Read the excerpt from "The Yellow Wallpaper." The front pattern does move and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I
think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads. They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white! If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad. I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I’ll tell you why—privately—I’ve seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! Whom does the narrator see hiding in the wallpaper? A. Herself, trapped in her life.
B. Jennie, trapped in her job.
C. The neighbor, trapped outside the house.
D. Mary, trapped with the baby.
The correct answer is A. herself, trapped in her life.
Explanation:
The narrator of the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a mentally ill woman - or, at least, that seems to be what her husband thinks and convinces her of. Trapped in her life, in her house, she is advised to get as much rest as possible and to control her vivid and wild imagination. She ends up developing a fixation for the wallpaper on the walls, in which she sees a woman that is a representation of herself, of her feelings and desperation. In the excerpt, she describes how the woman tries to climb out of the pattern, just to be strangled and suffocated. She is, in reality, describing the way she feels when she tries to be herself but is suffocated by others, their expectations and impositions. Just like the woman she sees, she wants to break free.
