How is the ending of the yellow wallpaper significant? And how does John's response at the end of the story reflect on his actions throughout the entire story?
The ending of the story is significant as we realise that the woman 'trapped' in the wallpaper is the narrator herself. She has literally overwhelmed her husband as he lies in a dead faint at her feet, and she is compelled to walk around the room that has been her prison.
"I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!
John has never listened to his wife regarding her declining mental state and her unnatural obsession with the wallpaper. He is effectively silenced and the reader realises that the narrator was right in her fears of confinement and has paid with her sanity.
'The Yellow Wallpaper' - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
