Journal #29 Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Shirly Ong
English 48B
7 March, 2008
Journal #29 Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Quote:
“I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again...I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path, and I don’t want to have anybody come in, till John comes. I want to astonish him.”

Summary:
This quote appears at the end of the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, when the woman finished stripping off the wallpaper.

Response:
I am surprised to read this. I think the woman is SO MAD when I learn that she actually enjoys the room, as it is bare, without wallpaper. At the beginning of the story, she hates the room because of the wallpaper. She hates its color, its condition, and its patterns. Yet, her husband, John does not let her move to another room anyhow. To “escape” from the room with the yellow wallpaper, she starts stripping off the wallpaper. I feel she is so poor to be trapped in a room that she hates for three months. If I were the woman, I would be so desperate. I would like to leave the room as soon as possible. The woman wants to leave the room sooner too. However, on the last day of the three months, she locked herself in the room and threw the key out of the room because she does not want other people to set her free before John comes. This does not make sense to me. I would definitely want to leave the room early in the morning if I could. I think the woman is so crazy that she wants to astonish her husband, who is a physician, by the bare wall. At the beginning of the story, I do not think the woman is mentally ill be cause she was so calm even though she hates the room. She simply did not understand why her husband put her in a room she does not like. As I come to the end of the story, I think she is acting so madly. If she is surely ill at the beginning, I feel her condition deteriorate after the “rest therapy”. I wonder if this is what her husband want, for he put her in a weird room.