They move into a house, which through the context clues you can infer the woman thinks it's beautiful, but is not quite fond of moving. John believes that this will help cure his wife of her “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 648) as he has diagnosed her with, as well as her brother, who is also a profound physician. The woman feels as though by living with these two in her life, she will never be cured. “You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?” (Gilman 647). She will never be cured in her mind because John will never believe that she is actually ill, he thinks it is all a fancy made up by her mind. John decides that the best place to have their room is in the old nursery due to having more fresh air. Inside the nursery, we are introduced to the bars on the windows, and the repellant and revolting yellow wall-paper that is “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 648-649). The wall-paper was ripped all around the room, torn off in great patches and nasty looking. After the woman stops examining the wall-paper, she hears John and quickly hides her journal for if he catches her writing it will send him into a …show more content…
John was leaving for business and she knew that this would be the final time she would be left alone with her. That night, she locked the door, and started ripping and tearing at the wall. She was not quite tall enough to reach the top so she desperately attempted to move the bed. When she could not get it to budge, she nawled at the edge of the wood frame, hurting her jaw and teeth. She even contemplates jumping from the window but the bars hold her in as well as the fact that to her, jumping from a window would be a pitiful way to leave this world. The act would be “improper and might be misconstrued” (Gilman 656). She finally gathers herself and starts tearing again. Then a knock is heard; John is home.
John bangs and bangs on the door waiting for a reply. The woman screams at him and he pleads her to open the door. However she has thrown the key out onto the sidewalk. John storms down to retrieve it and at the same time the woman has ripped off enough paper to “release” the woman stuck behind the paper. When John busts through the door, she tells him excitedly about her achievements and that she is cured. John then faints, as he realizes that she had not gotten better but worse within their time there. That she truly believed that when she set the woman free, she would be