Unpacking a quote

ENG101

Ackeem Vohrnis

“At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies. He said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on. You know the place is doing you good he said, and really, dear, I don't care to renovate the house just for a three month rental”-The Yellow Wallpaper By

Charlotte Perkins Stetson.

  The  narrator of the passage “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson is unhappy about the wallpaper in the room. She is complaining to her husband (referred to as “HE”) about it because she feels that the wallpaper is haunted and she is beginning to see suspicious patterns and forms inside the wallpaper itself. The narrator's husband does not agree with her because he feels that if he is going to have to replace the wallpaper, he is going to have to to replace and renovate everything else in the house, nor does he believe in the supernatural.

  The narrator is facing an everyday battle to deal and try to get rid of the wallpaper. She is also a ill patient, which makes her husband wonder if her actions are caused because of her illness. When her husband says “you know the place is doing you good”, he is trying to convince her that she is just over thinking the situation, that its all in her head. I believe he is starting to feel frustrated with his wife as well, because of the repetitive renovations he said he would have to do, it seems as if the narrator is nagging to the husband.

  The husband seems to be more of a logical person than his wife, which in my opinion, feel he shouldn't repaper the room. The husband says “I don't care to renovate the house just for a three month rental”.  We know that this isn't their permanent home, so its understandable why he wouldn't want to renovate the house. The narrator says “This wallpaper has a kind of sub­ pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so - I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design”. We can see from the above quote that the narrator strongly believes that there is something significant about the wallpaper, why else would she be describing it with “I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of a figure” and “conspicuous front design”?

  Do I believe there is something suspicious about the wallpaper? Not at all. I do believe it is the narrators ill self conscience playing mind tricks with her, and driving herself and her husband crazy.