Louise M Rosenblatt Reader Response Theory

When an author sits down to write a story, they are actually writing for themselves. The words that appear on the page are their thoughts and feelings being brought to life. It doesn’t matter what they’re writing; it could be a novel, an article, an essay; whatever it is, they leave a piece of themself in that work. The same applies to readers; they receive the message of the author and the reader will have their own unique interpretation of the work. What one reader takes away from a work, a different reader may have not been moved in the same way. A reader’s background influences their perception of a text, and this can be linked to Louise M. Rosenblatt’s Reader Response Theory. Rosenblatt taught comparative literature at NYU, and published

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide-plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (487). Within this quote, the author aligns the wallpaper with the narrator’s mental illness through her word choice. This tactic moved me because of Gilman’s clever use of symbols and clues. This caused me to feel the tension and stress of the narrator as I felt how the wallpaper such an irritant to her. The words the narrator uses, such as, “sin”, “confuse”, “suicide”, “destroy”, and “contradictions”, can all be connected to the emotions that mental illness can evoke upon its owner. “Sin” can be connected to how someone with mental illness feel guilty for their ailment. “Confuse” relates to the narrator’s own confusion and frustration relating to her diagnosis. Her husband, John, is a physician who is described as having “no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly as any talk of things not be felt and seen and put down in figures” (486). He is a man who doesn’t believe in things that cannot be seen, therefore, he believes that his wife’s illness is simply a state of mind and is voluntary. This can cause her to feel like she is sinning against him, and can also confuse her since her feelings are, in fact, very real. She expresses her frustration when she says, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a light hysterical tendency-what is one to do?” (486). She felt like she was suffering alone in her illness. I am able to relate to this since I have seen depression in many of my loved ones, and even I went through a bout of depression when I