This story has to be one of the best examples of someone slowly losing their grip on reality while everyone around her keeps their distance and attempts to diagnose her. The main character spends the vast majority of her narration describing her hatred and awe over the yellow wallpaper that torments her mind with its varying design.
I will go ahead and jump to the end and say that I am extremely confused because of how vague it is; I thought that she was going to actually hang herself with the rope or something, but then realized that that couldn't work because nobody would be telling the story. In the end it says the husband past out, but why would he pass out if she just tore down the wall paper, unless she is somehow part of it? I am not sure at all. But the extra bit about her writing this after she went through something explains how she was able to create such a realistic situation of a lady losing her mind while the people around her are constantly wondering about her mental health.
Gilman says that she wrote the story to try to keep another woman from being driven out of her mind by this 'cure' that was called 'total rest.' It is an amazing journey that we get to watch as she begins to find all these things in the wall paper. However, it is also clear that a mind which is not allowed to function will find something to occupy itself. Try sitting and thinking about nothing for ten minutes and you will see.
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