The Yellow Wallpaper
The cure for the illness (probably postpartum depression) suffered by the unnamed young woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" may have been worse than the cause. This story was written in 1892. It is often considered to be a feminist work. Those who suggest this claim that, since women's roles in life were so limited at the time, madness was one way that women could escape the boundaries that society placed upon them. What do you think were the causes and contributing factors to the madness of the main character?
The Yellow Wallpaper
byCharlotte Perkins Gilman
(etext of the story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, originally published in May 1892, in The New England MagazineJ It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and PERHAPS--(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)--PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-- a slight hysterical tendency--what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphites--whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?
I did write for a while in spite of them; but it DOES exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.
I sometimes fancy that my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus--but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.
So I will let it alone and talk about the house.
The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.
There is a DELICIOUS garden! I never saw such a garden--large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.
There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.
There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.
That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care--there is something strange about the house--I can feel it.
I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a DRAUGHT, and shut the window.
I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.
But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself--before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.
The Yellow Wallpaper
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THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
The short story titled “The Yellow Wallpaper” emerges to have been written in the era where women were much oppressed. The story narrated involves a woman who has a certain mental illness and could not heal because of lack of belief from her husband, who thought that she was melodramatic. During this period, women were looked down upon and were handled like second rate persons (Gilman, 1899). The author of the story, Charlotte Gilman employs the Feminist criticism features in the story to bring out the treatment that women faced during that period. There is a personal view of the causes and contributing factors likely to have led to the madness of the main character.
The contributing factors and causes of the narrator’s mental illness must have been initiated by the husband’s actions. The husband who is a doctor does not believe that she is ill. Moreover, they have a very strenuous relationship that makes him ignore her, as he treats her as a child and there are instances where she is forbidden to express her feelings. In addition, he was determined to bind her in a room that was exceedingly restricted. Therefore, the husband treatment clearly becomes the starting point of the narrator’s decadence to madness. The mental illness was drawn from restrictions and limitations that were inflicted upon her by her husband. The short fiction explains the condition of a woman’s physical imprisonment and the way they were mistreated during this era. The oppression always resulted to imprisonment of their minds since they were forbidden to possess any kind of recognition or outlet for their talents and thoughts. The story also brings out vividly the way marriages in those times devastated the well being of women. This is one reason that the main character faces and that completely leaves her helpless as she struggles to cope and adjust to the situation. However, she remains in anguish and distress as her husband locks her in a room, being the only treatment he could offer as a qualified doctor (Gilman, 1899). Being in the situation that she was, it would be quite challenging to follow sanity’s direction. Throughout the story, there is portrayal of oppression and torment that accompanies the main character, even as she struggles to express herself.
The setting of the story is among the contributing factors that led to the woman’s insanity. The geographic setting brings irony between the actions of the main character as well as the suggestion that the reader gets when thinking about the story location. Even though the village does not have a name, it is reasonable to think that it is located along the Pacific Ocean. This is because the narrator talks of a beautiful sight of the bay as well as a little private quayside that belongs to the estate. The fact that the house is portrayed as a colonial mansion can lead us to concluding that it is situated in southern areas, since the description well suited the big agricultural estates that were found there. The environment described seems very welcoming as the reader would gather. The irony in the situation of the narrator is that she was not in a position to enjoy all the serenity of their environment. Instead, she is locked inside her room to a limited space that almost suffocates her. It is the physical description of the room in which she occupies that makes us to really imagine how she would have been affected. We are able to feel her pain in the description of a child-like room that she was forced to stay in, as she makes some judgments of the room being a nursery at first, then a gymnasium and playroom. The loud thoughts of her room make us dislike the environment at once, even though the outermost part was described as serene. The narrator was clearly seen as a child and she disliked the situation. We can purely interpret the beautiful environment as the great opportunities that the woman had around her. The talents, the things that she should have been entitled to enjoy, but instead she only sees them from a far with hands tied not being able to enjoy even a single opportunity. As though adding salt to the wound, the husband treats her like a child in many instances.
The husband’s assumption that she was being a melodramatic could have worsened her condition. This is because every individual wants to be taken seriously and an occasion where one is ignored by her own husband can hurt terribly. The husband even describes his wife’s situation as a temporary nervous depression as well as slight hysterical tendency, which could be insulting to the narrator. The thoughts that a husband treats her like that could also bring the impression that he considered that she had little intelligence and that she did not know much about herself. Thi...