Reflection: The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about a woman's confinement and her journey to get better from her temporary nervous depression.  In the beginning it was rather confusing to understand because the story was written in a journal entry format.  The narrator mentions names and events that I don't exactly recall, so I usually assume that this or that happened.  But later on the story was easier to understand as the woman became more psychotic. Throughout the story I became angry at the doctor husband.  He treated the narrator more like a patient than a wife, and he seemed to convince her that he knew what was best for her simply because he was the doctor.  It was frustrating to see how her train of thought changed because of John.  She would write about what she thought about herself, then what John told her about her condition, then she would change her mind about herself, making it seem like John is always right about his diagnoses.  I think that Gilman's writing style helps her message (that resting will not cure her condition) get across to the audience.  The story is written in first person, so the audience reads the story as if he/she is the one going mad in the room and imagining the woman behind the wallpaper.  The journal entry style shows us step by step how the woman's mental condition progressively changed over time since it is told in her perspective.