Question

Read the excerpt from "The Yellow Wallpaper."

He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look.
It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis,—that perhaps it is the paper!
I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I’ve caught him several times LOOKING AT THE PAPER! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.

Why does the narrator believe that John and Jennie are looking at the wallpaper?

Answer 1

She thinks that the wallpaper is having the same effect on them as it is on her.

Step-by-step explanation:

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a feminist literary story of a housewife who had been under 'treatment' for her "temporary nervous depression". Her physician husband had suggested she be rested and get a good deal of fresh air to cure her.

The room n which she had been confined had a yellow wallpaper which she had noticed seem to have some resemblance and mutate by itself. Like the passage shows, the husband John and his sister Jennie also seem to feel some sort of interest in the wallpaper. The protagonist and the narrator of the story have caught them looking at it on various occasions. They both had at times, been staring at the paper, thus leading the narrator to believe that they must have felt the same way she had about the wallpaper.

Answer 2

The narrator believes that John and Jennie are looking at the wallpaper because she thinks that the wallpaper is having the same effect on them as it is on her.
All of them seem sort of mesmerized by this wallpaper and as if they can never take their eyes off of it. It has a certain effect on anyone who would even take a glance at the wallpaper, the effect that doesn't seem to wear off at any point in the story.