Loss of Innocence

Hello again! Its me, Smitty. It's Tuesday so lets get started!

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a roller coaster ride of a story. First off we have Jane, the heroine of our story. She and her husband have rented out a mansion for 3 months so that she can rest to cure her illness. Inside her room covering the walls is this ghastly yellow wallpaper that drives her to insanity. In class we talked a lot about how the wallpaper was a project of her insanity, and how condescending john is, and how Jane might be suffering through postpartum depression. But I don’t recall discussing the ending of the story where Jane gets possessed by the woman in the wallpaper. When Jane rips he paper off the wall she says, “I wonder if they all come out of the paper as I did?” I was extremely confused at that point- Jane seemed like she was becoming the woman in the wallpaper. And at the very end she says, “I’ve got out at last…in spite of you and Jane.” Wait what? So in the end, Jane is possessed by this woman that she sees in the wallpaper, but what does that mean? Maybe she, like the woman, felt trapped and wanted out. Jane relates to this woman in this want of freedom so this possibly is why Jane allows herself to become obsessed by this wallpaper. She is trapped by the bars of society and confined by male dominance and female subservience. So maybe she’s not possessed by this woman, but liberated. The woman behind the wallpaper represents all woman seeking freedom in a man’s world.

* This is just a side note but it was really baffling me. What does it mean to "creep?" In the Story Jane keeps saying that this woman in the wall is always creeping about. Like what does that even mean? But then all of a sudden it hit me. "...we got a new dance so get up on your feet/ it’s real easy to do, and it's called 'The Creep'/ Let your hands flap around like a Marionette/ Pop your knees up and down, sh-sh-shaking your neck." This exert is from the song “Creep” By the Lonely Island ft Nikki Minaj. As soon as I made the connection between the two I knew- that I would never be able to see it differently. The link to the song is below:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0&nohtml5=False" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0&nohtml5=False

-Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen