John in the Moonlight

A major thread in this story is the moonlight. The moonlight brings out a new side to the wallpaper and its mysteries. The light “creeps so slowly” and makes the narrator feel creepy” (23). Then the wallpaper changes: “the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (23). It is the moonlight that brings out the woman trapped in the wallpaper. “I didn’t realize for a long time…but now I am quite sure that is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet” (26).

These passages also tie in with the theme of imprisonment throughout the book. The narrator feels trapped in her house and her mind. She is forced to live in the nursery with barred windows, even though she doesn’t want to (12). As she studies the wallpaper more it becomes a “faint figure” and then later a woman (23, 26). The woman then tries to escape from her entrapment, she “shakes it [the wallpaper]” and “she is all the time trying to climb through (30). The woman is finally able to escape. The narrator knows this because she has “seen her” and knows “it is the same woman…for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight” (30). By the end of the story, the narrator identifies herself as the woman by a question to herself about the women she sees in the wallpaper. “I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?” (35). The woman was able to escape, which is what the narrator wants to be able to do herself. Therefore, the woman in the wallpaper is the personification of the narrator’s deepest desire.

The repeated use of the word creepy was interesting to me. The moonlight creeps to make the narrator feel creepy, and the woman creeps as well. The definition of the word creep by the Random House Dictionary is "to approach slowly, imperceptibly, or stealthily" which is how the author seems to approach the themes in the book. Still, the moonlight was the part of the book that really intrigued me. I liked how the wallpaper changed in the night, especially how the woman came out then. It seemed to contradict the narrator’s life, since she is only free during the day when John is not there.

John is a very confusing character to me. I’m not sure what to think about him. The first things the narrator says about John is that he “laughs at me [her], of course, but one expects that in marriage” (9). From this description of John, the narrator is exhibiting a feminist viewpoint where it is okay for men to laugh at women. John also does not believe that the narrator is sick, but rather that she has a “nervous depression” (10). The narrator disagrees with this diagnosis, yet she succumbs to whatever John tells her is best for her. This is especially evident in the way that the narrator lives in the nursery, when she would rather live in “one [a room] downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings” (12). Still, there is a way that the narrator is able to defy John, and that is by writing. “There comes John, and I must put this away, —he hates me write a word” (13). However defiant she may try to be, the narrator does admit that John “loves me [her] dearly, and hates to have me [her] sick…And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed…He said I was his darling and comfort and all he had…” (21-22).

Yet in the next line John “says…I [the narrator] must use my [her] will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away from me [her]” (22). A major question I had while reading this book is why does John keep bringing up her “fancies”? John “says that with my [the narrator’s] imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine [hers] is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies” (15-16). This made me think at first that John actually cared about the narrator and wanted her to be well. However, what I found on page 24 made me rethink that analysis. The narrator is trying to tell John that her mind is unwell when she is “stopped short for he sat up straight and looked at me [her] with such a stern reproachful look that I could not say another word" (24). Then John says that "there is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician…?” (24). This outburst by John made me think that perhaps John is pacifying the narrator and maybe even using her. It made me believe that John invented the idea of a “nervous condition” and that he tried to keep his wife “sick”.

I’m still not exactly sure what to make of John, and I think that he would be a good character to have a class discussion about. I would like to think that he is a kind husband looking after his wife, taking her to the country to rest and get well. But why does John obsess about his wife’s “fancies” and forbid her from the things she wants like writing or sleeping in a different room?

Part of the reason I’m not sure of how to interpret the character of John is that the narrator is going crazy during the story. I’m not sure if I can take anything she says as true. The narrator does mention that she is sick right away in the story (10), and the back cover says that the book is about “one woman’s descent into insanity.” Therefore, can I trust an insane woman’s view of the world? That is a question I would like to be able to discuss further with other members of the class.