“it strangles so…the pattern strangles them off”
The narrator is personifying the wallpaper of the nursery here, which is not the first time she does this throughout the story. She is both fascinated and obsessed with the wallpaper and describes it here with the ability to “[strangle] … off” the heads of the figures she sees in the wallpaper. Using this language for the wallpaper – another important aspect of her setting – signifies the way in which the wallpaper mirrors the restraint on the social role of women. Additionally, this “strangling” can be applied to the way in which John, the narrator’s husband, controls and suffocates her as a woman. Women were expected to be private members of society and perform appropriately gendered duties, so it makes sense here for the narrator to discreetly describe the act of being smothered by her husband and the social restrictions placed upon her. However, she draws on a part of her setting to do this: the pattern of the wallpaper. If women were to try to escape the pattern and be free of this “strangling”, they would be faced with consequences related to their reputation. And for a woman during this time, this is not ideal. As a result, the narrator is forced to outwardly accept the strangling, but resist it privately.
