He feels that he is helping her by not giving her any responsibility, but in reality that lack of control she has over her own life causes her to become even more ill. John is also very patronizing through out the story; he refers to her as a "little girl" and insists that she take a room she does not like, as if she were a child. In fact, the room she is to stay in used to be a nursery. It has child-safe bars on the windows and the bed is nailed down to the floor. This makes her feel even more like a child. .
In addition to her husband, solitude also drove the narrator to disconnect form reality. Not only does John take control in the way in which she leads her life, but he also does not allow her to see friends or family members. John instructs her that, "he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now" (161). He feels that having people around would make her condition worse, so she is left to recover by herself for three months. She doesn't even have John around all the time for he "is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious" (160). .
Due to the lack of interaction the narrator has with people, she begins to find comfort in the wallpaper; it becomes the text that she is unable to write due to it being the only stimulating object left for her to interact with. She states that, "it keeps me quiet by the hour" (166). Over the course of the story, her tone becomes more excited as she interacts with the wall paper, and becomes completely preoccupied with it. For example, she remarks that, "Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch" (166). She feels she is the only one who understands the wallpaper, and it becomes and ally to her/it. Later she starts to personify the wall paper as well. She speaks about the "bulbous eyes" (161), and says that "it slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you" (165), if you try to follow its pattern.
