The protagonist's husband doesn't keep her locked in the room, exactly. Rather, he prevents her from working or finding any positive way to spend her time because he believes she is ill with depression. Though he isn't literally locking her in, John locks her in metaphorically by denying her work, stimulation, or even the choice of her own room.
The protagonist explains that sometimes she wants to work, write, or go out, but her husband,...
The protagonist's husband doesn't keep her locked in the room, exactly. Rather, he prevents her from working or finding any positive way to spend her time because he believes she is ill with depression. Though he isn't literally locking her in, John locks her in metaphorically by denying her work, stimulation, or even the choice of her own room.
The protagonist explains that sometimes she wants to work, write, or go out, but her husband, John, believes it wouldn't be good for her. As a physician, he makes decisions about what his wife should and should not do. Both he and her brother—also a doctor—decide she needs less stimulation and stress.
As the protagonist spends the summer bored, isolated, and frustrated with her husband, she develops a fixation on the wallpaper of her room. John refuses to replace it, even though it makes her unhappy. She says,
At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.
The narrator herself locks the door at times so she can creep around the room. John never locks her in physically—but emotionally, he traps her in the house and the room. Even though she wants a different room, he believes that he knows what is right for her more than she does.
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