We can not tell what is wrong with the woman because she is mentally ill and some of her views do not make sense.
“ I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room most suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and ive caught him several times looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.”
The woman is making out as if John and Jennie are looking at the wall paper in horror, but they are looking at what the woman had done to it- she is making it seem that they are crazy and she is not.
Too much yellow is a colour that sends you crazy and it is surrounding the woman everywhere. The woman describes the yellow wall paper as a prison. It is so disgusting and not only does it look ugly but there is also the smell aswell.
“There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. It is the strangest yellow, that wall paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I have ever saw-not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old, foul bad yellow things. But there is something else about that yellow wallpaper-the smell! It creeps all over the house”
The wall paper is covering her- she sees herself in the wall paper which is moving.
“It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so”
The woman can not communicate with him because she thinks that he can not communicate with her.
The woman talks about the baby.
“There is one comfort-the baby is happy and well and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper.”
The narrator is foreshadowing the wall paper like it looks like its committing suicide and hints that she is going to committee suicide in the end.
“When you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly committee suicide-plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
The woman tries to move the bed to the window so she can hang herself in the window but can not to this because it is nailed down. You think that she wants to move the bed because she wants to peel the paper off but in the end we realize she wanted to do it because she wanted to kill herself.
The yellow wall paper seems like its “real” and has its own bad influence. Behind the wall, the woman thinks that there is a woman creeping behind the pattern of the wall, trying to escape in the daytime. She sees her in long shaded line and in the garden, creeping up and down.
“And ill tell you why-privately-I’ve seen her! I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those grape arbors, creeping all around the garden.”
The woman behind the pattern on the yellow wall paper crept when the moon came out, and started to shake the pattern. The sick woman went to the wall and tried to rescue her by pulling her, but when she looked, she pulled yards of the wall paper. This is making us feel that the woman seems that she is possessed by the woman behind the yellow wall paper.
In the beginning of this story, the woman did not like and want to be in the room with the yellow wall paper. She despised the colour yellow.
“Then let us go downstairs,” I said. “There are such pretty rooms there.”
However, at the end of the story, she did not want to leave the room, and strangely she liked the colour yellow.
“I don’t want to go outside. I won’t, even if Jennie asks me to. For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.”
The story is also very confusing near to the end when the woman has a rope, so when the woman behind the wall tries to escape, she can tie it to her. She has also “escaped”, and when her husband John saw her, he fainted.
“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back! Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”
The woman is describing herself like the woman in the yellow wall paper which makes it seem odd. It also doesn’t tell us exactly what happened to the woman, but I believe she has committed suicide by attaching the rope to herself.
“If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!”
Overall, the story is strange and shows curiosity and uncertainty. The woman once hated to be stuck in the yellow wall paper, now loved to be in that room.
