back! (Gilman 19) The final statement of the narrator is profound and mysterious. The author launched Jane into the plot without the reader knowing, making it easily missed. Idealistically, Jane has the possibility to be anyone, but clearly Jane is the narrator. She has defeated her husband as well as her suffocated soul. She had been repressed for so long, and finally she has been able to free her soul from the male dominated society in which she lives. When John faints at the end, she has to creep over him... (Gilman 19), but at least she can creep freely. One may think that creeping has a certain negative connotation of hiding or not wanting to be seen. This may be the case, but the narrator does not know any other way to be. She has been conditioned to creep everywhere indirectly by the man, so that is all she knows. Again, the man dictates the womans behavior.Understanding the relationship between the narrator and her husband requires understanding of this time period. In the late eighteen hundreds, a woman suffering from depression was most likely not fully understood, so isolation was the easiest and most effective method of treatment. John feels the only way to deal with the narrators problem is isolation. This has the potential to drive anyone insane, irregardless if they have a condition or not, and apparently this is the effect on the narrator. The narrator in this story battles a continuous struggle between her desires versus the desires of society. John epitomizes the men of this societys time period and their quest of domination over women. The narrator manifests the subservient woman of a society struggling against male domination. The struggle is finally over. By trying to ignore and repress her imagination, in short, John eventually brings about the very circumstance he wants to prevent. (Shumaker 589) The author leaves the ending subject to interpretation by the reader. My interpretation of the ...
