n a mental institution, admitted for depression. She says that her new home stands “quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village.” (Gilman 551) She then describes the garden, saying, “There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden – large and shady, full of box-bordered paths.” (Gilman 552) But what sort of house has a garden like the one described and separated from the main town? It seems likely that the woman is in an institution, but her perception of it is so distorted that she believes that it is her new house.The fact that her “husband” is also a doctor suggests her mental state. She says that, “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special instruction.” This sounds more like a description of a doctorpatient connection than a husbandwife relationship. The narrator also says that John is gone quite a lot on trips to see other patients and is only with her at night. Even then he is not always there at night. She says he is gone “nights when his cases are serious.” By nighttime she may mean the time when her doctor, John, goes to check up on her and sometimes he can’t check on her everyday, because he is busy with the other patients in the mental ward.The narrator also speaks a good deal on her room, which she describes as “a big airy room the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.”(Gillman 552) She claims that the room was formally a nursery, but what nursery has rings in the walls and bars over the windows? Windows at mental institutions are commonly barred and rings are used to restrain frantic patients. Then the narrator focuses on the wallpaper and really begins to lose her sanity. At first she describes the paper as, “dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and pr...
