English
The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman which first appeared in the 1892 edition of the New England Magazine. The story narrates the perils of an anonymous women who is confined by her doctor husband. The tale narrates the manner in which the main protagonist becomes obsessed by the yellow wallpaper in her room during her period of confinement by her patriarchal husband. Gilman’s short tale intricately describes the oppression of women living in a patriarchal society. The main theme being feminist in nature, the short story has inspired several linguistic analysis. Despite the fact that the central theme of the story is one of paternalism and traditionalism, the current analysis will concentrate on the psychiatric angle of the story examining the discourse of insanity from a feminist perspective.
The narrator in Gilman’s short story problematically handles her thoughts or even her relationships with children. As the story unfolds, the narrator reveals that she will not harm her baby as she is locked in the nursery. On the other hand, Jane’s constant insistence of loving her child by addressing the child as “dear baby”, “impressionable little thing” and “blessed” makes the reader to feel pity on her. This is until the time when the narrator further reveals the reason as to why she “cannot be with him” as she “is nervous” and the manner in which Jane comforts herself by maintaining that her child need not “occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper” when the reader starts getting signals of the narrator being mentally afflicted as a result of being confined to a room (The Yellow Wallpaper, 44 – 49).
The concern about the narrator’s child is often mechanical. Despite the fact that the narrator seeks solace by maintaining that the child is lucky to not stay in the room, she hardly reveals any qualm about the wallpaper. The phrase “to them any more – I am too wise – “ suggests that the narrator resents her child as much as she resents her husband, John as she holds both of them responsible for her oppression and suffering (Hume, 6).
Previous analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper has synonymously linked the story about the manner in which women has been traditionally viewed to be a weakling by the oppressive and paternalistic social structures. The Yellow Wallpaper has been critiqued by literary scholars to reveal the unhealthy and complicated linkages that women share with the medical discourse. The linkage between the medical diagnoses in the nineteenth century followed by the manner in which women are totally cast away from the society has been subtly underlined in this literary piece. As the story progresses the reader understands the peril of the “mad” narrator as she is physically alienated so that she cannot be a part of intellectual discourse. The narrator is also counselled to evade expressing unfavourable thinking about her medical condition and to keep her superstitions and fancies to herself. The narrator is forbidden to express her true thoughts to any other human being and hence she starts sharing her thoughts to the wallpaper itself. In this story, the wallpaper is symbolically used for “dead language” (Treichler, 1984).
The Yellow Wallpaper is reminiscent of the feelings of the narrator who rebels in a patriarchal society and poignantly gives in. the author’s story has brought about a revision not only because the narrator strives to read the language of the wallpaper but the fact that she has been totally alienated from all social contacts as a measure of oppression and patriarchal politics. Most papers have evaded the influence of patriarchal societal norms that have contributed to the insane behaviour of the narrator as the story unfolds. Modern day readings on feminism asserts the sexual oppression in The Yellow Wallpaper from the beginning by displaying the dominance of the narrator’s doctor husband, John. The medical prescriptions and subsequent medications that John gives to his wife is a manner can be interpreted as the manner in which the society has always shunned females. The story further describes the manner in which John’s treatment successfully immobilizes and makes the narrator to lose her sanity. The wallpaper is then regarded as a means of escapism from her husband’s grotesque sentence and attains the independence of insanity which in feminist perspectives is a representation of sanity in the dominant and insane world of masculine domination (Lancer, 418).
The fact that the narrator in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a female devoid of all legal facilities require to control her own self during the time of publication, and the obvious fact that her husband is a physician whose diagnosis about his wife’s ailment is disregarded by a powerful and spectral medical facility makes the wife to fear her husband over a period of time. The wife even suspects that her husband conspires with his sister to cause harm to her.
The Yellow Wallpaper is further influenced by the author’s life and subsequent treatment of depression by S. Weir Mitchell. These situations and the fact that the lone women is alienated by her husband after delivering a baby boy has prompted the author to explore the angle of the supernatural. The bearing of the supernatural is an apt strategy which cunningly underpins the descent of the narrator into a state of insanity (Davison, 48). The basic assumption behind this short story is that the setting explore the position of women in the Gothic era has in itself presented the allegory to literary imagine the manner in which the domestic, psychological and social unbinding of a female author is deeply related to this short story. Despite the fact that the story presents in itself a parody exploring the Gothic period, scholars have accurately elucidated and recognized several Gothic elements like irrational fear, forbidden aspiration, rebellion and confinement along with conventional Gothic themes like a dominant and oppressive male character, a lone mansion and the distressed female character (Davison, 48).
The nineteenth century viewed females to be the epitomes of morality and the society expected them to be centrally responsible around domestic activities. They were supposed to be in their homes and cheerfully await the return of their husbands. Women not adhering to these basic societal norms were alienated from the society. The society believed on women to concentrate their attention on maintaining the household by staying at home to be the true essence of being an ideal female. The ideal women needed to have four main qualities. These are to have a fierce dichotomy as compared with the world outside and their world in the home, a contrast in the nature of females as compared with males, the society’s aspiration to assume women to attain the position of domesticity by tending to their homes, women to be ethically superior and the ideal woman to play her role as an ideal wife and mother. The fundamental idea of this cult was to cut out a sharp difference between the confines of the house and the outside world and a firm belief to conserve the separation to be desirable. The central belief behind this cult was that the brutal outside environment and the highly competitive world having fluctuations in fortunes needed to be explored by the male only and the moral societal sanction was that the women had to stay indoors and maintain the household as a temple as this was their only function. Articles and books written by individuals in those times expected the women to be attend to their homes, perform religious duties and glorify their function to take care of their homes and seek happiness and peace in the realms of their home and family. Despite the popularity of this cult belief of authentic womanhood and the convention of reform and protest in the later nineteenth century, several American women protested against this belief and refused to be shackled under such societal restrictions. Women in the Victorian era not only protested but also displayed their criticism against the societal sanctions which desired women to be alienated to the shackles of propriety, domesticity and the virtue of being a female against the political power and male dominion. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a leading woman writers of the nineteenth century who refused to adhere to this cult belief and her literary works clearly displayed her aspiration to work for the rights of women in the Victorian age including her own rights as a woman. The Yellow Wallpaper is a rich and interesting piece displaying audacity and defiance. This piece in itself is a protest to the medical treatment or specifically the medical treatment that the author received by Dr. Mitchell which prohibited her to indulge in writing or engage in intellectual stimulation. The story depicts the manner in which Gilman details the growth and groping that the protagonist is subjected to in her consistent struggle against the hegemony of masculine domination and several patriarchal norms of the society and self denying folklores that were incorporated in the minds of the females in the Victorian times.
The narrator of the story has the power of the traditional feminine hero. She attains a higher level of sanity despite being subjected to oppression by asserting her individuality. She epitomises the New Woman who struggles to build her identity in a society that forbids any ideological and intellectual issues pertaining to feminine existence. She acts as the voice to display her aspiration to deconstruct the societal order in which women are given an inferior position as compared with males. The manner in which Jane raises queries about her condition and explore the responses to these queries stress on the development of a new and true self of woman hood (Quawas, 40 – 41).
The Yellow Wallpaper is a radical and a bold piece of work as it questions the societal norms. The story also reveals the writer’s opinion in which she disagrees and questions the otherwise invisible and suppressed truth that metes out unfair treatment of the fairer sex by presenting a discourse of a disturbing social order. The voice of the narrator is the author’s voice which displays fearlessness by means of questioning the alienating life and the manner in which the female is denied to pursue their dreams to fulfil patriarchal societal norms. The story has an uncanny resemblance to the author’s life. The manner in which the narrator descends into insanity as compared to Gilman who remains sane by intellectual pursuit strongly questions the rest cure treatment provided in those days.
Works cited:
Davison, Carol M. Haunted house/haunted heroine: female Gothic closets in The Yellow Wallpaper. Women’s Studies, 33 (2004): 47 – 75. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte P. The Yellow Wallpaper. Old Westbury, New York: The Feminist Press, 1973. Print.
Hume, Beverley A. Managing madness in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Studies in American Fiction, 30.1(2002): 3 – 20. Print.
Lanser, Susan S. feminist criticism, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and the politics of color in America. Feminist Studies, 15.3(1989): 415 – 441. Print.
Quawas, Rula. A new woman’s journey into insanity: descent and return in The Yellow Wallpaper. Journal of the Australasian University of Modern Language, 105(2006): 35 – 53. Print.
Treichler, Paula A. Escaping the sentence: diagnosis and discourse in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 3.1/2 (1984): 61 – 77. Print.
