I'm not going to lie. I'm a very shallow person. And perhaps that's why I don't do very well in analyzing text- but that does not necessarily mean I can't do it. So needless to say, when I was sitting in class on Tuesday, I was going through one of my shallow phases when we were talking about this crazy wallpaper that the narrator became so entranced with. When someone mentioned that the narrator saw the woman in the wallpaper, I was reminded how weird that was and joked with myself that this narrator must be really strung out on something strong. Well, for whatever reason, I was reminded of this "art" craze in the 1990's when everyone was all into this 3D art that, if you stared at it long enough, you would get a vision amidst all the craziness. And then I realized, in context of "The Yellow Wallpaper," yes, the narrator was crazy. But at the same time, we all had to look pretty ridiculous even though we were all perfectly sane in the 1990's crossing our eyes and telling everyone to shut up so we can get at this image behind the pattern.
Despite my shallowness and the whole 3D art thing, I did manage to come up with two themes about "The Yellow Wallpaper," and they both kind of tie into each other. "The Yellow Wallpaper," to me, is about truth and perspective. One of the questions that came up in class was, "how can we trust the narrator knowing she's got a mental illness?" My response to that is why should we have to trust her? After all, this story comes from "Anthology of the American Short Story," not the New England Journal of Medicine. It appeared that the narrator was writing this stuff down because she needed an outlet because her turd of a husband only cared about her medical condition, not her as a person and she really had no friends that she spoke of to let out her feelings. For this to be her outlet, much like these blogs, she's free to write whatever she wants without having the criticism of others- that's what she had her husband for. Therefore, why does it it really matter what she was speaking was the truth or not?
Perspective is also important for this story. From the perspective of a perfectly sane person, the wallpaper could have never come to life and start sprouting women. It's just not possible, unless you're in Disney World and they can trick your mind into thinking so. As for the narrator, there are a couple things that might attribute to her hallucinations. As we covered in class, she was clearly suffering from postpartum depression, which is never good. And secondly, I think her living a very solitary and lonely life for these few months inside this rented house did not help her situation at all. I hardly consider myself a medical doctor, but I think if she had more stimulation or at least more people surrounding her, she would have been a little better off. Her husband was so wrapped up in himself, and she had no friends to confide in otherwise. Having such a secluded life probably made the situation ten times worse because she had all the time in the world to think about the things that would bring her down. And in a way, perhaps in this middle of all this bleakness, what she really wanted was a friend, and her hallucinations were really a subconscious want for a friend. So maybe from her perspective, this was a way of entertaining herself, which in turn, turned out to be entertainment for other people in this published writing. So in short, the author, in my opinion had a very valid perspective. What she saw was what she saw and thus, wrote about it. It's as simple as that.
My last question about all of this is... because of our individual perceptions, do we ever know what the truth really is?? It's definitely one of those long, philosophical questions that I'm sure we can go on for days with, but it's one of those questions that cause us to really think about the truth and our relationship to it.
Oh, and by the way- the 3D art is a guitar and musical notes :)
