Additional themes include how marriage has kept women in a passive infantile state, the importance of self-expression and communication, mental oppression against women and the relationship between reading wallpaper as text. There was a strict distinction between the female function in the home and the dynamic jobs of the male, ensuring that women remained second-class citizens as domestic housewives. “In this period, men characterize rationalism and realism, while women have imagination, creating conflicts and tensions between opposing forces” (Wiedemann). John believes he has superior knowledge, misjudges, and dominates his wife, who is abusive, all in the name of "helping" her. As a result, the narrator forcibly becomes completely passive and hides her fears to preserve the fiction of a happy marriage. Practically, the narrator no longer has an identity because the role of mother and wife has been taken away from her. The mental restrictions placed on the narrator by John's demeaning and authoritative ways, and the way he sees her only as a housewife and not as an imaginative thinker, stifles her individuality and ultimately destroys her. In reality, John does not know his wife, only superficially, and treats her as a medical case rather than as loving affection.