The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, is a short story that was written in order to describe the total inefficiency of medical treatment for postpartum depression in its era, and to create a greater awareness of the lack of medical understanding of the condition. As such, the storm describes the primary character’s deteriorating mental health, as she descends into madness as a result of her depression. More specifically, her description of her environment, and the personification of the wallpaper directly represents her deteriorating mental condition. As the wallpaper’s descriptions become more vivid and charactuerized, the narrator’s madness intensifies.
At the beginning of the story, the woman is mostly within her right mind. She is described as having a mild “temporary nervous depression” (648). She also repeatedly asks “what can one do” demonstrating both her growing distress, and her apparent lack of control (647). She does not know what to do to improve her situation or stop herself from feeling nervous, paranoid, and distanced from her family. Similarly, she describes the house as feeling “queer” (647). This overall assumption of queerness, however, will meaningfully increase as she is descends into madness.
The first sign that her madness is more than just basic nervousness is that she is “unreasonably angry.” She notes that this marks a major change in her demeanor, as she “never used to be so sensitive.” (648). This increased sensitivity, or escalation in her condition, is paralleled in her view of the house, or more specifically her room. She describes the wallpaper for the first time as “dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide - plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.” (648). This is the beginning of the personification from the wallpaper and the first indication that she views it as an aggressor. Further, it is the first indicator that she is not mentally well, that her condition goes beyond the basic description of nervousness.
Her story then jumps forward in time a period of exactly two weeks, during which time she has further descended into madness. She describes herself as both “distressed” and “depressed (649). She is driven mad by the “press of ideas” which have no expression, and which she cannot escape. This increasing desperation and depression are reflected in her description of, and interaction with the wallpaper. She states that it takes great effort to go on with normal life, and that she is not mothering her child as all. She also states that the wallpaper is “getting the better” of her, and warns that she may give way to the “fancies” that she is entertaining regarding the wall paper (649). Though, she begs to leave the room, and move to another, her husband has denied her any escape from the room. As a result, at this point her view of the room increases in its personification, as she views the room as aggressive and mimicking the decline as her own mental state. She states that the wallpaper has become a “vicious influence” and suggests that it might know the way that it affects her (649). Whereas previously she described the wallpaper simply as “confusing” and “irritate”ing, at this point she describes it as appearing to have a “broken neck” and “bulbous eyes” (649). The eyes also begin to “crawl” as she watches them, stating that they both move, and express, something that disturbs her, however it is at this point still, only a “formless figure” (650).
When next the narrator records her state of mind, it is past the fourth of July. She describes herself as “tired” all the time, and it is clear there is talk of sending her away to a medical facility (650). She describes herself as apathetic, “fretful, and querulous.” She also expresses that she cries “most of the time.” (650). These symptoms show that her mental state is deteriorating, as her postpartum depression goes on without effective treatment, and she slips further into mental illness. This is also evidenced by her mounting obsession with the wallpaper. She makes clear that she has studied it greatly, stating that it has “bloated curves” and that it moves like a gymnast (651). What is expressly interesting about her descriptions, at this point in her madness, is that she both fully recognizes that it is just wallpaper, and that she has started to use definitely feminine language to describe it. This allows her to mentally assign the wallpaper a gender, further personifying it, and its behaviors.
In her subsequent entry, the narrator describes the act of writing in her journal as “greater effort than relief” demonstrating that she is getting increasingly apathetic, and is suffering from the fatigue of ongoing depression (651). As such, it is once again clear that her description of the wallpaper has intensified to match her failing mental state. She describes needing to protect the baby from the wallpaper, and describes herself as keeping an eye on it constantly (652). She also, for the first time, defines it as containing the figure of a woman, stooping down (652).
She continues her decent into madness, speaking no longer of her own deteriorating condition, but instead demonstrating it within her description of the wallpaper alone. She becomes suspicious of everyone else. She believes that Jennie and her husband, John are interacting with the paper, but wants to keep the woman in the paper to herself (653).She then insists that the woman behind the paper is moving it, shaking, crawling, and trying to escape (654). Eventually, at the height of her madness, she divines a plan to lose the woman from the wallpaper, and then tie her up before she can get away (655). Finally she rips the wall from the paper, shouting at John that she is “out at last” fully assimilating herself with the woman in the wallpaper, and believing that by destroying the room, she has freed herself (656).
The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, tells the story of the narrator through a series of journal entries. The writer/narrator, tells the audience about her growing suspicion of a woman inside the wallpaper, and her movements. As the symptoms of her postpartum depression escalate, so does the intensity of the descriptions of the wallpaper in the room, eventually escalating to personification of a woman inside the walls. It is revealed that in her madness, she believes that she has been trapped in the wallpaper, and so destroys the room in order to free herself. This story, through use of the woman’s descriptions of the wallpaper describes the treatment for postpartum depression during this era, and demonstrates its ineffectiveness, and the disease progression that occurs as a result. As such, the wallpaper’s descriptions become more vivid and charactuerized, the narrator’s madness intensifies, and as she increasingly self identifies with the woman in the paper.
Works Cited:
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yello-w Wallpaper. 1892. Alexandria, VA: Orchises Press, 1990.
