The Subversive Message of the "The Yellow Wall-Paper"

" She fancies she would feel better if only she faced "less opposition and more society and stimulus;" she yearns for "advice and companionship about [her] work" (her writing, apparently) or the company of cousin Henry and Julia ("stimulating people"). But then, as though learning to accept that she is wrong, that her husband knows best, and that any intellectual activity or even just dwelling on her condition is bad for her, she resolves to "let it alone and talk about the house." A traditionalist might argue that this is, after all, her duty as a woman and a wife. .
             The hysterical patient is impressed by the ancestral halls that she and John have secured for the summer, albeit she finds (all to her husband's rational unbelief) that "there is something queer about it." Much of the picturesque landscape on which the house sits is easily viewable and appreciable from the barred windows of the upstairs room in which she is practically confined all summer. Adding her feeling that there is something strange or even spooky about the estate, she thinks she sees people walking about the numerous paths, "mysterious deep-shaded arbors," and gnarly trees. But what later becomes an obsession is the "sickly," "unclean," yellow wallpaper that covers the walls of the big, airy upstairs room her husband has unilaterally chosen for them. He, however, assures her that it is all due to her "nervous weakness" that must be checked as it "is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies." .
             John is away most of the time during the day, and sometimes overnight when his medical "cases are serious," so it is his sister Jane who attends to the narrator and, as if policing her, keeps an eye on her activities and progress which she then reports to the doctor. "I must not let her find me writing," says the narrator. "I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!" Setting the example of the conventional woman of her time, Jane, herself, the narrator says, "Is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession.