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Summary and Analysis of Part 2
Part Two: Summary It has been two weeks since the narrator and John have moved into the house, and she has not felt like writing since the first day. John is away during the day on cases, even at night sometimes, and he does not understand how much she suffers. Still, she believes it is merely nervousness, and she feels like a burden to John. She can hardly do anything on her own, and she is grateful that their nanny, Mary, is so good with their baby. John laughs at her anxiety over the wallpaper and denies her request to repaper the room for their three-month stay; soon she will want to change everything else in the room, too (which she privately admits is true). To avoid looking at the wallpaper, she looks at the garden out of one window, and out of another at the bay, the estate's private wharf, and the shaded lane from the house. She thinks she sees people walking down the lane, but John tells her not to give in to these fanciful visions, as it will exacerbate her nervous condition. She still thinks writing would heal her, but gets tired when she tries. John will allow her company only when she gets well. A recurrent pattern in the wallpaper looks like a broken neck and two upside-down eyes staring at her. The room is damaged from its previous status as a nursery, aside from the torn-off spots in the wallpaper. Through the window she sees John's sister, Jennie, a caring and perfect housekeeper approaching the house, and the narrator must make sure not to let her see her writing; Jennie probably thinks the writing has made her sick. The narrator thinks she sees a "strange" figure in the wallpaper's pattern. Jennie comes up the stairs and she puts away her writing. AnalysisThe narrator reveals her feelings of inadequacy over her wifely and maternal duties. Mary (likely an allusion to that most sacred and perfect of mothers, the Virgin Mary) has replaced her as the caretaker of the couple's baby, while Jennie is a model of the perfectly submissive and happily domesticated wife. With the narrator's identities as wife and mother subverted, John acts more like a father to her than he does as a husband. He continues to infantilize her, calling her his "'blessed little goose.'" This paternalistic attitude extends to Jennie, who "hopes for no better profession" than being a housekeeper and who probably believes writing is the cause of the narrator's sickness. Jennie's bias against writing, however, is less forceful than John's is; he stifles the narrator's "imaginative power and habit of story-making" when she merely looks outside and thinks she sees people. We see more evidence that the narrator's mind is growing more chaotic. The garden, with its "riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees" seems to mirror her state of mind, which grows choppier in the writing. She also feels watched over by the wallpaper, much as John and Jennie watch over her, adding to her sense of imprisoned surveillance. The sunlight motif pops up again when she claims she can see a figure in the wallpaper "where the sun is just so." What this figure means will become apparent later in the story.
ClassicNote on The Yellow Wallpaper
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