There are many instances in the story where the woman tries talking to her husband about her need to work in order to keep busy and giving her a purpose for existence but he ignores her completely. She believed that “congenial work with excitement and change would do me good but I am absolutely forbidden to work until I am well again”.
She has been given a schedule which she follows as exercise would do her good and her diet is also monitored. The lady did not like the room where she had to live. She describes it as “dull enough to confuse the eye, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide- plunge off at outrageous angles.” She hates the color of the wallpaper and calls it “repellant, almost revolting, a smoldering unclean yellow”. She does not want to stay in this room but her husband insists that the room is airy and would help her to recover. Then gradually the wallpaper which she hates so much becomes so overpowering in her mind as if she says “it knew what a vicious influence it had”. She has it, constantly on her mind.
John, her husband has isolated her from her friends and family.She feels lonely and wants to meet her friends. She speaks to him about visiting her cousin Henry and Julia but he turns it down, making her feel weak and treating her like a child who needs to be told what is good for her. He addresses her as “little girl”, when she expresses her desire to go home. From the country side where he has taken her for recovery, he ignores and insists that she is getting better and needs the rest and solitude.
He does not see her loneliness nor her obsession with the wallpaper. She had sleepless nights where she just looked at the wallpaper and starts thinking that there is a woman behind bars which is the pattern of the paper and is trying to escape. Her condition worsens and finally she becomes so obsessed and frustrated that she peels the wallpaper and frees the woman behind it. She has a rope to tie her if she tries to run away.
In the story, John, the doctor husband is the reason for the condition of his wife. The whole story is about how social isolation deteriorates a person’s mental condition. The woman has minor depression and was forced by her psychiatrist husband to be idle and isolated. It is frightful to imagine the mental state of a woman who is not allowed to function normally or as she desires to. The overall meaning of this story is an outcry of a patient who is not handled correctly by the antagonist the doctor and proves once again that the people who suffer from a mental illness should not be treated abnormally. The environment plays a great part. Their feelings and views should be given importance and considered. Together with social exposure the patient can be cured.
