The concept of the unreliable narrator was hardly a new one when H.P. Lovecraft wrote The Rats in the Wall in 1924. In fact, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a popular story in 1892 that featured an unreliable narrator when she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. Throughout history, many authors had used this technique from Aristophanes’ The Frogs (405 BC) to Gilman and Lovecraft nearly 2,300 years later (Mastin). After reading both The Yellow Wallpaper and The Rats in the Wall, one can see many similarities and differences between the two seemingly unrelated stories. This is important, because in order to understand both stories, and stories with unreliable narrators in general, we need to examine the patterns that suggest both characters are insane. One key similarity between the two fiction stories is how both characters are unreliable. They are both mentally insane. This is not explicitly told to the reader in the story, but the hints are there throughout the stories and the conclusions feature a surprise ending, where it is clear to the reader that the narrator is insane. Both stories are told in the first person which impacts our understanding of what actually occurred in the stories, as well. 

In The Rats in the Walls, H.P. Lovecraft doesn’t initially suggest the narrator is insane. Instead, he starts off by explaining the ancestral history the narrator. Essentially, the narrator’s ancestors lived in England for many generations at this same estate. However, due to mysterious circumstances, they were forced to abandon the property and move to America. “The country folk hated” the estate that the family lived at (Lovecraft 75). They “had hated it hundreds of years before, when [the narrator’s] ancestors lived there, and they hated it now, with the moss and mould of abandonment on it” (Lovecraft 75). Once the narrator had regained possession of his ancestral halls, he had workmen obliterate the house and rebuild it. The narrator, who is only introduced as Delapore, tells the reader that every father in the family would pass down to his eldest son a letter that Delapore speculates contained more history about his family. A fire led to his grandfather and the letter being destroyed. This far into the story, the reader is anticipating a typical horror story. The pace of the story is slow and the narrator seems trustworthy enough. Clearly, his family seems to have had some trouble in the past.

The Yellow Wallpaper also starts in a similar fashion. Instead of Charlotte Perkins Gilman telling the reader that the narrator is insane, the narrator tells us how she and her husband acquired “ancestral halls for the summer” (Gilman 299). However, the narrator quickly sets up the idea that not all is going to be right with the story. The female narrator, who is nameless, describes the estate as “a haunted house” and notices “something queer about it” (Gilman 299). She also confides in the reader that she is “sick” but her husband and brother, who are physicians, don’t believe her. This is different from The Rats in the Walls, because Gilman instantly suggests something is currently wrong with the narrator and the home she is staying in, whereas Lovecraft simply informs the reader that Delapore’s family had problems centuries before. So, the beginning of the stories have similarities in that neither author directly suggests their narrator is to be distrusted, but different in the hints they provide.

Later in The Rats in the Walls, the narrator tells us he moved into his now-rebuilt house with “seven servants and nine cats” (Lovecraft 79). Five days later, Lovecraft first hints not all is right with his narrator. His favorite cat, who was in the bedroom with him, started acting “alert and anxious” which was out of place for its normal behavior (Lovecraft 80). The next morning, “a servant complained of restlessness among all the cats in the house” that night (Lovecraft 80). Later that night, Delapore, with his favorite cat, “had a distinct sense of leaving strange dreams” when he was awoken by the cat. He “heard a low, distinct scurrying as of rats or mice” and the cat went ballistic looking for them (Lovecraft 81). The following morning, none of the servants reported anything unusual, except for the cook, who noticed a cat acting howling. The next night, Delapore awoke from another strange nightmare to find the same thing happening. When he turned on the light, the “motion disappeared almost at once, and the sound with it” (Lovecraft 82). The cat also stopped and went back to its normal behavior. He checked the mouse trap and saw that it had been sprung. Delapore and his cat go downstairs and find the same thing happening. This time, when he turns on the lights, it doesn’t stop. All the cats are going berserk, but when Delapore asks two servants if they heard anything, they “replied in the negative” (Lovecraft 82). Also, all of the traps in the house seem to be sprung. The challenging part to discern is if this rat-like noise is actually happening or not, but something is setting off the traps (although it could be the cats). Other than Delapore, no one has heard this strange noise. However, clearly the cats are reacting to something, because they have woken up the servants each night. The narrator has to still be trusted at this point. The next night, Delapore sleeps in a vault with Norrys, who is a friend. While the cats go crazy and Norrys wakes up, Delapore is in the same strange nightmare from before. However, he wakes up to the sound of rats, despite Norrys being right there and not hearing it. Since no humans have heard the noise despite being close to him suggests something must be wrong with him to some extent. 

The Yellow Wallpaper also has more and more subtle suggestions that the narrator is unreliable. The story is written as if the female narrator is writing in a hidden diary. She changes topics quickly throughout the story, but it almost always goes back to the wallpaper decorating her room. Her room “is a big, airy room” and she believes it was once a nursery and then playroom/gymnasium for children (Gilman 301). The wallpaper is stripped off “in great patches all around the head of [her] bed, about as far as [she] can reach” (Gilman 301). This is interesting because she despises the wallpaper. Now, if the room was designed for children, how could they reach where she could and tear the paper. Plus, some of the rips are near her bed, where she presumably spends a lot of time. She also writes about “the barred windows” and the “gate at the head of the stairs.” These are items that would keep someone in the room, which may be John’s, the physician-husband, purpose. She also claims to see people outside in the gardens, which John tells her is not true. Clearly, one of them are wrong. Gilman may be suggesting the wrong person is the narrator, because she shortly says she “used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than more children could find in a toystore” and writes about the “kindly wink the knobs of [her] big, old bureau used to have” and the “one chair that always seemed like a strong friend” (Gilman 303). So, the narrator used to project her imagination on blank walls and give them character. She could be doing that throughout the story. She also sees a creeping woman in the pattern of the wallpaper which becomes important in the end of the story. So, in both stories we see more and more hints from both authors that both characters aren’t as reliable as they appeared early on.

Later in The Rats in the Walls, Delapore, and a group of recruited explorers go under the vault to a hidden city, which is where the story goes from making sense logically to more fictitious and uncertain. In this city, there are tons of human bones that have been chewed by rats/mice and other half-humans. This city also matches Delapore’s reoccurring nightmare. Delapore seems concerned and confused by what he sees and doesn’t reveal any odd comments early in the adventure. Then, all at once, the cat and Delapore take off and the story breaks down chaotically. “Something bumped into” him that was “soft and plump” which he guesses was a rat (Lovecraft 88). However, it was probably the cat. He then asks “why shouldn’t rats eat a de la Poer as a de la Poer eats forbidden things?” (Lovecraft 88). He basically says he is about to be eaten by rats, but then acknowledges that his ancestors have eaten some kind of “forbidden” food, which is interesting soon. Judging by what Lovecraft has told us and shown in the city, the Delapores have, in all likelihood, been cannibals for centuries. They basically bred captured humans, like cattle, which seems even worse. This is the “forbidden things” they eat. He then goes off tropic and compares the rats to the war that killed his son and the fire that killed his grandfather. These rats begin to sound more and more like a metaphor than an actual danger. Delapore reveals he is upset with how Norrys survived the war, but his son didn’t, plus how he used to own Delapore lands. Then he curses Thornton, one of the explorers, who fainted when he saw the remains. Then, he utters a curse in some other language. The group sees him later “crouching in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys, with [his] own cat leaping and tearing at [his] throat” (Lovecraft 89). Then, Delapore and Thornton is in a mental asylum all in one quick paragraph. He still hears the rat noise. Delapore definitely is unreliable, but to what extent is difficult to decide. The cats clearly reacted to something this whole story, but no one other than Delapore heard a noise. The rats clearly don’t seem to exist. Lovecraft suggests that Delapore went crazy and killed Norrys perhaps out of rage for his son’s death and his family owning his ancestor’s estate. In the beginning, Delapore seemed stable and didn’t premeditate this killing. Determining what exactly occurred is hard, but the reader can see that Delapore is unreliable since he’s in an asylum.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator keeps telling the reader how she is actually sick, but John doesn’t believe her. They have an interesting conversation where John says “the repairs are not done at home” (Gilman 306). They are staying at this home because their other house is being repaired for some kind of damage. She could have damaged their last house, like she soon does to this one. She tells us of a smooch that goes around the room behind all the furniture and around the wall. She explains it makes her “dizzy” (Gilman 309). Clearly, she had to go around it to become dizzy. She goes back to the creeping woman idea in the wallpaper. She says it creeps in the night and she doesn’t blame it. She claims “it must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight” (Gilman 309). That’s an odd thing to say in general and when compounded with everything else she told the reader, it would seem this has happened to her. Now, she always locks “the door when [she] creeps by daylight” (Gilman 309). She also writes about how the bedstead “is fairly gnawed” then says she got so mad that “bit off a little piece at one corner” (Gilman 311). She also reveals she probably made the smooch, because her “shoulder just fits” in it. (Gilman 311). Then John comes in and faints as she creeps around the room with her shoulder in the smooch. She also says she got out “in spite of you and Jane” to John. So, Jane could be her name and she went insane or something totally different. However, it is clear she is very unreliable. 

It is clear both narrators aren’t to be trusted. Both stories were set up as if they were reliable, but both Lovecraft and Gilman quickly turned the situations. The biggest difference between the stories is why they were written. Lovecraft probably wrote his story for entertainment purposes exclusively, while Gilman wrote to primarily promote feminist ideas and use her life to make a difference in women’s healthcare (Gilman). Gilman’s story has a ton of feminist references and her character is probably driven crazy by male-dominated society in part. This difference is important to understanding both stories in relationship to one another. Despite that big difference, they have many similarities in their layout and use of unreliable narrators.
