The Yellow Wallpaper

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The surroundings are not the only thing that holds the narrator back. The narrator has to constant hiding her actions and motives from her family and servants. “ I lie her on this great immovable bed- it is nailed down, I believe-and follow that pattern about by the hour.”(439) It is the position of physical and mental confinement that the narrator secretly describes her descent to madness.
As a wife of a prominent physician of the time, the narrator assumption of the typical female role illustrates one aspect of the physical and mental confinement of society; being submissive and deferential to her husband John is expected from her role as a woman in the nineteenth century.
John’s behavior illustrates his authoritarian efforts to control his wife. He tries to have the narrator’s brother who is a physician to corroborate his diagnosis and prescribe a cure, making it more difficult for the narrator to challenge the diagnosis herself. The narrator complain; “John does not know ...

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