The Yellow Wallpaper Musings

I thought I knew how The Yellow Wallpaper was going to end. I thought there would really be a woman or ghost of a woman in the walls, perhaps a victim of a murder. I thought that the husband had taken his wife to this huge house to kill her and make it look like a suicide. Like one of those Lifetime movies where the husband pretends to love his wife and care for her although he secretly wants to bump her off. So the husband isolates the wife and slowly attempts to convince his wife and others that the wife is crazy. That way, when she’s found dead, a suicide seems plausible, even to others close to her. I was surprised this didn’t happen. The wife is isolated by the husband, true. However, he isolates her out of genuine concern for her physical and mental well-being. He truly means well and thinks he’s doing right by his wife. It is out of genuine concern for his wife’s health that he denies her visitors and tries to get her to stop working. He also feels that she is not strong enough to handle caring for their child without doing harm to herself. This guy is under the impression women are weak little dolls that must be handled fragilely and he must be the big, strong man and look out for his little wife. I guess if you’re going to be married to a chauvinist, one who wants to take care of you is the way to go. Although, in the story, perhaps if he had made his wife exercise and allowed her the company she wished rather than keeping her hid until she was “better” then his wife would not have descended into madness as she did. He thought he was doing good but really he was doing more harm than he could have thought possible. I thought that it was strange that neither husband nor wife seems to spend much time with their baby, especially as it is their first and most new parents nowadays seem to never get enough of their children. I know that I hate it whenever one of my friends has a baby because I know that for the rest of the week my Facebook feed is going to be