# The Yellow Wallpaper — Munchausen-by-Proxy Lens

## Care That Sustains Illness
### Munchausen-by-Proxy (Analytical Lens)
* Not a literal diagnosis
* Authority sustains illness
* Caregiver controls truth and recovery

## Narrator (No Name)
* Identity reduced to diagnosis
* Self-knowledge dismissed
* Voice present but not authoritative
* Reality validated only by John
* Loss of agency and self-definition

## Authority and Psychological Control
### John as husband and doctor
* Defines diagnosis
* Controls treatment
* Decides when she is “better”
### Epistemic Control
* Self-reports dismissed
* Truth validated externally

## Care as Control
* Rest cure
* Isolation
* No reassessment
* Treatment never changes

## Sustained Illness
* Narrator reports improvement
    * Improvement dismissed
* Condition worsens
    * Treatment unchanged
* Same outcome
    * Isolation
    * Loss of agency
* Illness becomes fixed identity

## Silencing
* Writing forbidden
* Expression treated as symptom
* Surveillance replaces listening
* Silence required for stability

## Complicity (Jennie)
* Reinforces norms
* Supports control system
* Monitors narrator

## Structural Absences
* No timeline to leave
* No description of home
* No definition of recovery
* Absence as control

## Psychological Rupture
* Woman in the wallpaper
* Split self
* Tearing wallpaper
* Ambiguous ending