AnarchoEngineer

Depends on what “makes sense” meant. I understood that the dude basically locked up his wife and she went insane, crawling around the room thinking her shadow was another woman in the wallpaper. Also that she perhaps killed her husband in the end.

I also caught the vague impression maybe they lost a kid since she mentions shes in “the nursery.” Of course bars on the window makes it seem like maybe shes in a hospital, but that wouldn’t track with her having a blade to sharpen her pencil with.

I still don’t really know what the message is. People are fucked up? Mental illness was not well understood nor treated well in the victorian era? People can go insane because they’re treated like they’re insane?

Addendum: Just read the wiki article. Yeah the feminist themes were almost entirely lost on us. To be fair I grew up in a very rural conservative town, but that raises the question of why have us read the book if not to talk about the main point? I think we were just supposed to pick out metaphors and similes etc. from the text

Traumatizing middle school reading assignment

Commodus—pictured at the bottom, who is the biological son of Marcus Aurelius (bottom right of top images)—marked the end of “Pax Romana” the golden age of Rome.

His rule was actually more peaceful than his father’s with regards to wars. However there was a lot of political turmoil and he was one of those “good soldiers don’t make good kings.” Many people thought they could rule better than a boy who was more interested in fighting as a gladiator than being a good ruler. Maybe he was just power hungry or maybe the threats from his rivals pressured him into it (or both), but he started consolidating power and shaping Rome towards dictatorship.

When he was inevitably assassinated, Rome plunged into an era of civil war starting with the “year of five emperors” which you can imagine was not very beneficial for Rome or anyone in it.

Sidenote: He was very proud of his physical prowess and form to the point he had lots of statues and portraits made of himself, portraying him as a god or mythic hero. This pride makes him similar to the greek myth of Narcissus, especially since that narcissistic behavior kinda lead to his death. The real kicker? He was assassinated by a guy whose name was literally “Narcissus”