The Yellow Wallpaper Ending

        I think I have finally understood the ending of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. At a first look, this story seems like it’s simply about a crazy woman that absolutely loses it at the end. However, once you reread and go into a deeper analysis, you see that is not the case at all. The ending of this story was very perplexing because it seems like it leaves the reader hanging, wondering why John has fainted or if maybe his wife killed him. It’s all very confusing, but to understand the ending you have to go back to the beginning.

         The narrator’s tone in the story is completely different compared to how she speaks to other characters. When she is writing her private thoughts, she has a lot of discontentment with how she is being treated and there is a sarcastic tone in her writing. “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency-what is one to do?”(Gilman, pg. 1). She places emphasis on the fact that her husband is also a physician because it gives him more power and control over her. It justifies why she can’t make her own decisions of how she wants to deal with her condition. Its also important to note that she puts dashes around “a slight hysterical tendency” because it creates more of a sudden cut in the flow of the language compared to if she had just put commas there. The dashes create an annoyed tone and illustrate her frustration and anger with how she is being diagnosed.

         When she is interacting with other characters she does not have this sassiness and succumbs to the rules that John and Jennie set up for her. “But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished,”(Gilman, pg. 7). She has ambitions to do something other than stay in the house and when she asks to fulfill them she cannot even keep herself together long enough to ask for it. Which is completely contradictory to how she writes in private thoughts in her journal. Up until the end of the story it seems there are two different versions of the narrator. The one that writes and has opinions and goals and the one that sleeps all day staring at a wall.

         In the end, she finally is able to keep her cool around John when she is not doing what he wants. “It is no use, young man, you can’t open it! How he does call and pound! Now he is crying for an axe. It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door! ‘John dear!’ said I in the gentlest voice, ‘the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!’”(Gilman, pg. 15).  In this scene, the narrator has locked herself in the room and John is frantically trying to get in. John and the narrator seem to have almost switched personalities. The narrator is thinking very rationally and has a calm head, while John is making an absolute scene to get into the room. She even calls him a young man, which lowers his authority over her. This is a critical moment because after she tells him where the key is, eventually he listens to what she says and follows her instructions, which is something he has yet to have done in the entire 3 months that they are in the house. When he finally gets into the room and sees that she is simply rubbing herself against the wall while crawling he faints. “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”(Gilman, pg.15). John had probably assumed the worst, that his wife was trying to kill herself in the room, but discovers that she was simply tearing the wallpaper down. He had made such a fuss to get into the room only to discover that what she was doing wasn’t even that bad. Yet he was still shocked enough to faint. This is probably from the shock that his wife would do anything that would disobey what he said. Then when she ends the story saying that she had to crawl over him every time, that symbolizes how he was always in the way of her wants and needs even after he has no control over her.

            This entire story symbolizes the fight for woman’s rights especially for the time period that this story was written. By writing how a man is in charge of every little detail of her life when he barely understands her, shows how men can’t be the ones that make all the decisions for all women because they do not understand what it is to be a woman. Most men don't even realize that there is an issue with women’s rights until they themselves see it and experience it. Just as John is in the way of the narrator’s path even when he has lost his control over her, men are a hurdle that women must always get through to get what they want. The narrator’s continuous failing attempts throughout the story to gain some control over her life symbolize the difficulty that comes with fighting for your rights. How it is not only difficult to argue with others, but also with yourself. There can be the part of you that wants to have wishful thinking and be taken care of, but there is also the part that says enough is enough, it is time to be independent.