"The Yellow Wallpaper"--Close Analysis: John

The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper has gone insane in spite of the fact that she has a kind and loving husband to take care of her. Throughout the novel John tries everything in his power to solve his wife’s mental problems. Before much deterioration of her mental state she noted that “John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess that it always makes me feel bad” (10). This is still while the narrator is relatively lucid and is thus one of the statements the reader can trust the most. Although John was not entirely aware of what troubled his wife, he tried everything in his power as a doctor to make her well: “[John] is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction” (12). Such a husband who dotes upon his wife and deals with all of her odd behaviors cannot be blamed if she acts oddly. Some might say that he was unloving and patronizing to his wife but in her deteriorating mental state there was nothing else he could do. It is impossible to lay blame on the poor man’s shoulders with the basis for such blame being the narration of his wife. Even of the verge of her insanity she notes that “he is so wise, and…he loves me so” (23). Later in the book the narrator says that John is holding her back and attempting to steal her secrets, but this is after she has a very weak mental state and she has not support for this except that she has “caught him several times looking at the paper!” (27).