"Unpacking a Quotation"

‘’I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength. John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dread­fully depressing. “

In this passage from “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, we can see that the narrator of this story is a mentally disordered woman, who has clearly a strong passion for writing, even if her husband forbids her to write, because he thinks that writing is not helping her getting better. Apparently, the fact that her husband prohibits her to write, push the narrator to start sneaking, when she wants to write, because she has a strong belief that writing is her unique way of liberation.

The theme of mental illness is plainly dominant in this quotation even if john dismissed it as nervous troubles. But normally, a competent physician like John should easily diagnose the disease of his wife or take her to a medical specialist, to make sure that she is on the mend.  But unfortunately in this passage we see totally the opposite, the doctor does not understand how the narrator exactly feels and how serious her case is.

The narrator begins this passage with describing the nursery such us an “atrocious” place, which means an absolutely unpleasant or cruel place. The word “Atrocious” makes it seem like if the narrator hated being a patient and “the nursery” constantly reminded her of the sickness that she suffers from even if she is trying to neglect it.

Not only the negligence reigns on her case, but furthermore, the narrator is trying to camouflage her own illness as “only nervousness”. The “only” in this passage tell us that the narrators try to convince herself that her mental disorder is only nervousness, but here we certainly see that there is a hint of mockery, she is completely conscious that something is wrong with her.

“I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous trouble are dreadfully depressing” here, the narrator uses a figure of irony. She exclaims that her case is not that critical but simultaneously she complains from “these nervous troubles” that makes her “dreadfully depressing”. The adjective “depressing” here connote a much stronger feeling than simply from a bad day. I think here the narrator is trying to protest against the oppression and the imprisonment that she suffers from, since they are in this nursery, more specifically,  in this story the narrator is trying to represent the repression of women in their epoch.