The Yellow Wallpaper: Reflection

I found this short story to be very intriguing.  At first, I was not very engrossed in the story.  As I kept reading, however, it commanded my attention and I began to become very interested in what the woman had to say.  I found the dynamic between the woman and her husband to be very important to the overall meaning to the story.  Earlier in the story, it is stressed how powerful and in “command” of his wife the man in.  He tells her that she needs to rest; she does it.   He tells her she mustn’t leave the house; she does it.  To the naked eye, she is very submissive.  But, this makes me wonder: is there something more behind why she obeys as she does?  Is it simply the constraints of the time period that cause her to comply?  Is it love for her husband?  Is it fear?   What strikes me as interesting is that this woman’s husband is so concerned with making sure his wife obeys him that he becomes completely blind to the fact that being alone is making her go crazy.  I think what she needs is attention, but that is obviously not something that her husband can give her.  One of my favorite parts of the story is how the wallpaper is described.  The woman sits in this room by herself every day all day long, and searches for things to keep her mind busy.  She sits and observes the wallpaper; her eye follows the twirling and whimsical path of the pattern, then suddenly reaches a dead end and stops.  When the woman describes this, I’ve noticed that her thoughts come rushing back and she becomes yet again preoccupied with thinking about her illness.  Also, the way she describes the wallpaper and how the things behind it creep add a sense of eeriness to the story.  At the end, it is particularly interesting how the woman suddenly asserts that it is she who has escaped from the wallpaper, as if the reader knew all along that the figure creeping about was her:  “I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?”  Her mental state is finally understood when she says this.  We understand that when she looked at the wall and said she saw a dark figure, she saw nothing more than her own shadow moving about.  When she looked out the window and claimed to have seen women creeping about, she saw nothing more than her own reflection.  It is amazing how the way we view her changes in an instant, just by reading one sentence.  In the earlier part of the book she sounds so level headed and rational; wise, really.  When she says that line, however, the way we view her changes dramatically.  Just like that, we reconsider every previous word we read, because we realize that we had interpreted and absorbed it completely incorrectly.  I can honestly say that after reading this story and reflecting on its meaning, it has become one of my favorite pieces of literature, simply because it is so incredibly intriguing.