The Yellow Wall Paper is a short story written by an American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman It was first published in January 1892 in the New England Magazine and considered as an important example of the early feminist literature.
In order to analyze the work of the psychoanalytic school of criticism viewpoint we should refer to the author's life and personality, that is important for psychoanalytic research.
She was born on the 3 July 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut. Her childhood was not easy because her father gave up the family and Charlotte's mother had to grow up her two children herself. ("From Woman To Human: The Life And Work Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Radcliffe Institute For Advanced Study At Harvard University")
In 1884, charlotte married Charles Stelton, an artist. Her experience of a housewife and home routine badly influenced her mental health. Moreover, after her daughter was born, she suffered from severe postpartum depression. Her trip to California was healthy but returning home she divorced her husband, sent their daughter to live with him and soon remarried her cousin George Houghton Gilman and that caused a great public scandal.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's interests were wide. She was a writer and philosopher, lecturer and publisher, suffragist and journalist.
She lived with her second husband for 34 years, until his death in 1934. A year later she was told about her inoperable breast cancer. On 17 August 1935, she committed suicide. ("Charlotte Perkins Gilman")
As we know from Charlotte Perkins Gilman biography, her father left the family and never felt love to her mother. After pregnancy, Charlotte was deeply depressed and was cured Dr. Silas Weir Mitchel who considered the “rest cure” a panacea for the nervous disorder treatment. We can search the coincidence with the author’s life from the first pages of the novel.
The young American couple hires a mansion in the countryside because their town flat is being repaired. From the very beginning, the narrator considers the new dwelling as haunted. Her husband, called John, wis a doctor. As readers discovered later, their move to the outskirts is just a cause to hide the young woman from other people and the hustle and bustle of the city life. In John’s opinion, his wife is mentally ill but not seriously. He decides to place her in a quiet site and give her an absolute rest. She is even forbidden to write because from his point of view writing is harmful.
The heroine likes the garden but her room with yellow wallpaper she does not like at all. She prefers another one on the first floor “that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window.” ("Short Stories At East Of The Web" p.3) Her husband refuses her pointing that the yellow room is bigger and lighter and there is a vacant room near it in case if John wants to be alone. “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.” ("Short Stories At East Of The Web"p.4)
In two weeks of their staying at the mansion, the narrator’s mental condition gets worse. She spends all days alone because her husband leaves for the hospital early in the morning and comes back home late. She does nothing about the house because her husband’s sister Jennie is a splendid housekeeper and the baby cares a skillful nanny Mary far away in the city. The narrator’s only work is sitting and looking out of the window or staring at the yellow walls of the hatred room. Soon she notices some strange figures in the patterns. She sees bulbous eyes, broken necks, and strange figures that are crawling everywhere behind the pattern. Those images scare and irritate the narrator. As the days pass, the images become clearer and by the moonlight, she can even see a woman trapped in the wallpaper behind the bars. The protagonist asks her husband to leave the house and visit their relatives but he refuses and when she tells about her visions, he replies that it was just her imagination and the play of moonlight.
The narrator’s health improves when she starts to display a keen interest in the images on the wall. She even becomes jealous when she notices John and Jennie’s interest to the wallpaper. Once she sees a creeping woman out of the window. She is crawling around the garden and hides in the shade when she sees people on the path. The narrator thinks that she will do the same. She also begins to smell the yellow wallpaper everywhere not only in the room but outside too. At night, the woman behind the bars tries to release herself and shakes the bars violently but cannot get out. Then, lots of imprisoned women appear and they are trying to break through the wallpaper too. So, the narrator decides to peel off the wallpaper and help the woman to get free. There are two days left before the couple’s returning home and she peels off the half of the wallpaper in the room.
The next day Jenny is shocked when she sees the room in a mess but the narrator explains that she peels the wallpaper out of spite because they are so ugly and irritated and asks her not to tell John about it. Later that evening the narrator closes herself in the room and throws the key out of the window in order to nobody disturbs her. She takes out the rope hidden before to tie the released woman and continues peeling the wallpaper. She finishes in the morning and when her husband eventually breaks into the room, he sees his wife crawling around it. He faint but the narrator does not recognize him. She wonders why this man faints and she must crawl over him. He seems an obstacle on her way. ("Short Stories At East Of The Web")
Psychoanalytical literary criticism developed simultaneously with the development of psychoanalysis. The key to understanding it is to distinguish that literary criticism is about books and psychoanalysis about minds. The founder of psychoanalysis was Sigmund Freud who had followers such as Jung. Until the middle of the XX century psychoanalytical criticism tended to turn around the author psychobiography, thus, it does not focus on what the writer intended, instead of what the writer intended. ("Psychoanalytic Criticism")
According to Carl Jung, archetypes are the patterns which are the exit at the subconscious level. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” we can see such Jung’s archetypes as the shadow and the animus. The shadow means the dark side of ourselves onto others and interprets them as enemies. Animus is considered as the natural and primitive part of the mind’s activity and processes remaining after releasing the personality, which is the mask shown in interaction with others and which is formed by socialization. ("Glossary Of Jungian Terms") Jung’s archetype, the animus, or the inner opposite of the female soul, in the novel, is the woman the narrator experiences behind the patterns of the wallpaper. Her shadow woman is a personification of her unconscious obsession to be free. The narrator sees the woman trying to release as her unconscious is fighting to escape her difficult situation. The shadow woman can leave the room but the narrator cannot. The narrator projects her inner desire to the shadow woman to be free. ("Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada")
Sigmund Freud developed the theory of human mind and behavior and a clinical technique to attempt to cure some mental diseases. The aim of Freud’s therapy was to bring to consciousness deep-seated thoughts and feelings. The term “Id” is inside unconscious. The Id is based on the person’s pleasure and it allows a person to get his basic needs. The Id does not pay attention to reality, needs of others and concentrates only on its own satisfaction. Another term is “Ego” that is based on the principle of reality. Its function is to face the needs of the Id and take into consideration the reality of the situation. ("Psychoanalysis - Glossary")
Analyzing the narrator’s behavior according to Freud, the shadow woman is an example of Freud’s fantasy and displacement. The protagonist calls the woman behind the bars as the kink to a place that is different from her room and transfers her feelings on her and uses her as the exit for the behavior, for example, crawling by the daylight. She cannot apply those feelings to herself until they defeat her in the end. Suppression is the other Freud’s mechanism of defense. The narrator projects her state to the woman in the wallpaper, suppresses and disclaims her feelings until the moment when she cannot manage herself any longer. We can say that narrator’s Id is suppressed throughout the novel. Her Id and superego are struggling during the story until she frees her Id in a spastic fit of crawling around the yellow room. Everything she wants to do to fit the society, and what is morally acceptable for a woman at that time and her desire to please her husband is the superego. The Id is that she wants to write in spite of her husband’s prohibition. In repressing the egoistic nature of her Id, the protagonist goes mad. ("Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada")
Lacanian psychoanalysis can be also applied to the “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the Mirror Stage in particular. The relationship between the narrator and the reader reflects the relationship between a doctor, psychiatrist, and his patient. In the novel, the protagonist says “I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind.” ("Short Stories At East Of The Web", p.1) She attempts to describe her temporary house and the room and their descriptions are more important than their realities. The yellow wallpaper is the narrator’s alter ego, just as her unconscious because she sees the figure of a woman in it. Lacan’s stages of development include The Real Order, The Imaginary Order, and the Symbolic Order. The narrator consciousness consumed with this “other”, and she becomes the single whole with it. The protagonist’s behavior gradually becomes childish and her husband calls her “little girl.” ("Short Stories At East Of The Web", p.12-13) Her final degeneration is obvious when she is crawling around the room on the last page of the book. She looks like a baby who needs to be supported and guided. According to Lacan, it is the digression to the Real Order as an escape from physical to mental captivity. The yellow paper is a symbol of the unconscious and it described like a dream that is an escape from the unconscious mind. ("Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada")
According to some psychoanalytical definitions of things, a window usually represents a cherished view and hope. The barred window means obstacles on the way. “I don’t like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.” ("Short Stories At East Of The Web", p.21) It can be decoded as that the women creep to fit in society. The yellow wallpaper represents society in which the narrator is trapped. At first, she is depressed. Then repressed and finally obsessed. When she peels the wallpaper off the wall, she protests against it. By going against society the woman branded as mad. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wanted to warn her readers “Don’t let society manipulate you!”
Works Cited
"Charlotte Perkins Gilman". Faculty.webster.edu. N.p., 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
"From Woman To Human: The Life And Work Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Radcliffe Institute For Advanced Study At Harvard University". Radcliffe.harvard.edu. N.p., 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
"Glossary Of Jungian Terms". Carl-jung.net. N.p., 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
"Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada". Flash.lakeheadu.ca. N.p., 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
"Psychoanalysis - Glossary". Freudfile.org. N.p., 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
"Psychoanalytic Criticism". Wsu.edu. N.p., 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
"Short Stories At East Of The Web". Eastoftheweb.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
