A Journey from Submission to Insanity in "The Yellow Wallpaper".
In "The Yellow Wallpaper", the dominant/submissive relationship between an oppressive husband and his submissive wife pushes her from depression into insanity. This dominant relationship was brought on by the roles men and women were to play.
Prior to the twentieth century, men assigned and defined women's roles. Although all women were affected by men determining women's behavior, largely middle class women suffered. Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. Women were not looked upon as the 2nd piece of the relationship. They were looked at as a decorative piece that is to serve the husband as he sees fit. She believes that the mansion incorporates external instruments of restraint suggestive of a prison or mental ward. John, her husband, laughs at her opinions regarding the house and her feelings toward the area. Her comment, "but one expects that," implying within a marriage, conveys the narrator's .
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helplessness and perceived inability to change her uncomfortable situation. In the 19th Century, middle-class women expected to be looked down upon .
and in turn accepted this role that they were to play. Men, on the other hand, loved their role. They got to play the provider and the superior ones. Her reaction to the role she is supposed to play causes the conflict. She did not overtly rebel; she kept it in, and in turn went insane.
She has no say in the location or decor of the room she is virtually imprisoned in: "I don't like our room a bit. I wanted.But John would not hear of it." Her first impressions of the "nursery" are as anyone's would be; very defensive. She later becomes attached to the room. "I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps because of the wall-paper. It dwells in the mind so!" Here, the narrator explains to the reader her feelings for a particular room that she has been forced to live in, as it grows on her.
