The Liberating Madness

John has placed his wife in a prison. The disturbing stained and yellowed wallpaper is used, faded and repulsive. The color is one that is unwelcoming, uncomfortable, and uneasy; its color mirrors the narrator's relationship with her husband, and ultimately, with herself. The narrator is uncomfortable and anxious in the barred sulfur colored room where she is fussed over by her husband. John preens his wife, his possession, making the narrator draw further and further away from him. She realizes that her husband lacks the understanding that she craves. This is emphasized as John refuses to accept his wife's condition; "John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him" (248). As the narrator begins to recognize herself as her husband's caged belonging, she becomes more attached to the symbol of the wallpaper. Instead of attempting to understand, John reduces his wife to the status of a child. He repeatedly refers to her as his "blessed little goose"

Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded.

She has to tear off all of the wallpaper to free the woman, which in turn will free her. “I wasn’t along a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook. I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of the paper” (416). She is becoming obsessed with the wallpaper, and it is now beginning to consume her. She moves slowly into her insanity, and separates herself from the observation of others. In the end, “I’ve got out at last . . . And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (417).

Every request the woman in the story has made to her husband has been dismissed and her depression continues to worsen because she has lost control of her own life. John fails to understand how it feels for his wife to be trapped in her room all day. “He forces his wife into a daily confinement by four walls whose paper, described as ‘debased Romanesque,’ is an omnipresent figuring of the

It was commonly casted that women during the 19th century were not to go beyond their domestic spheres. If a woman were to go beyond the norms and partake in a “male” activity and not assign to “womanly” duties, it were to take an ill effect on her, because she was designed to act merely as a mother, wife, and homemaker. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, demonstrates the status of women in the 19th century within society, revealing that madness in this story stems from the oppressive control of gender on woman. A woman who is trying to escape from confinement may result in madness. The use of madness characterizes women as victims of society, suffering the effects of isolation brought on by oppression driving

Due to their behavior, both men lead their wives to rebel. John’s controlling behavior causes the narrator to abandon him by going completely mad. First, she questions John’s pronouncements. The narrator believes that congenial work, with excitement and change would do her good (p.297). Next, she focuses on the wallpaper. She describes its negative features noting that patches are gone as if school boys wore it out (p.298). Upset by her husband’s actions, the narrator decides to begin writing in secret. . It reaches the point where the narrator has to hide her writings from him, because he gets upset if she even writes a word (p.298). -After time passes, we see her obsession grow. John seems to be oblivious to the narrator’s conditions, telling her “you know the place is doing you good” (p.299). She notices that the pattern is torturing (p.303). Finally, she begins to see a woman hiding behind the pattern (p.304). Looking for the woman in the pattern gives her something to look forward to (p.305). Ultimately she comes to believe that she is the woman in the wallpaper and wants to free herself. She begins peeling off the paper through the night, and by morning removes all the paper she could while standing (p.307). The narrator even begins to contemplate jumping out of the window, but does not

“The narrator's double-voiced discourse the ironic understatements, asides, hedges, and negations through which she asserts herself against the power of John's voice came for some critics to represent ‘women's language’ or the ‘language of the powerless’” (Lanser 418). Women were not able to freely express themselves and when they did it was seen as unintelligent. This all connects to the image of the woman trapped behind the paper. The woman’s mind is not freed until the end of the story after she has completely peeled the paper from the wall that was keeping the woman, and her soul,

Similarly, “The Yellow Wallpaper” symbolizes the trapped narrator with an urgency to escape from her dwelling. Like Elisa, the narrator finds a task that would keep her boredom away as “life is very much more exciting than it used to be” (443). By staring at the wallpapers pattern constantly all day, she is no longer bored. In addition, the narrator believes that in order to escape she must free the woman behind the wallpaper. The narrator turns insane by visioning a woman in the wallpaper and trying to escape. The narrator is imprisoned, and the bothersome patter of the yellow wallpaper begins to straighten out to her. The narrator finds a channel of hope outside the windows, through the bars, wanting to leave the room and depart into the real world. Both Elisa Allen and the narrator feel a need, a desire for an escape from their current lives.

Madness is the state of being mentally ill. It is the spectrum of behavior characterized by abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Madness manifests as the violation of societal norms, including becoming a personal danger to one’s self. As a woman in the male-dominated society of the 19th century, the narrator has no control over her own life. This lack of control contributes to her descent into madness. The rest cure prescribed by her physician husband provided the environment for her madness to flourish because it was only in her imagination where she retained some control and could exercise the power of her mind. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman centers on the deteriorating mental condition of the female narrator. Gilman’s demonstrates of the progression of her madness throughout the story is reflected in the narrator’s change in attitude toward her husband, her growing obsession with the wallpaper, and her projection of herself as the woman behind the wallpaper.

John’s domineering personality is seen throughout the story. He denies her choice of bedrooms at their rented home and “hardly lets me stir without special direction.” (Gilman 845) The most profound example of control is shown with

The narrator feels trapped in the wallpaper and sees herself desperately trying to pry herself from the bars that are holding her in. Symbolically, the bars are the confinements of her marriage. Her husband, John, has full control over every aspect of her life, including her hobbies and self expression. As her doctor, he can control her treatment and continue to hold her in solitude. She even allows him to pick what room they stay in.

Forced to lie in bed all day and take it easy, the narrator becomes obsessed by the wallpaper and is drawn into trying to interpret it. She imagines a woman trapped within the paper. The narrator decides to strip off all of the wallpaper in her room, this is the moment of ultimate rebellion for the protagonist, and she is taking action towards independence. When John comes home to find the door locked, he begins freaking out. When he finally gets into the bedroom the narrator’s actions are so extraordinary and shocking that her husband faints. Through everything that is going on the narrator keeps creeping around the room in circles stripping all of the wallpaper off to free the woman that is trapped within.

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.

Madness is a tool and when used correctly one can escape one’s true reality. Authors use madness to explain eccentric behavior in characters and the reason madness occurs is due to society’s expectations. People are not forced to follow society’s expectations but, if one choses to break away and be themselves, society will look at them with a scornful eye. Social standards bind women and don’t allow them from reaching their potential. Madness is a way to gain self-acceptance without having to deal with societies judgments. Authors have written books in which protagonist are lost and unable to find the meaning of life due to these expectations, if it weren’t for madness these characters would have never have learned to accept themselves for who they really are.

“The state of being mentally ill”; “extremely rational behavior” these are the definitions for the madness you know. These definitions are true in one way, madness comes from the Greek word “mania” which means disease, but I would rather describe madness as a kind of perception, an advance view, an anecdote. Such anecdote is sometimes against the current social norm, therefore denigrated by the upper class of the society, more specifically is when one individual holds a very different point of view than the aggregate—which is the society’s point of view, most the time the rulers. With this in mind, madness as a disease becomes the representation of people who hold a distinctive view whether scientifically or holistically. To point out, that poems, prophecies, all of these creative works are mad because these literature work often imply issues the society “resist confronting”. In other words, the poet stays “awake” and express their critical view while the others blindly follow the order and live in a fantasy build by the rulers to maintain their dictatorship over the country and better control the society and its citizens. All of this result in the author’s point of view being rationalized, the rulers sensationalize the story in order to destroy the author’s reputation. When enough people believe that sort of point or that particular person is mad, whatever critical point he made, it becomes nonsense, crazy and madness. Such method used by the wealthy and powerful group