Journal entry# 36 Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Siu Faat Jimmy Wong
English 48b
March 7, 2008
Professor Lankford

Quote:

I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?

Summary:

It is found in the end of the story. It explains what the narrator sees outside her room.

Response:

After the narrator has torn down most of the yellow wallpaper, she thinks that the woman inside the wall is now free. She can come out eventually. However, when I am reading this part, I ask, “So where is the freed woman?” Indeed, the woman in the wall has already combined with the narrator. They have become one unit. Instead of thinking it as a horror story, I think that the woman in the wall is an image of the narrator. Since the narrator always creeps in the room, she sees that the shadow also always creeps in the wall. Gilman wants to use the shadow on the wall to explain the hopelessness and weakness of the narrator that she cannot help herself out in that situation.

Why the women are always creeping? I think that Gilman wants to use “creeping” to explain that the women have no difference with infants. Since infants do not have power to stand up and walk, they always have to creep. Similar to women, they do not have the “power” to stand up. They will never have full development. The “power” can only be possessed by the men. Only men have the abilities to stand up.

Moreover, in another point of view, I think that the women do not have the courage to stand up. If they stand up, they may threaten the social and family positions of the men. Therefore, the men would use his “power” to “cure” them in the method which is similar to what the narrator receives.Furthermore, “those creeping women” outsides the rooms help explain that there are actually many women like the narrator in that time period. Gilman wants to use these women and the narrator to further prove that the narrator is not the exceptional case. It is a common trend in that society. Women are treated as infants. They are always trapped in their houses which have no difference with prisons.