It is easy to see that there is an inherent relationship between the way John treats his wife and the effect the yellow background has on the narrator. While John certainly means no harm, her stubbornness in letting the narrator have the say in her life leads her to become more depressed. As she becomes more depressed, the patterns she sees on the yellow wallpaper become more vivid until she sees images of a woman trapped behind the wallpaper. The yellow wallpaper in this sense serves as a catalyst for the narrator's mental death. Although both John and the yellow wallpaper had a significant impact on the narrator's mental state, they were both interdependent for his eventual mental breakdown. Without her husband, the narrator's experiences with the yellow wallpaper would not have a significant enough context of depression associated with them. Without the yellow wallpaper, there would have been no woman behind the wallpaper who would ultimately cause the narrator's breakdown, even in the context of depression. But looking at the background in the context of severe depression, the circumstances that brought the narrator allow her to do so mentally