John and Jane: Women Are Prone to Madness

Most people believed that women were delicate and prone to madness if overstressed. Her husband who is a physician does not think his wife is sick but, he disagrees he think she is suffering from temporary nervous depression, her brother even agreed with her husband, and her brother is also an physician of high standing. The things that cause Jane’s breakdown. From her own account, audience knows that Jane enjoys writing and reading, yet John considers these to be very dangerous activities that should be avoided at all costs. At that time, it was very common to extort a depressed woman from all sources of sensory stimulation stress. Women such as Jane were separated from their children, hand-fed ,kept in bed,massaged , and bathed. . It is exactly this type of treatment that drives Jane to begin hallucinating. The silent madness into which Jane withdraws is not only her reaction to the cure that men prescribe for her,but her only available form of rebellion against these tyrannies.

John really cares for his wife and wants the best for her, but sometimes she doesn’t see that john does what he does for her . She sometimes gets very angry with john but she says it's because her condition, because she feel so sensitive. In the story John says if she feels any anger toward him he shall neglect proper self-control. There were plenty of things she wanted to do to the house such as; decorative, moving furniture, but john would annoy any of her request. She dislikes John patronizing and controlling ways, so she begins to hide her true feelings from john in her journal. In her journal she says how john believe she would get fixated on the wall paper. He even told her that he would repaper the room so it would not worry her. She attempts to disregard her current condition and her undeniable desire and love of writing. By beginning to talk about the house. She talks about all aspects of the house from the yard to the history of the house.

Over time Jane begin’s to become very found of the wall paper in the house, and tries to figure out the pattern, which became here main attraction. Soon her focus on the wall paper takes over and becomes an obsession of hers. She becomes very secretive and possessive. She wants to find out the pattern of the wall paper for anyone else can. As Jane becomes more distanced from the world and from any source of sensory stimulation, she begins to hallucinate. Her visions of the creeping women and the woman trapped behind her bedroom wallpaper symbolize her own binding and oppression.

By the end jane is hopelessly insane, convinced that there are many women in her house behind the wallpaper.