Yellow Wallpaper
So this week I saw Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" for the first time, which yes is a little late and, yes, it sounds irrelevant but it does have something to do with what we're going to discuss in this journal. The whole reason I decided to watch the movie is because recently I've become fascinated by cabin fever, the psychological phenomenon which occurs when we are confined to a single space in isolation for a long period of time and begin to lose our sanity. It has been likened claustrophobia but it is certainly more devastating. Granted "The Shining" has a lot of supernatural elements to it as well but the events are based on the symptoms of those experiencing cabin fever. When reading the Yellow Wallpaper it is easy to assume that the one was simply insane from the very beginning but her denial simply didn't come through until near the end of the story, however in retrospect I think her decline into insanity may have had more to do with her being trapped in the bedroom for so long. The mind and nerves are very fragile and sometimes our psyches can be more easily broken than we'd like to think. Furthermore I find there to be a more sinister undertone to the story in regards to the lady's husband, the doctor, who always tells her to stay in bed. It makes me wonder if he wasn't just trying to drive her over the edge from the very beginning.