Control In The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, is a great example of early works pertaining to feminism and the disease of insanity. Charlotte Gilman’s own struggles as a woman, mother, and wife shine through in this short story capturing the haunting realism of a mental breakdown.The main character, much like Gilman herself, slips into bouts of depression after the birth of her child and is prescribed a ‘rest cure’ to relieve the young woman of her suffering. Any use of the mind or source of stimulus is strictly prohibited, including the narrator’s favorite hobby of writing. The woman’s husband, a physician, installs into his wife that the rest treatment is correct and will only due harm if not followed through. This type of treatment ultimately drives the woman insane, causing her to envision a woman crawling behind the yellow wallpaper of her room. Powerlessness and repression the main character is subject to creates an even more poignant message through the narrator’s mental breakdown. The ever present theme of subordination of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is advanced throughout the story by the literary devices of symbolism, imagery, and allegory.

In her story, The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman expresses exasperation towards the separate male and female roles expected of her society, and the evident repressed rights of a woman versus the active duties of a man. The story depicts the methods taken to cure a woman of her psychological state during Gilman’s time, and delineates the dominant cure of the time period, “the resting cure,” which encouraged the restraint of the imagination ("The Yellow Wallpaper: Looking Beyond the Boundaries") Gilman uses the unnamed narrator to represent the average repressed woman of her time and how her needs were neglected in an attempt to mark a fixed distinction between the standards and expectations of men and women. John, the narrator’s husband, take the designated and patriarchal role of a man who believes he knows everything there is to know about the human mind. His belief of his superior knowledge pushes him to condescend, overshadow, and misunderstand his wife. As a result, his wife loses control of her life and escapes into her own fantasy world, where she is able dominate her imagination, free her mind, and fall into insanity. Gilman describes her era’s approach toward female psychology in order to criticize the patriarchal society she lived in as well as to reveal its effects on the women of her time.

In addition to placing his wife on bed rest, John mediates that renting a colonial mansion during the summer will help her recuperate. While in awe of her temporary home, the room in which she is detained contains a yellow wallpaper that she describes as unbearable. The narrator continues to illustrate the house which contains “hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people” (Gilman 1061). Although it appears as though she is describing the home's physical attributes, the narrator may subconsciously be noting the details of her confinement. She is kept under the close eye of her husband and his sister, Jennie, under a strict schedule in which she is incapable of veering from. Although staying in a mansion, the narrator is kept in her room for the majority of

“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Gilman is a chilling portrayal of a woman’s downward spiral towards madness after undergoing treatment for postpartum depression in the 1800’s. The narrator, whose name remains nameless, represents the hundreds of middle to upper- class women who were diagnosed with “hysteria” and prescribed a “rest” treatment. Although Gilman’s story was a heroic attempt to “save people from being driven crazy” (Gilman p 1) by this type of “cure” it was much more. “The Yellow Wallpaper” opened the eyes of many to the apparent oppression of women in the 1800’s and “possibly the only way they could (unconsciously) resist or protest their traditional ‘feminine’

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is a short story, published in the late 1800s, about one woman’s descent to madness. Finding herself plagued with postpartum depression after the birth of her son, the narrator’s ailment is overlooked by everyone around her. Her husband, “...a physician of high standing..” (Gilman) describes the narrator’s illness as “temporary nervous depression...a slight hysterical tendency.” Her brother and male doctor, also agree with this diagnosis and because so, the narrator is forced to go through a rather peculiar treatment plan that was commonly practiced on women who were considered hysterical during that time period. Considered a societal norm this treatment plan, created by the dominate male,

John takes her sensitivity as a sign of lacking "proper self-control" (Gilman 179). Because of his callous opinion, she must hide parts of herself. This reminds the reader of a parent telling a child to grow up. The colorful, sensitive side of her psyche is being pushed aside for his more black-and-white male perspective. His view is one of a colorless world that is cut, dried, and neatly organized with no room for varying shades. If he can't see or touch it, then it doesn't exist. Beverly Hume writes, "John is mechanistic, rigid, predictable, and sexist; he 'combines' as Rachael Duplesis notes 'the professional authority of the physician with the legal and emotional authority of the husband'" (478).

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story of a woman who goes mad while fixating on a bizarre wall-covering has been used as an early example of post-partum depression. In the latter part of the 1800’s women were seen as inferior subordinates to men who could not be trusted due to the effect of the female organs on their brains. The narrator is almost certainly a victim of the lack of medical knowledge of the day, while the prevailing attitudes in the medical field of women as childlike and the social pressure of male domination contribute to the narrator’s illness. The husband’s role as spouse and physician enable his benevolent manipulation of the narrator by isolating her and removing her

John is introduced into the story by the narrator as soon as the story starts. The narrator describes him as "practical in the extreme." He has "no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talks of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures." Although the narrator describes him as these things, they are married and she, undoubtedly, loves him. She continues on by saying " John is a physician and perhaps... that is one reason I do not get well faster." This description paints the husband, John, as controlling over his wife.

During the late 19th century women, as history demonstrates, were to remain confined to their societal expectations and roles. Women were thought of as the weaker sex, emotional, and fully dependent on their male counterparts, child-like. She was to be a pious woman, living a life of true domesticity. If a woman was not able to function in her role as a mother and submissive wife, then she was thought of to be simply undergoing hysteria. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, written in 1892, we are introduced to an unnamed woman suffering from this “nervous depression” (1). This woman and her husband John, who is a “physician of high standing” (1), are taking a three-month vacation in an old colonial mansion. It is in this haunted house that the reader is able to see the psychological deterioration of the woman as she lives under a demanding patriarchal society.

In the beginning of the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, John and his wife relocate to an ancestral home located some 3 miles away from the nearest village. John is a medical practitioner and is very well known around the area. It is very common that her husband will be called to come to very serious cases that many times result in his staying away for days at a time. Originally John believed that his wife suffered from severe depression. This idea was also backed by her brother who is also a doctor.

Like when a child falls asleep on the couch, and the parent takes it to their room, so John does the same thing for his wife. Many times, John restricted his wife on the physical movements she could complete. As her doctor, he insisted she not strain herself with unneeded tasks. She was no longer allowed to preform her passion of writing, take walks in the garden, or be with her newborn son for too long. Activities that gave her joy were no longer acceptable to John's standards. This all knowing attitude of male roles over women show to be ways of restriction on the female capacity in a society dominated by men.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an author, but also a well known feminist who believed that "heterosexuality had become the means by which men subjected women through an economic dependency". (feminism 1) Throughout my research there is one word that best describes the era of a male dominated and controlled society, Patriarch! During this period of male dominance, Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" to prove a point and to "get Dr. Weir Mitchell to change his ways." (3). Gilman suffered from neurasthenic, melancholia, suicidal depression and after the birth of her child post partum depression. Gilman was a patient of Dr. Mitchell and was prescribed the "Rest Cure", which is to rest and never write again. Gilman follows the recommended prescription for a month but found it was weakening her intellect. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written during the time of a patriarchal society and the reader becomes witness to male dominance. The male dominance in "The Yellow Wallpaper" represses the narrator's ability to control her own mental health.

The short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can be interpreted in many ways. Some scholars debate that it is written as an autobiography, some say it is an isolated work, a complete fantasy, or simply just a feminist uprising. One particular scholar even relates the feminism aspect with a feline creature within one scene of the story (Golden 1). Although there are many aspects throughout the text that represent feminism, the main theme that shines through is the story of a woman descending into psychosis. This story explains the close mindedness of how postpartum depression was treated and managed by physicians, and how negatively society viewed mental illnesses. The significance of The Yellow Wallpaper is remarkable

The narrator’s feelings of inferiority and powerlessness parallels the female figure she sees trapped behind the pattern in the wall-paper adorning her room. She gradually withdraws from both John and reality by locking herself in the room and ultimately merging with the figure. Through the changing image of the pattern from a “fait figure” (Gilman 46) to a “woman stooping” (Gilman 46) behind the paper and “shaking the bars” (Gilman 46) as if she wanted “to get out” (Gilman 46), we can see her becoming one with the figure: “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.”(51) Her collapse into madness as reflected in her behavior with the “bedstead [that] is fairly gnawed” (Gilman 51) and her “creeping all around” (Gilman 50) is a direct result of her passive submissiveness to John’s control of her life.

Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is centered on the deteriorating psychological condition of the female narrator. As a woman in a male dominating society in the 19th century, the narrator has no control over her life. This persistence eventually evolves into her madness. The insanity is triggered by her change in attitude towards her husband, the emergent obsession with the wallpaper and the projection of herself as the women behind the wallpaper. The “rest cure” which was prescribed by her physician husband, created the ideal environment for her madness to extend because, it was in her imagination that she had some freedom and control.