Essay On Insanity Vs. Haunting In The Yellow Wallpaper

Debate the Ending: Insanity versus Haunting

Often times, people blame horrific events on the supernatural or paranormal world. What they do not consider is that people may be going insane for different reasons. Insanity is the state of being seriously mentally ill or going mad whereas haunting is poignant and evocative or difficult to ignore or forget. In “the Yellow Wallpaper,” insanity is definitely what made this woman who she is. She was locked in a bedroom for three months with minimal human contact, which can cause insanity. It is clear that this woman is insane because she creeps and crawls, she starts to see a figure in the wallpaper, and she exhibits animalistic tendencies.

The woman in “the Yellow Wallpaper” shows her insanity when

While this woman was locked away, she experienced different characteristics that people could say resemble an animal. The woman starts to notice that someone has been biting her bed. What she does not realize is that she has been biting the bed and so has the woman in the wallpaper. Both of the women creep around as a lion would do right before they attack their prey. This shows that her hallucinations are insanity symptoms and making her see this other woman resembling herself. At the end when John leaves, the woman finds a way to get out and goes downstairs. She is crawling around on all four like a wolf ready to pounce at any moment. While doing this she decides whether to jump out the window for exercise because she wants to surprise John. She has now realized that John has been pretending to love her, which makes her not trust him anymore and causes her to turn herself into someone bad. She grows very fond and protective of the wallpaper and starts getting it on her clothes. She states, “But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me, not alive(Gilman 655).” In this statement, she is saying that only dead people can truly understand the wallpaper and all its beauty. By saying this, she is telling us that she has died and become the woman in the wallpaper. Once she tells herself that she has come out of the wallpaper, she starts to see that other women have come out of