The imprisonment in Yellow Wallpaper, Jane Eyre and the slave When I think of prisons, the first thing that comes to mind is obviously locking someone up against their will or as punishment, because someone else has decided that this is better or simply wants to get someone out of the way. Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre is locked in the attic and the woman in The Yellow Wall-paper is confined to a summer house by her husband. For both of these women, imprisonment acts as yet another prison: both are already prisoners in their own bodies and mental states. In The Yellow Wall-paper, the main character is placed in a summer house to recover from a nervous state. Her husband John, a doctor, believes that to recover she must take a rest cure and abstain from any type of physical or mental effort, and therefore he more or less locks her up in one of the largest rooms of the house where she has nothing to do but stare wallpaper and keeping a diary. She thinks she sees a woman trapped behind the wallpaper and undresses her to free her - this seems to me to be how she sees herself in her captivity. Her psychological state and confinement in the room, along with the gender roles and expectations of the time, all contribute to making her a prisoner who continues to make her own decisions. The husband is the provider, the one who knows best and the one who makes the decisions and she has no way to express hers. She eventually "escapes" her controlling husband and the room, finally falling into madness. "'I've come out of it at last,' I said, 'in spite of you and Jane! And I've got most of the paper out, so you can't put me back!'" (Gilman, p1669). Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre has, to use a somewhat old-fashioned term, gone mad to the point of being dangerous both to herself and to others. To get her out of the way, Mr. Rochester has her locked up and pretends she never existed. By treating her like an animal (putting her in a big cage), he creates a real (physical) prison with its locks and bars, and I think this only makes things worse, since there was certainly no way that she would ever recover. There.