The Demise of Reason in The Yellow Wallpaper

"The Yellow Wallpaper", by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, bears its Gothic roots as it demonstrates a struggle of ideas that would not appear out of place in literature by Poe or Hawthorne. Indeed, the one of the story's primary themes is the contrast between reason and madness. In The Yellow Wallpaper, reason is embodied by John, the narrator's husband and primary caregiver as she fights her sickness. John is a physician, and he stubbornly refuses to believe that anything out of the ordinary is happening to his wife, treating her physical needs while neglecting her emotional and spiritual needs. John attempts to help her feel better with medicine and privacy, when all she really needed was love and support. However, Gilman shows the flaw behind this logic, as this "cure," while rational, actually pushes the narrator further toward chaos and despair. Eventually the narrator loses her sanity completely in her room, succumbing to madness and completing the victory of chaos over reason.
From the beginning, John and the narrator appear to be an odd match for one another. John is a doctor who has "no patience with faith," while the narrator appears to believe in fate and spirituality even at the beginning of the story, intuitively sensing something "queer" about the house. Her suspicions are proved correct as she is placed, against her wishes, in the room with the horrifying yellow wallpaper, which disturbs her profoundly throughout the story. Gilman, through her affected narrator, goes into great detail about the wallpaper, which she describes as "a smoldering unclean yellow" with "bloated curves and flourishes." From the beginning, the narrator is bothered by the decoration, and asks John for permission to rest in a different room. John refuses, citing the "practical" concern that there was no room for a second bed in the other room. This refusal begins a story-long pattern of John ignoring his wife's increasingly desperate pleas for empathy and understanding. John fails in this respect, stubbornly refusing to leave the house even though it is clearly hurting, not helping, his wife. Even worse, he essentially abandons her in her time of need, working every day and some nights. In a sense, the narrator's obsession with the wallpaper and her eventual insanity are inevitable, as she is locked in her room all day and night, with nothing else but the wallpaper to occupy her attention. Even if she were not suffering from depression, this would not make for a healthy situation. Without John to help her, the narrator becomes obsessed with the wallpaper, accelerating her depression and driving her to madness.
Indeed, not only does John not help his wife with stubbornness and neglect, but there is also evidence that he actually aggravates her problems with his adherence to reason. Throughout the story, John believes so ardently that he is handling the problem correctly that he repeatedly overrides her protests in order to do what he thinks is right. This protectiveness is frequently taken to the extreme, where the narrator is chastised for even using her imagination. In fact, there is evidence that she is stifled in this way even before they get to the house. For example, the narrator proves willing to accept the rest cure that John proscribes to her, even though she says, "Personally, I disagree with their ideas." This is another instance of where John's reason and practicality actually contribute to the problem. The narrator is so repressed that she lets her imagination get the better of her while she watches the wallpaper. In this way, she also moves away from the concrete world that she never felt entirely comfortable with to another, more abstract world. In this abstract place, she seems to understand subconsciously just how trapped she is, as she begins to see a woman (possibly herself) hidden behind the design in the wallpaper, contained in the same way that she is. As she sinks further and further into madness, the narrator begins to empathize with the "women" in the design, reaching a level of understanding, in her own twisted way, that she never has with her husband. Indeed, it can be inferred that the narrator becomes so emotionally connected with the wallpaper because she is not receiving support from her husband.
Gilman does a brilliant job of showing the inadequacy of reason in certain situations. John, symbolizing all that is concrete and scientific in the world, tries in his own way to help his wife. However, his stubbornness and repression cause her to turn to the abstract world, as she eventually becomes completely insane. And when John faints at the end of the story upon seeing the state of his beloved wife, it represents the final demise of reason in "The Yellow Wallpaper." (807)
Questions:

To what extent is the story feminist in tone or content?

Why is the narrator discouraged by her husband and others from writing?

Why are other characters also interested in the wallpaper?

The story strongly suggests that something violent happened in the room before the couple moved in. Could this have something to do with the wallpaper?