9. How does narrator's relationship with her husband change?

[Jen]

9. How does the narrator's relationship with her husband evolve/change? Does her mental state improve or worsen?

[Diane]

I would say their relationship worsens over time as she becomes suspicious of him.

[Kristel]

The woman eventually withdraws and doesn't share with her husband and he is too busy working and doing other things to be in relationship with his wife.

[Pip]

Well, he ends up in a dead faint when he realises how far she has descended into madness when he discovers her stripping the wallpaper. It is striking that they never have a rational adult to adult conversation, he is consistently condescending.

[Jan]

At first, Jane seems extremely docile. She has, on the surface, accepted her husband's opinion that she is weak in mind and needs to rest, away from stimulation. And yet, she also questions his opinion, finding herself increasingly angry with him and continuing her writing in spite of him.

Little changes in their relationship for most of the book. If Jane challenges John, he argues her down, applying his logic, making her seem insane. He tells her she is getting better, but that's not how Jane feels. She keeps asserting to herself that John loves her, and cares for her, and seems incapable of seeing how he is controlling and diminishing her.

Eventually, though, whatever is going on in her treatment, she becomes afraid of John, suspicious of him. Her sanity seems to be deteriorating. Jane thinks it's the wallpaper, and at times I found myself wondering whether it was like the arsenic impregnated wallpaper that covered the walls in Napoleon's place of exile. Other times I wondered whether John was drugging Jane. She records that he was always encouraging her to sleep, so he was possibly tranquillising her and causing her to have hallucinations.

Jane ends by not wanting to leave her prison until she has worked out the puzzle of the wallpaper. Her belief is that the woman trapped inside the pattern is shaking it in an attempt to escape. It's a sad contrast to Jane's misguided acceptance of her own imprisonment.

By the end, Jane believes that she is the woman trapped inside the wallpaper, that she has escaped, and that she must destroy the wallpaper in order to prevent John and Jennie imprisoning her again. Her descent into madness is complete. John's horror at how badly he misjudged the situation is deserved. What a pompous fool.