Yes, she clearly escaped into madness. It was done so brilliantly and chillingly, wasn't it?
And it was so intelligent the way extremity of her increasing madness was evoked by the allusions to how oddly her husband and Jenny seem. "He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look." "And John is so queer now that I don't want to irritate him." "I don't like the look in his eyes." And John is quizzing Jenny, and wants her to spend the night in the room with his wife. You can just feel him getting more and more cluelessly nervous the more he succeeds in driving her mad with his regimen, aka patriarchy.
I guess my question about the ending is, has she merely become completely mad, or is there an implication that the "woman" in the wallpaper, who is herself projected, having gotten "out at last," which could be taken as meaning having understood at last the pattern in the wallpaper, that is, the modus and devices of her oppression, might now be free?
The emergence from the wallpaper (what it represents) would then be like a rebirth. That would give it a happy (if macabre) ending.
"I've pulled off most of the paper so you can't put me back" could sure be read as "I've pulled the wool off my eyes, so you can't control me in those ways again." |
