As soon as Abigail stays alone with the girls in the room we see what kind of person she really is. She threatens and intimidates the girls. In line 349, when Betty awakens and accuses Abigail, she smashes the child across the face and yells: "Shut it! Now shut it! ".
When Evyn first saw Eleni, with her red lipstick, black pants, and high heels, she thought Eleni looked nothing like a college professor and a mother. Evyn made the assumption that she went partying every night. That is an example of her being judgemental. After her father, Birdie, reminded Evyn that her new combination lock was 5, 10, 15; she forgot, making her forgetful. An example of Evyn being unintelligent was when her so-called friends, Andrea’s group, calls her Evelyn and doesn’t talk to her unless it’s to ask about updates with Ajax, she doesn’t realize that they’re just using her.
This conflicting mood soon proves that the setting is just another one of the illusions in the story. The reader then begins to see that the setting in fact contributes to the overall disturbing mood. The roses in The Possibility of Evil are an effective symbol for the perfection of the town which Miss Strangeworth is aiming for. She is extremely proud and possessive of her roses. The author includes; “Miss Strangeworth never gave away any of her roses, although the tourists often asked her” (Jackson, 223).
She just shoved in her clothes, her jewellery, her perfumes” (page 281) shows her to be a vain, desperate creature who strives to give her life some purpose but is looking in all the wrong places. The passage “She joined the CWA, mixed with Corrigan’s leading ladies, helped cater for events and joined all the amateur pleared-skirt sporting fraternities and committees” (page 97) emphasises her desire to be a well-thought of and active member of the community. However her materialistic values are shown to be void and meaningless: “... she dragged that empty suitcase to her vanity table. She stole it from me, but she had nothing precious of her own to pack in it. She just shoved in her clothes, her jewellery, her perfumes” (page 281) shows her to be a vain, desperate creature who strives to give her life some purpose but is looking in all the wrong places.
The story goes by and the setting does not change, that is why the woman goes crazier and starts crawling into the wallpaper trying to help get the woman out. It is not to late before she realizes that she is insane and the woman she tries to get out of the wallpaper is only herself. There is also some kind of irony in the story because her husband puts her into that room without activity or work to help her problem. But the irony is that instead of helping her, it just makes the woman more insane because she imagines more things. The setting impacted the character in the story because the woman was in that lonely room the whole time and the woman just felt more insane.
As she rushes to the stove too late, a wave of nausea overpowers” As the woman is framed in a doorway it suggests that she cannot escape her reality, to the dreams in which she once aimed to achieved. She is framed like a painting that
Before she left she tried to burn the receipts from all the money Waverly had been spending and withdrawing. As she left the room, she locked the door and disposed of the key. Dora Snook had killed Waverly because she thought she deserved the money or half. Soon after Captain Reilly had come down and kicked in the door. In conclusion I believe that Waverly did not commit suicide or accidentally fall off the boat.
Unable to express herself and incapable of making any decision, her obsession with the wallpaper becomes a fantasy and she is forced to be secretive about these fantasies of the women behind the wallpaper. Her imagination starts to believe there is a women trapped behind the patterns which causes it to move, “The pattern does move […] she is trying to climb through” (Gilman 318). At this point, she is beginning to lose control of reality due to her inactivity and insomnia. Essentially, the woman she is describing behind the yellow wallpaper is herself trying to escape from her lonely, anxious life. She explains one night “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl […] I got up and ran to help her” (Gilman 319).
Her maids never came. Olivia covered the bomb with soil and used water to extinguish it. Olivia was a woman who always put others first. She knew that the bomb could hurt someone so she risked the fact that the bomb could be very dangerous and put it out herself. She had a lot or courage and bravery in her.
On her nearly-bald head she used black ash to draw in square hairline, and then painted her scalp pitch black. Thus when shampooing her hair, the charcoal was completely washed away, and out shone the half-bald, shiny crown of her head, fringed with thin wisps of hair fluttering down her back. She would hobble to and fro helping my mother fix dinner. I never dared glance her way. (4) But Mother's raven hair was like a length of satin falling over her shoulders.