The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper: The last image in this story is a fairly unsettling one. What is it and why do you think Gilman concluded the story in this manner?

The last image in this story is a fairly unsettling one. What is it and why do you think Gilman concluded the story in this manner?

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John comes home and tries to open the locked door. The narrator tells him where the key is, and he finds it and enters. He asks her what she is doing as she creeps around. She tells him that she has finally gotten out of the wallpaper despite him and Jennie, and that she has pulled off most of the wallpaper so they cannot put her back. John faints, and the narrator keeps creeping over him as she goes around the room. There is one final irony that avenges the narrator's insanity: John's fainting is a stereotypically feminine show of weakness. The narrator finally achieves an authoritative position in her marriage, with John unconscious and her creative imagination finally free of all restraints. Her continual “creeping” over his prone body serves as a repeated emphasis of this liberation, almost as if the narrator chooses to climb over him to highlight his inferiority over and over again.

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