You are an adult who is happily married to a wonderful woman, and then you meet your long-lost sister and fall passionately in love. This shocking experience is more common than one may believe. Acknowledging the existence of such feelings is a scary process. It makes the relationship between you and your family member very complicated. This occurrence is called “genetic sexual attraction.” One example of this is the character, John, from The Yellow Wallpaper.
Genetic sexual attraction is a sexual attraction between two close relatives who first meet as adults. It is experienced between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, but most commonly between siblings of the opposite sex who bear a close resemblance. “It takes the form of an overpowering, almost electrical grip of emotion, associated with an inability to keep away from the other person and an almost primordial sense of having belonged together all their lives. The attraction gives rise to a sense of underlying shame and guilt, together with a feeling of rejection that may prevent effective communication because the emotions are too threatening to share with anyone” (Adoption).
The Yellow Wallpaper is about a woman’s temporary nervous depression. It is told in journal form with the woman as the narrator. She describes the way she feels and how she is treated by the people. Her husband, John, takes advantage of her vulnerability to cover up for his own emotional issues. He uses his title as a physician as leverage to get her to do what he wants. His treatment for her required no activity, and she was forbidden from working and writing. He also makes her live in the upmost room of the house, despite her hatred for the distracting yellow wallpaper.
As the summer days passed, John’s late-night working hours and visits to town started occurring more frequently. John’s explanation for being gone all day and some nights was that he had to take care of his “serious cases.” Instead of staying home to care...