I really enjoyed reading The Yellow Wallpaper since there are so many things going on. It made me think about the narrator and question her sanity. That is not usually something I do when reading. Narrators are almost always trusted and their mental capabilities are not questioned. I can only think of The Penelopiad, or even Until the Dawn’s Light (if you take the book to be Blanca’s journal) as other books where the narrator is suspicious.
I also liked the format of the story and how it is happening in ‘real’ time. The stops in her writing and comments on what she is doing make the story seem very realistic. At one point she even says she is “sitting by the window now”, creating an instant mental picture of the writer in real time. This also made me think about the act of writing, since you literally envision the protagonist of the story writing the story. I thought about what writing does for her health and what it might mean also for the actual author Gilman.
Finally, what intrigued me the most was the last paragraph where she says: ‘I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane.” The name or character of Jane is never mentioned in the story so this made me think that this is the woman in the wallpaper speaking. Jane is the protagonist of the story. If you interpret the story in this way, it’s really creepy because the woman in the wallpaper comes to life and actually speaks. It also made me question if the woman in the wallpaper narrates the story at other points or if they are the same person all along. Regardless, it was quite thrilling to hear the voice of the woman in the wallpaper, affirming she is real and that mental disorders are real.
