, “He thought of his family with tenderness and love. The decision that he must disappear was one that he held to even more strongly than his sister, if that were possible”(p. 825).The deterioration of Gregor’s life was in part due to the ostracism associated with his being turned into a bug. Once his family found out what happened, they banished him to his room, and his parents could not even bear to look at him. Prior to his metamorphosis, Gregor was an integral part of the family. He provided the money by which the family survived. Yet as soon as he changed, he was labeled an outcast, who was useless to the family, and therefore not paid any attention. He felt this ostracism, and it made him not want to continue on in life, he gave up because he felt unloved.Likewise, the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was confined because of her mental illness. She, most likely, was suffering from post-partum depression, after the birth of her child. Instead of getting love and attention, and being able to see her child, she was sent to live in a room in a foreign house. She was not allowed out of the one room that her husband picked out. Although she yearned to see the gardens and the rest of the house, her husband would not let her. It was as though she was being punished for her illness. I believe that her confinement had an effect on the progression of her insanity, similar to the way Gregor’s ostracism and confinement led to his death. She was forced to look at the yellow wallpaper day in and day out, making her more insane each day. Even though Gregor eventually died, and the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” fell into the depths of insanity, it seems they both gained some sort of freedom through the deterioration of their former lives. Gregor gained a freedom from the restrictiveness of his parents. Previously, he had to go to a job that he did not even like in order to support a g...
