail or the narrator could of forgotten parts of the story or telling it in the way she wanted things to happen. As well she is mentally unstable therefore we have one viewpoint of the story that may not be interpreted in the same way as if it were from someone ‘normal.’ The irony is the idea that we have the knowledge of the narrator virus the knowledge of the characters in the story. The narrator is naturally the most reliable source in a story, considering their point of view their the ones who present us with the facts. Though ironically we don’t know if we should consider what the narrator says to be true or false.
