Our Nameless Heroine-- The Yellow Wallpaper

It wasn't until I was nearly three quarters of the way through "The Yellow Wallpaper" that I realized the narrator is just that-- she has no name. She is almost as enigmatic as the woman she sees on the wall, a shadow of a being that lives in relation to those around her, without her own true identity. The woman in the paper is clearly representative of her situation. She cannot exist if the narrator doesn't see her-- just as the narrator does not exist on her own without her husband or her child. John defines her and John determines whether or not she is set free. The narrator is bound to this room as well as her life as a wife and mother, and she loses her sense of agency without a name. Without even this most basic idea to make her human, she is just another wife and mother. Without a name, she becomes the face of all of the wives and mothers that passed through lives of so many, living without recognition and living in the shadow of others.