The Yellow Wallpaper

In the nineteenth century, women in literature were often portrayed as submissive to men. Literature of the period often characterized women as oppressed by society, as well as by the male influences in their lives. "The Yellow Wallpaper" presents the tragic story of a woman's descent into depression and madness because of this oppression. The narrator's declining mental health is reflected through the characteristics of the house she is trapped in and her husband, while trying to protect her, is actually destroying her. The narrator of the story goes with her doctor/husband to stay in a colonial mansion for the summer. The house is supposed to be a place where she can recover from sever postpartum depression.

According to Jennifer Fleissner, "naturalist characters like the narrator of Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is shown obsessed with the details of an entrapping interiority. In such an example we see naturalism's clearest alteration of previous understandings of gender: its refiguration of domestic spaces, and hence, domestic identity according to the narrative of repetitive work and compulsion that had once served to distinguish public life from a sentimentary understood home" .1

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a fictionalized account of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's own post -partum depression. Gilman was a social critic and feminist who wrote prolifically about the necessity of social and sexual equality, particularly about women's need for economic independence. According to Fleissner, "Gilman attached the nineteenth century's configuration of private space as woman's domain and its attendant generalizations about femininity. Gilman seeks to blur the distinction between private and public life. Gilman unflaggingly urged her audience to consider

their logic in assigning women to the home. The composition of home life altered

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1 Fleissner, Jennifer p. 59, The Compulsion to Describe: Women, History, and American Naturalist Fiction. quoted on "Scribbling Women" website

radically between the beginning and final decades of the nineteenth century" .2

The narrator, who is without a name, loves her baby, but knows she is not able to take care of him. "It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a deer baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me nervous".3 The symbolism utilized by Gilman is somewhat askew from the conventional. A house usually symbolizes security. Yet, in this story the opposite is true. The protagonist, whose name we never learn, feels trapped by the walls of the house, just as she is trapped by her mental illness. The windows of her room, which normally would symbolize a sense of freedom, are barred, holding her prisoner. It is painfully obvious that she feels trapped and unable to express her fears to her husband. "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?" 4 Her husband is not the only male figure who dominates and oppresses her. Her brother, also a doctor, "Says the same thing".5

Because the story is written in diary format, we feel especially close to this woman. We are in touch with her innermost thoughts. The dominance of her husband, and her reaction to it, is reflected throughout the story. The narrator is continually submissive, bowing to her husband's wishes, even though she is unhappy and depressed. Her husband has adopted the idea that she must have complete rest if she is to recover. "So I...am absolutely forbidden to 'work' until I am well again". John does not even want her to write. "There comes John, and I must put this away - he hates to have me write a word".6 It is interesting that the room her

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2 Fleissner Jennifer, p.7, quoted from "Scribbling Women" website

3,4,5,6 Perkins Gilmore, Charlotte, p. 357 & 359, The Yellow Wallpaper, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992

husband chooses for them, the room the narrator hates, is the nursery. The narrator describes the nursery as having barred windows and being "atrocious" .7

The narrator's response to the room is a further example of her submissive behavior. "I do not like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened into the piazza and had roses all over the window and such pretty old fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear of it". 8 Although she is practically a prisoner in the room, she is given no voice in choosing or decorating it. She attempts to justify John's treatment of her. "He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule...I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more" . Even though the narrator knows that writing and socializing would help her recover faster, she still allows the male figures in her life to dominate and control her treatment. "I sometimes fancy that in 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". 9 Critic Julie Bates Dock states, "if the writers were a male doctor, he would further exemplify men's attempts to suppress women's creative expression, like the husband who tries to suppress the narrator's writing" 10

A reflection of the way women and mental illness were perceived in the nineteenth century is John referring to his wife's mental illness as a "temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency" 11 He obviously does not want anyone knowing the extent of his wife's mental illness. Women were supposed to let their men take care of them, and mental illness was often ignored. "He says that no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and

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7,8,9, 11 Gilmore, p. 357, 358, 357, 641,

10 Julie Bates Dock, p.61, "Julie Bates Dock, ed. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper" and the History of Its Publication and Reception: A Critical