"The Yellow Wallpaper" - full of spoilers!

[Linna Heartbooger]

..."The Yellow Wallpaper"..

I'll be interested in what you think it means, particularly the ending.

She's someone intelligent who is forbidden to use her intelligence in the ways she usually does, and who has all of her avenues of useful work taken away; lots of symbols of being trapped and treated like a child.
So, as intelligent, creative minds do, hers fastens on to something... trying to find a problem to solve or investigate, and it's the pattern of the wallpaper.
her being intelligent and creative- I judge from her dialogue with her husband about her being so imaginative, and her internal dialogue about her imagination in her childhood.

And the ending... well, she goes crazy... is trying to end it all, but hampered by the bed nailed down.

There's ambiguity in there ...about when she does lose it. The whole part where in the last few days of their summer she's realllllly obsessive over "finding out the secret" is just soul-cringingly awful/torturous... because it's building... and it's like she has a deadline for when she has to ruin herself.
and it's the same deadline as when they could leave the darn place... grrr.
but that's just me not liking the way things are.

I was disappointed by the book... (p'raps because some of the best quotes from it were things I'd already read online) didn't have a lot of sympathy for the protagonist... she keeps telling herself she's going to confront her husband, and then whenever she 'tries', she lets herself get put down too easily... while she nurses her anger against him; adds that to her isolation and the other factors perpetuating her depression.
He was never really pressed - so he could EITHER have been a person who would have continued to willfully blind himself OR he could have been someone who truly would have actually softened and listened, and she never found out. (he never found out, either. nor did we.)

I guess, a really good depiction of how someone who is slowly going crazy can keep up a good "show" for the rest of the world - or at least the part of the world that wants to lie to itself about how bad things are.

[Vraith]

There is ambiguity...the part you mention, about the timing, but also another one [at least] that you point to when you say she never actually pressed him, we don't know what he might have done. I think we do know...he would have taken it as another symptom, another thing to be controlled/snuffed out...or a reason to have her permanently committed...I don't think that's really ambiguous with the period it was written in taken into account. What's ambiguous is she is fighting two apparently different battles. Against the discipline of society, but also against the discipline in herself. And where/how do those two things converge/reinforce? Where diverge/conflict? And where do they come from? Which makes which, if they do? [are they branches on one tree? or two trees standing side by side, separate but intertwined?]
The thing I like about it is the questions it generates:
At the end is she insane? or is she free? Because it seems to me that you can't be both at the same time. [insanity precludes choice, the choiceless cannot be free]
OR it seems that anyone who's really free is insane in societal terms.
AND/OR that society creates insanity, both by structure enforcement and by definition [we define insanity in relation to norms/deviations...but in most ways anyone who is human is, by definition, a "normal" human. The lines drawn are fluid, sometimes completely arbitrary...as they were for her circumstances.]
AND/OR/BUT: there is literal insanity, ideological insanity...also partial/limited insanity and something close to total. And effective insanity and irrelevant insanity.
In this story, among other things, her life/role/identity is imposed on her...she is the victim of societies ideological insanity, which drives her to literal insanity. Not freedom, or escape...she hasn't gotten out, she's just moved from a cage she could see and somewhat understand to one invisible where she'll never be able to understand anything again.
[that's why I agree with one line of interpretation that it is obviously a feminist story...yet I disagree that it is in any way, as some see it, any kind of victory for her]

[Linna Heartbooger]

Pfft, how am I supposed to respond to a post when you open up interesting lines of thought in like 7 different directions!

Well, here's the ones I've thought about. (or not thought about very much, in at least one case!)

..when you say she never actually pressed him, we don't know what he might have done. I think we do know...he would have taken it as another symptom, another thing to be controlled/snuffed out...or a reason to have her permanently committed...I don't think that's really ambiguous with the period it was written in taken into account.

If you're going at it from the authorial point of view, that would be hard to argue with.

I agree it's the overwhelmingly likely outcome for most ways that she could press the point.
(that is, "the point" that the isolation and lack of intellectual stimulation is having a negative psychological effect on her)
But if we were going from the raw data of what the husband in the story said + what the POV character described him doing + context, his background and training, etc., ...I don't think that's sufficient.
Because if you use the argument "given that time period," wouldn't that imply that the John character is impossibly bound by society's inaccurate assumptions / fallacies, and by the "doctrine" of his training as a doctor?
Isn't it true that in any society, there are some people who manage to "break through" and see another person more as they truly are, drop lots of their preconceived notions, and understand.

What's ambiguous is she is fighting two apparently different battles. Against the discipline of society, but also against the discipline in herself.

This is interesting to me.
I'm especially interested in what are some examples you're thinking of of her fighting the discipline in herself...
internal "discipline" is something I'm especially interested in at this time....

yet I disagree that it is in any way, as some see it, any kind of victory for her]

THANK you.

[Vraith]

I'm especially interested in what are some examples you're thinking of of her fighting the discipline in herself...
internal "discipline" is something I'm especially interested in at this time....

I'm ALWAYS interested in that. In fact, I often think that everything I care about [and most things that most SHOULD care about] revolves/evolves/issolved if we can comprehend and address this. I'll try and bring it up more/point at it...maybe add to this thread...when the issue seems front and center [or at least highly relevant].

yet I disagree that it is in any way, as some see it, any kind of victory for her]

THANK you.

You're welcome...but going backwards [to confuse you, as I did by flaming more than one point... ]

Isn't it true that in any society, there are some people who manage to "break through" and see another person more as they truly are, drop lots of their preconceived notions, and understand.

I want to say 'YES!', I think 'ummm...maybe...' I fear 'so we think.'

[Linna Heartbooger]

I'm especially interested in what are some examples you're thinking of of her fighting the discipline in herself...
internal "discipline" is something I'm especially interested in at this time....

I'm ALWAYS interested in that. In fact, I often think that everything I care about [and most things that most SHOULD care about] revolves/evolves/issolved if we can comprehend and address this. I'll try and bring it up more/point at it...maybe add to this thread...when the issue seems front and center [or at least highly relevant].

I've been thinking about this one a lot.
What I'm coming up with are these examples of "fighting internal discipline":

• * Letting her mind focus on the stuff she's angry at while not deciding to try to change it. (hrmm, that one's pretty common. and crazy-making.)
  * Not checking if one thought follows another / is a reasonable conclusion.

(hmmm, not sure if those are great examples though; not sure if that's quite what you meant by "fighting internal discipline")

You're welcome...but going backwards [to confuse you, as I did by flaming more than one point... ]

I thought "flaming" meant ranting at the person(s) one is talking to online, as opposed to just ranting about something..

Isn't it true that in any society, there are some people who manage to "break through" and see another person more as they truly are, drop lots of their preconceived notions, and understand.

I want to say 'YES!', I think 'ummm...maybe...' I fear 'so we think.'

Ahh... I'm sorry. I think that I almost never lose the certainty that it truly happens...
Though I often second-guess individual instances of it. And for good reason!

Another theme I've been thinking about from the book is:
How wealth and the need to maintain status can be such a ball-and-chain.
I mean, if the main character & her hubby were not from a "wealthy" class, (able to have people help with the house - even if one is just a relative who has nothing better to do) they wouldn't be able to afford forcing her to a "rest cure."

[Vraith]

What I'm coming up with are these examples of "fighting internal discipline":

• * Letting her mind focus on the stuff she's angry at while not deciding to try to change it. (hrmm, that one's pretty common. and crazy-making.)
  * Not checking if one thought follows another / is a reasonable conclusion.

(hmmm, not sure if those are great examples though; not sure if that's quite what you meant by "fighting internal discipline")

I think those both come into play...though I think they're developments/results/symptoms...maybe the bruises/welts from the fight. I think I can get at it with the opening:

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

This is her "internal discipline." Her self-story is mansions and estates and romance just out of reach [that stuff is for less ordinary peeps, peeps with "ancestors." Of course, she wasn't BORN like this, [part of the tale's point] but has internalized/become this. [it's very like Foucault's development of Panopticism...but this story got there first, I think my michele wasn't born yet, or was a babe when this was written].
And already there are signs of cracks in it...cheap, untenanted.

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and -- perhaps (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?

More of both...she accepts his laughter, it's a marriage after all. Men have their ways, women others, his are the controlling ways...this is still/again her internal discipline. She knows something is wrong...yet she still accepts the discipline by labeling what is wrong, even to herself, as "I am sick!"...then she shifts to "What can ONE do?"...I think that's important/telling...because things really start happening cuz she flows to asking, instead of "What can one do?" "What can I do?" And the answer is insanity...cuz she's "beaten" the disciplines, but has no "I" left. [by extension NO women do as things stand...they either accept what's built for them, or they have no place/are mad.]

You're welcome...but going backwards [to confuse you, as I did by flaming more than one point... ]

I thought "flaming" meant ranting at the person(s) one is talking to online, as opposed to just ranting about something..

Heh...you're correct, of course...but I don't always adhere to word definitions as supplied by the world. That wouldn't be any fun at all!

[Linna Heartbooger]

What I'm coming up with are these examples of "fighting internal discipline":

• * Letting her mind focus on the stuff she's angry at while not deciding to try to change it. (hrmm, that one's pretty common. and crazy-making.)
  * Not checking if one thought follows another / is a reasonable conclusion.

(hmmm, not sure if those are great examples though; not sure if that's quite what you meant by "fighting internal discipline")

I think those both come into play...though I think they're developments/results/symptoms...maybe the bruises/welts from the fight. I think I can get at it with the opening:

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

This is her "internal discipline." Her self-story is mansions and estates and romance just out of reach [that stuff is for less ordinary peeps, peeps with "ancestors." Of course, she wasn't BORN like this, [part of the tale's point] but has internalized/become this...

...And already there are signs of cracks in it...cheap, untenanted.

Okay, I think you meant "discipline" in a different way than I did (or drew on a negative rather than a positive aspect of a more general meaning)...

I was meaning that she was fighting against positive disciplines like doing something where she can see the actual effects of her actions, (something that her "rest cure" seems to almost make impossible, *&^(&*%) mental discipline to "take honest data," etc., discipline to be the same person in her thoughts as in conversation with others..

So you're saying she has this internal narrative she wants to believe, and so her mind always smacks herself back into what she would call "facing reality," which is actually a lie, which is that she'll never have things as she wishes, and they have stuff better?
Or am I just importing my own assumptions instead of getting what you're saying.

Feel free to rant that rant about "she had a choice" that you have inside you first, though!