Examples Of Sickness In The Yellow Wallpaper

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Gilman demonstrates how sickness influences the views of the victim it consumes. In “Yellow Wallpaper,” sickness consumes the narrator causing her to push away anyone who wants to help her. At first, her husband’s intelligence impresses her, but now she thinks that his knowledge gives him too much power over her. She claims that her husband is controlling and cannot apprehend what she is going through. She wants him to understand her, but she never gives him the chance to. She lets her sickness, take control of her opinion and hallucinate her view of who she is or what she wants herself to be. Yellow Wallpaper emphasizes how sickness controls the narrator's physical, emotional, and mental psyche, making her vulnerable to the outside world. …show more content…

While she is analyzing John and Jennie’s change in behavior, she concludes that “he [asks her] all sorts of questions, too, and [pretends to be] loving and kind. As if [she] couldn’t see through him” (Gilman 402). She takes John’s act of kindness and care as a disguise to find out more about her sickness. She thinks John and Jennie “are secretly affected by it” (402). John has control over her life so she does not understand why he feels the need to treat her right. She thinks his kindness and love is temporary, so she protects herself by pushing him away. Her sickness is making her feel paranoid about having the wallpaper to herself. The yellow wallpaper is the first thing she feels that John does not have control over. A part of her recognizes that John is changing and the other part of her tries to understand his …show more content…

She wants power over her life, she wants to make her own decisions, it is too late to do that, her sickness has taken control over her life. She misjudges her husband's intentions when he treats her right, she thinks that there are others trying to free their true selves, she mistakes her enemy as her friend. She has given up her life in hope to find someone by her side even though John and Jennie are always by her side and are there if she needs help with anything. Freedom does not exist, he narrator being free is just a fantasy, no matter how hard she tries her sickness will always have control over her, therefore, her sickness will always influence her to do what it wants her to

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