27 Oct The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

Women throughout early history have been looked down upon as subordinates and

belittled by males in society. They were placed with the burden of failing into the cult of domesticity, which placed the value of a woman on her ability to stay at home and perform the duties that are expected of her. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins tells the story of a woman who finds herself in an unfortunate predicament when attempting to seek treatment for her deteriorating mental health. She is put in isolation by her husband, and physician, John, to help her seek treatment for her postpartum depression. She is cast away from the outside world since he accepts this as a solution to make her well. The narrator questions her husband’s treatment plan for her, but she believes she must be submissive to him given his standing as a physician, as well as the role he has as a man in this society. Unfortunately, this rather has an adverse effect, causing her to spiral into insanity. She forms an unhealthy obsession with the yellow wallpaper surrounding the room she is trapped in. With nothing else to do, her imagination runs free and onto the wallpaper. This turns into a mental entrapment, and she begins to imagine images of a woman in the wall. This is representative of how Jane feels trapped within her relationship as well as all the external pressures of being a housewife in the 19th century, and she wants nothing more than her freedom. She battles against despondency and male dominance which is common in this time period. Perkins accurately represents the woman’s feelings of being a 19th century woman through imagery, symbolization and foreshadowing.

The use of the wallpaper is symbolic to develop the core theme of the story. It symbolizes suppression and confinement of women in society in the 19th century. The narrator is put in a room with a yellow wallpaper containing patterns that overtime lead her to insanity. First, she only dislikes the wallpaper, but later this feeling changes into hatred. Society at the time, as well as her physician husband John, did not have the right idea of postpartum depression and thought it was a temporary nervous depression. Therefore, they suggest she take a rest from work to cure it. However, the narrator’s life reveals this temporary problem is much more complex than originally thought, and the reader is taken on a journey as her mental health continues to decline.

The wallpaper can be interpreted in many different ways and can represent the woman’s controlling husband as well as how society views women as a whole. Gilman expresses “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, in candlelight lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight. It becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it as plain as can be” (Gilman). The use of the wod “bars” represents the feelings of being locked up, as in being in a prison cell. The woman also behind the wallpaper is described as being plain and lacking her own identity. In this time period, a woman’s identity is found only in attachment to her husband. Her true value is dependent on how willing she is to comply with her duties as a wife and mother. This claim is backed by Rena Korb by her analysis in “An overview of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.” when she states, “The narrator is so cruelly trapped both by the conventions of nineteenth-century American society, which says that a woman’s function is to bear and raise children, and by her husband’s inflexible belief in this code” (Korb). Breaking free from this bondage becomes the ultimate goal. In her predicament she loses her sense of individuality and the only thing she had to herself was her journal, and even that was done in the disapproval of John. She has no other physical or mental escape from her husband therefore forcing her to turn to the yellow wallpaper and she becomes fixated on it. The narrator sees herself through the woman in the wallpaper as it is a mirror image of her life.

Society had roles assigned for women that they had to adhere to. This is represented through characterization in the story. The unnamed woman is used to represent the women and John, her husband represents men. Women of that time had no say in anything. Perhaps this is why the narrator was never named in the story. Many times an unnamed character is representative of all of a certain gender, race, or religion. Gilman does indeed represent women of her time, and since the story was written upon reflection of her own experience, the preceding statement is definitely true. Through her own experience, Gilman is able to convey the images and ideas within the story very effectively. The narrator, and the women she sees in the wallpaper are desperately trying to break free of this hold that is placed upon them by society. Although their efforts are clear, they fail repeatedly to break free.

Through detailed visual imagery Gilman gives an extremely vivid mental picture of the narrator’s surroundings to help picture the state of her mental health. Having a solid image of these surroundings helps readers to understand what the woman is going through. It is through her eyes that we see the house, ground, rooms, and most notably the yellow wallpaper. The house itself, with its metaphoric value, plays a big role in the story. In the story, the detailed description of the house begins on the outside of it. ” The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village… for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate houses for the gardeners and people” (Gilman). With this small passage we have a clear depiction of how large the estate is. The gates that are mentioned are also represented in the room and they serve as symbols of being trapped, which we are aware the narrator is. The visual imagery is strongest when used to describe the color and pattern of the wallpaper. Right away the color is dull, lurid, and sickly. She uses several passages to describe how inconsistent the nature of the wallpaper is. According to the narrator, it moves and changes; sometimes it has a pattern and sometimes it does not (Gilman). Unfortunately, it has no definite color or pattern. Through this imagery, Gilman conveys the message of the irrational and unjust treatment of women by men in her time. In addition to visual imagery, the author portrays the confusion of the narrator, caused by the wallpaper, through very strong personification. Throughout the story the narrator writes passages about the wallpaper which she cannot plainly describe. As the story progresses we begin to notice that as she tries to become more detailed she actually becomes more insane. At first, she tries to figure the paper out through its visual appearance, however she slowly digresses and begins to feel as though the paper is taunting her. This is how the author personifies the yellow wallpaper. “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had… There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down… Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd unblinking eyes are everywhere… I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before” (Gilman). The author brings the wallpaper to life in the mind of the narrator and we slowly start to see her beginning to battle the wallpaper as if it were a person. “You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back? somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you” (Gilman). In a sense, the narrator is engaged in a battle of wits with the wallpaper. She is convinced that the wallpaper is hiding something, and she is determined to find out what it is. Foreshadowing is clear from the very beginning of the story. From the narrator’s initial depiction of the wallpaper it is seen how she grows an obsession with the wallpaper which eventually leads to her demise. Upon reading Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” it is revealed, through her extraordinary use of visual imagery, characterization, and foreshadowing, that the oppression towards women in the 19th century was very apparent. The narrator is seemingly doomed from the beginning, because she is left alone in a visually unsettling room with nothing to keep her company except her thoughts. Obviously, this is not a good thing for someone who is suffering from an issue concerning their mental health. Sadly, she never has a choice in the matter, and this was the case for almost all women of the late nineteenth century. The main cause of the narrator’s mental condition is her overbearing husband who stifles her emotional and imaginative impulses and forces her to concentrate on the objects that surround her. Furthermore, this inactivity pushes her deeper into madness. John imprisons her in a room that has no escape with bars on the windows and an immovable bed which is nailed. But the narrator is not just a prisoner of this room, she is a prisoner of her marriage. Her developing insanity is a form of rebellion in a way to gain her own independence.