Detailed Notes

Justification

• Justification implies awareness that an action is wrong, yet attempting to rationalize it.
• Gaslighting often involves justification, but not always; sometimes the person being gaslit is unaware.
• If a person is aware they're being gaslit, providing justification undermines the gaslighting itself.

Pride/Hubris

• Pride can lead to a person ignoring symptoms and believing they know best, resulting in "willful blindness of the self."
• Hubris, a form of excessive pride, could be a more potent version, earning a slight bonus on a test.

Loss and Grief

• The narrator experiences loss on multiple levels:
  • Loss of her baby.
  • Loss of freedom.
• Her grieving manifests as doubling down on justifications for her husband's actions and trying to free the woman from the wallpaper.
• She fears her husband discovering her attempts to free the woman, as well as Jane/Jenny, who has been "co-opted into the patriarchy."

Co-Optation

• Co-optation refers to being integrated into an oppressive system to the point of not recognizing one's own oppression.
• Example: A woman at a Trump rally stated the presidency is "a man's job."
• Consider how much of your worldview is genuinely your own versus conditioning from parents, leaders, schools, politics, or religion.
• The narrator is learning to be an equal person in a patriarchal world, symbolically "crawling before she can walk."

Reflections

• The narrator's experience with postpartum depression and having a baby is reflected within the story.
• She is infantilized like a child, similar to her own infant.
• The nursery setting emphasizes her regression to a child-like state.

Deceptive Gaslighting

• The narrator feels guilty when she goes against what she is being told.
• Writing could help her depression.

Love

• The doctor loves his wife in a controlled and manipulative way.

Narrator's Identity

• The narrator's name is unknown.
• Some suggest her name is Jenny, based on a line at the end; however, it could be a mistake or a reference to a voice in her head.
• Severe depression can lead to hallucinations and psychosis, possibly exacerbated by incorrect treatment.
• The narrator experiences a psychotic break when she starts to crawl.

Themes

• Family relationships skewed by patriarchy.
• Fear of the wallpaper, John, and Jane.
• Deception
  • Hiding her writing.
  • Self-delusion: Gaslighting herself into believing she's getting better.
• Infantilization.
• Isolation: Being kept away from everything; isolation is detrimental to human beings.
• Patriarchy.
• Misogyny: Psychological manipulation as a form of violence against women.
• Agency: The ability to make one's own choices and decisions.