We Must Creep to Be Heard

We Must Creep to be Heard

It's 2:00am and I cannot sleep. I toss and turn while the question, "Why didn't you stand up for yourself?" keeps playing over and over in my mind. The picture in my mind of a subjugated woman who feebly attempts to fight against feminine oppression and her impending insanity is vivid and disturbing and continues to slap against the recesses of my mind with an angry hand. What was Charlotte Perkins Gilman attempting to convey to her readers when she wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" and created the characters of the narrator, her husband John, Mary and her sister-in-law Jennie? Obviously, in an exaggerated version of her own experience with post-partum depression and its prescribed "rest cure", Gilman speaks of a world in which the female is forced into a role of the submissive counterpart to male dominance. In the following pages, I will describe how Gilman has effectively created characters that draw us into their view of control, dominance and frustrated silence against imprisonment in a paternalistic society, and how we are given a view into a perfectly healthy mind that goes awry.

To begin with, Gilman created the narrator as a nearly anonymous identity; we know her only as John's wife. This power imbalance extends to other areas of their relationship. John dominates her in a progressively patronizing manner. His character is displayed as strong, practical and stereotypically masculine and he seems skeptical of her seemingly weak, feminine condition. John diagnoses her problem, and prescribes the "rest cure" he believes she needs. The narrator has no say in her condition, and when she attempts to speak her mind, he treats her like a child and makes light of her voice. "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that" (An Introduction to Fiction 572) which illustrates the role women are expected to play and accept in a marriage. Another main function Gilman gave of John's control over the narrator is his inhibiting of her writing. Although she believes writing would help her condition, as I'm sure Gilman did, John insists it would only debilitate her ailment further. He stifles her creativity and intellect, forcing her into the role of the submissive wife. She is forced to hide her writings, which frustrate her more "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" (572). Gilman writes of the narrator as imprisoned, unable to exercise dominion over her own mind. Furthermore, her role as a mother and wife are subverted, which allows for further repression and diminished self-worth.

We know the narrator and John have a baby, but the baby, as a character, is quite flat and doesn't play a significant role in the story, if only to clarify the narrator's feeling of inadequacy over her wifely and maternal duties. Mary (a likely allusion to the perfect mother, the Virgin Mary) has replaced her as the caretaker of the baby, and Jennie plays the model of a perfectly submissive and happily domesticated wife. In an attempt to retreat from her inability to be a good mother and wife, she focuses on her immediate surroundings and allows her mind to get drawn into delusions and fantasies revolving around the house, and more specifically, the room she is imprisoned in.

The structure of the house and its surroundings bear out the suppression of the narrator's mind "...there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people...I never saw such a garden, large and shady, full of box-bordered paths..." (572). Everything seems separated and boxed in, like a prison, and she is held captive in her room. Interestingly enough, I was under the impression that Gilman wrote of the house much like that of a man: larger than life, full of aggression and competitiveness. Even the fact that it was a "hereditary estate" (572) reminds us that it was probably passed down to the men in the family. The fact that John ordered the narrator to reside in the large nursery on the second floor is further evidence of his control over her. She voiced her opposition and her desire to be able to choose one of the rooms downstairs with a view of the garden, but to no avail. Notice here, Gilman has described the narrator as desiring a more stereotypically feminine room, one that "opened to the piazza and had roses all over the window" (573). But predictably, John would not hear of it and she is forced to rest in the nursery with no visitors, no writing and only the wallpaper to stare at. The nursery also has bars on the windows, another symbol of imprisonment. Of course the narrator hates the wallpaper most of all, almost as a parody of how she hates that room, and furthermore, her suppressed life. She describes the wallpaper and its design "...when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of-contradictions" (573). Gilman, here, describes what is to come...a foreshadowing of the delicate nature of the narrator's mind. Her sanity is in turmoil and conflict, she is fighting a determination to be heard, and, not being able to in her society, retreats into herself, committing social suicide as a way to escape her imprisonment.

In another subtle hint, Gilman addresses the significance of sunshine and moonlight as a direct caricature of man and woman. Sunshine dominates the nursery for most of the day, much like John dominates the narrator as he gives her "a scheduled prescription for each hour of the day" (573), and, subsequently, the narrator begins to sleep most of the day. The moon, however, symbolizes female intuition and sensitivity and appears to liberate the narrator in some form. The sunshine is also equated with the yellow wallpaper, which is "faded by the slow turning sunlight...a sickly sulphur tint" (573), which is symbolic of the narrator's illness.

Gilman provides additional evidence that the narrator's mind is growing more chaotic as time passes. The garden becomes less appealing to her with its "riotuous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees" (574). These words seem to mirror the narrator's state of mind, which grows less fluent and more irregular in her writing. The