The Yellow Wallpaper Reaction

The first reaction that I had to the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was simply; “What did I just read?” I was extremely confused because in all honesty, this woman seems so completely out of her mind and yet sane all at the same time. The way she wrote, she kept her composure the whole story, even till the final sentence when she exclaimed; “Now why should the man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!” (Page 18). I felt pity toward this woman and tried to understand her a little better. I do not necessarily believe that she is crazy, but merely a prisoner in a room. I say prisoner figuratively because they obviously did not lock her in the room all day, they did allow her to move around the house and even venture outside; but because of her illness she became a prisoner of her mind. I reacted harshly to the illness that she claimed to have. I do not believe that she had a real illness, nor did her husband. I believe that after all the time of pretending to be sick finally broke into her mind and she began to believe that she actually was and made herself ill in the head. I am confused when it comes to the very end of this story, the last page. I understand that she is ripping down the paper because after weeks and weeks of staring at it, it has finally broken her, but I am confused as to what happened to the husband. It stated that he passed out, but I am confused as to if this is attributed to him retrieving the key, opening the door and seeing what she has done to the walls or not. In the end, I had multiple reactions toward this story, but the most prominent was pity toward the woman.