Summary and Analysis of Part 4
Part Four: Summary The narrator finds it difficult to talk to John about her case, but she tries it one night. She watches the female figure on the wallpaper by the moonlight. When she gets up to look at it and comes back, John is awake. She asks him if they can leave, but he says their lease is up in three weeks and their house is still being remodeled; besides, she looks like she is getting better. She said "Better in body perhaps" but John interrupts and warns her not to "let that idea enter your mind!" He goes to sleep but she stays up for hours staring at the wallpaper. The wallpaper's pattern continues to absorb the narrator. She notices that when the first ray of sunlight shoots through the east window, the pattern changes quickly. By moonlight, the pattern looks completely different. The pattern becomes bars, and the figure of a woman becomes very clear. John makes the narrator lie down more, and she thinks he and Jennie are acting strangely. She thinks they are both interested in the wallpaper, too; she caught Jennie touching it one time under the excuse that the paper stains clothing. The narrator resolves that no one shall figure out the pattern but her. AnalysisThe motif of sunlight and moonlight develops here as the wallpaper's meaning clarifies. By moonlight, the narrator gains the strength to ask John to let her leave the house (although her plea is unsuccessful). Then, the wallpaper's pattern emerges by moonlight. The figure of a woman behind bars symbolizes the oppression of female domestication, since she is barred within wallpaper. Wallpaper is stereotypically a floral, feminine fixture in rooms. Women of the late 19th-century, like Jennie and Mary, were expected only to tend to the housework and the family - and rarely to leave freely for work as John does. But the narrator grows subconsciously aware of this oppression only at night, when the subconscious is allowed to roam. In the daytime, she is repressed like the wallpaper's figure: "By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still." John continues his condescending, infantilizing behavior toward his "'little girl,'" about whom he says, as if she is not in the room, "'bless her little heart!'" His refusal to discuss her intimations that she is mentally ill portends disaster. The narrator's prose style grows choppier and more paranoid. She fears everyone else is trying to figure out the meaning of the wallpaper, and she "cultivates deceit" as she often pretends to be asleep.
ClassicNote on The Yellow Wallpaper
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