Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is a fictional depiction of her own experience. Once, she was forced to undergo a course of treatment for what the doctor felt was a severe nervous breakdown. The psychiatrists in those days, in the nineteenth century, were in the habit of looking at a woman as a domestic animal and diagnose her mental disorders as a result of her distorted domestic life. Gilman fictionalizes her experience in order to highlight the state of the subordinated life of a woman in her days, particularly the suppressed state of a married woman. This paper analyzes Gilman’s story to see how the setting, the tone, and the symbols in the story help her in delineating the nineteenth century middle class woman’s place and role in her society.
The story begins with the protagonist narrating her pathetic situations in her life. She is placed in a lonely confinement, in a house that is cut off from all the busy centers, because the doctor says she needs rest. Her husband, who is a doctor, justifies this form of treatment. She wonders what she can do when one’s own husband and the doctor say that there is nothing wrong, except that she needs rest. Personally, she does not agree with what the doctor or her husband believes. She believes that an atmosphere that is congenial to some creative work can make her life happy. But, she is helpless. Her loneliness gradually grows into insanity. In other words, “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows how a tortured mind can deteriorate itself and reach the point of insanity. The protagonist is under double subordination; she is desperately seeking liberation from her husband’s domination, as well as from her doctor’s. She is passing through a period of forced passivity, while her inner urges cry for some creative writing. As the male world believes that intellectual and imaginative activities are not the sphere of a woman, the life of the narrator turns confused and helpless.
The protagonist in the story asserts that her inherent nature is to be active, to read and write. This, perhaps, was seen as the cause of her nervous problem. Therefore, she is not permitted to use her imagination. John, her husband, has cautioned her against the habit of brooding and getting trapped into imaginations. She is forced to think that “with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try” (Gilman). The statement, “So I try”, is very significant in the story. The tone of this confession implies that a woman, as an individual, has no choice. Man dictates and “So I try”. The implied meaning here is that if a middle class woman, whose function is strictly confined to domestic activities, uses her mental or imaginative faculties like a man, she is sure to be afflicted with nervous disorders. “Resting cure”, the doctors (men) assert, is the only remedy for this. In other words, what a man believes is what a woman is supposed to do. Gilman thus uses the narration to show the helpless subordination of a woman in marriage.
“The Yellow Wallpaper”, hence, is a story written to display the poor plight of women, particularly of the married women. The story can be taken as a call to women, call to save themselves from the trap created by the institution of marriage. The reader is expected to pause and think why the narrator’s free flow of thinking in the story is interrupted by the frequent appearance of her husband’s instructions. Obviously, it shows that the male domination remains so strongly stamped in a married woman that the free use of imagination has become impossible for her. A woman’s powerlessness to change her situations in her life is the gist of the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The powerlessness deteriorates into such a horrible state, that the story attains a gothic touch. The setting, the tone, and the symbols in the story help the author in achieving her desired creative intentions.
Reference
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper”. http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/YelWal.shtml
