The short play, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is based on the lives of a chauvinistic husband and a sick wife. The over-dominating nature of the husband called John makes the environment unbearable for the mentally ill wife Jane. The wife is involuntarily imprisoned by the chauvinistic nature of her husband who would not listen to any of her suggestions. Moreover, John is quick at relating any of her ‘weak ‘ideas to mental illness. This paper presents a critique of the play The Yellow Wallpaper from a feminist perspective by applying symbolism to understand the 1800s society.
Feminist Critique of the Yellow Wallpaper
Detained in a mental prison as a result of the machination of her husband, the main protagonist Jane is deeply embodied in an unending struggle that women seeking freedom in their thoughts and actions face. The short play The Yellow Wallpaper is written figuratively to connote the gender struggle between men and women, especially in the institution of marriage. Although an open interpretation would denote a psychological thriller, it is apparent that the play was mainly a commentary on the unfortunate conditions of the women population in the 1800s. Especially, it captures the views of the author of how the then patriarchal society was hurting female freedom. For instance, the character of Jane’s chauvinist husband connotes an over-controlling person who cares very little about the thoughts of his wife. He proceeds to confine Jane in an oppressive environment against her will and would not listen to any of her suggestions (Schroder 39). In the conversations, John’s decision is final and cannot be debated by Jane. Although the wife has attempted on several occasions to confront John to change his stand, the conversations often end with the husband reaffirming an antagonist stand (Schroder 41). From a feminist perspective, John’s dominance in the conversations and decision-making on behalf of Jane is representational of female imprisonment and control by men against their will.
From the interaction between John and Jane, the husband is a typical illustration of a spouse who has mastered the art of absolute control. Specifically, he treats Jane as an inferior partner. The wife says that “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in a marriage” (Gilman 1). In the view of the husband, Jane is a partner with weird, laughable, and inconsistent ideas which should not be taken seriously. Moreover, the mockery directed at the sick wife conforms to the expectations of the patriarchal society. However, the dominance is challenged when Jane decided to take command of her thoughts. As a result, the authoritative male figure was trimmed down and he became ‘as weak as a woman’. Jane confesses, “Now why should that man have fainted” (Gilman 17). When John saw the transformation of his wife to an independent thinker, he passes out. He could not believe that a woman could challenge his decision. In this scene, Jane reversed the traditional expectations characterized by male control of the thoughts of women (Golden 23). The shock and eventual fainting of John are triggered by the desire to overexert control over his wife. The husband is determined to conform to the expectations of patriarchal society through exerting dominance in his household.
The ideas and thoughts of Jane are representative of the feminist perspective. For instance, she desires to freely express her thoughts against the barriers imposed by society. Jane is defiant and confesses that “I did write for a while in spite of them” (Gilman 1). As a woman, Jane is depressed until she regains the ability to express her feelings in the hidden journal she is writing. Although she can continue scripting in hiding, Jane is depressed by the need to conceal her activities away from the chauvinistic husband. Specifically, Jane is struggling to remain in the full care of her husband. For instance, she says “he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful to value it more” (Gilman 2). Though the actions of the husband to pay the bills are good, Jane’s resentment is figurative of the resulting feeling of uselessness and imprisonment of the female gender (Tischleder 13). Just like other women, Jane feels the negative pressure imposed on her by society to worship the husband as a primary provider.
The entire plot of the play is exposed in a room that reminisces insanity and scorn from the perspective of a feminist. The empty and dull room is accentuated through the surrounding of Jane in thoughts and actions. For instance, her description of the room is emblematic of a prison-like environment where Jane’s requests cannot be heeded. When she requests the husband to consider repainting the walls, Jane gets a negative response from John. The husband says “that after the wall-paper was changed, it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on” (Gilman 3).
The unwillingness to change Jane’s environment is figurative of the desire of John to continue imprisoning her from free expression. Moreover, the description of the wallpaper is also symbolic of a psychological prison. Jane confesses that “at night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars” (Gilman 10). Across the play, Jane’s thoughts are concentrated on the wallpaper, and only gets relief when she removes it from the wall. Jane is captivated by the wallpaper to a point that she is unable to ignore the strange pattern on it. She later connected to the perceived image of a trapped woman in the background of the wallpaper (Goodman 18). Jane only gets relief after she gets rid of the paper. From a feminist perspective, the actions of Jane aimed at regaining control over thoughts and actions are representational female emancipation from the yoke of male dominance.
Conclusion
The Yellow Wallpaper story portrays a patriarchal society where men control the actions and thoughts of their wives. In this relationship, women are expected to take orders from men whose decisions are final. The author has expressed underlying feminist perspectives to illustrate the mental and physical hardships encountered by women during the 1800 era. These perspectives are hidden in the dominating actions of John, hidden thoughts of his wife Jane, and the room where the plot is played. However, Jane is determined to escape this prison by directing her thoughts in a hidden journal. Gilman has reflected on the psychological and physical imprisonment of the women through the symbolic use of the wallpaper, poorly painted room, and mental illness.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte. The Yellow Wallpaper. Virago, 1981.
Golden, Catherine, editor. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper: A Sourcebook and Critical Edition. Routledge, 2013.
Goodman, Lizbeth. Literature and Gender. Routledge, 2013.
Schroder, Marie. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s the Yellow Wall-Paper from a Feminist Perspective. A Woman’s Place in a Patriarchal World. GRIN Publishing, 2016.
Tischleder, Babette. The Literary Life of Things: Case Studies in American Fiction. Campus Vergal, 2014.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that explains the sad story of a woman suffering from acute postpartum depression. Written during the dying years of the 19th century, The Yellow Wallpaper is characteristic of the mental and emotional treatment that women were subjected to during this period. Indeed, Gilman uses this short story as her “reaction” to this sort of treatment.
Given the weight that Gilman gives The Yellow Wallpaper and considering her own life, one would conclude that she was indeed using the story as a reference to her life. Through reading the story, one can see a clear desire for the women in this period to entangle themselves from domination. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, there is a clear theme of domination of women, and society seems to be unanimous in support of it.
The Yellow Wallpaper: Short Story Analysis
From the surface, the story seems to be addressing the narrator’s sickness, but a more in-depth analysis reveals that it is indeed talking about the condition of the womenfolk in general. The society seems to have assigned roles for women, which they are supposed to adhere to.
In the story, John symbolically represents the male folk while the narrator represents the women. Throughout the story, the narrator, together with the rest of the women trapped in the wallpaper, is desperately trying to break loose from the function that the society has assigned for them.
Although these women are trying as hard as they can, their courage always seems to fail them, especially at night when their husbands and the rest of the family are at home. However, their courage finally gives way, and this is why John, who represents men, faints upon realizing that his wife has finally broken free from his control.
Although this observation is debatable, there is clear evidence from the story to prove this point. Right from the start, there seem to be specific duties that wives and mothers have to fulfill. These duties seem to have been so oppressive that women tend to get depressed after giving birth to their first child. This depression leads them to take the rest cure during which time they are supposed to do nothing but to eat and remain in seclusion.
The rest is so extreme such that one is even forbidden from writing anything since this would be tantamount to overworking their brains, something that would hinder their recovery. This is despite the fact that the narrator knows that “congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.” (Gilman)
The oppression of women seems to have been so great that John and the narrator’s brother, both physicians, believe that the narrator is not sick despite her thinking otherwise. This happens despite the fact that they both love the narrator dearly.
What is surprising is that despite this form of medication, the narrator does not seem to get any better. She wishes that she could get well faster just to escape this form of the regimen. It is obvious that the narrator views the treatment as an unnecessary interruption in her life that should not have occurred in the first place.
Despite this, she is aware of the repercussions that could possibly follow her refusal to adhere to the terms of the medication. Instead of looking into the reasons why her recovery is slow, John believes that her wife is to blame something that seems to scare the narrator a great deal.
This is seen when she says, “If I don’t pick up faster, he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.” (Gilman) Although we are not told what kind of a place Weir Mitchell was, there is no doubt that it was a place that instilled fear on the narrator, and this makes us wonder what kind of a husband would want to take his wife in such a place. In fact, Gilman seems to have put this statement for effect just to show us the extreme end that these men were willing to go to keep their women under control.
Although the couple rents a colonial mansion for the wife to recuperate, it is ironic how she is not allowed any say in the matter. Throughout the story, John seems to know what is best for his wife, and he does not accept her output in the matter. The husband does not even allow her to choose her bedroom from the many rooms. Instead, he forces her to occupy the room with the ugly wallpaper.
The narrator wants to do so many things but as it was characteristic in that period, the marriage institution that she is committed to compromises her freedom and happiness. In addition to the bedroom containing the ugly wallpaper, the room has no windows, and even the bed is bolted to prevent her from moving it to any other position. This is a clear sign of control and domination by the husband.
By analyzing the lives of the women behind the wallpaper, it is obvious that they are trying to look for their freedom. On her part, the narrator is looking for freedom from her husband and the rest cure that she has been subjected to. Throughout the story, the narrator tries hard to free women from the gender bias that had seeped in society. However, this is not easy because, just like the wallpaper, these societal changes had become “ridged and yellow with age.” (Gilman)
Despite John’s domination, the narrator slowly begins to take control of her life. Although she had loathed the yellow wallpaper at first, she begins gaining some mental strength just by watching it. As her mind begins to churn, she forces herself to think, and this is something that her husband does not like. Deep down her heart, she knows that her husband does not necessarily know everything, but she does not say anything for fear of reprisals. Although John has told her not to bother herself with anything, she begins analyzing the wallpaper, and that is when she notices the figure of women trying to free themselves.
For once, the narrator feels that she knows something that her husband or any other person, for that matter, does not have an idea about. This is presented when she says, “there are things in that paper that nobody knows but me.” For once, the narrator is elated since she feels that she possesses first-hand knowledge that is not yet evident to her husband.
For once in her life, she seems to have concluded that she has a functional mind that is entirely hers and one that she can use as she wills. Even to John, his wife is like a mystery that he is unable to solve. That is why he keeps her locked in the bedroom just to keep her under control. However, what he fails to realize is that by doing so, he is actually helping her to solve her own mystery.
As the story nears climax, John seems bewildered, and he even seems to be noticing a change of attitude on the narrator. In fact, he commends her for putting an effort to get better, but she knows that she is getting well for other reasons. Although he does not admit it, John has realized that the wallpaper is a representation of his wife, and that is why he reprimands her wherever he catches her staring at it. Just with a day to go before they leave the house, the narrator masters her courage and tears down the wallpaper.
The narrator’s feelings of freedom come to peak when she manages to pull down the yellow wallpaper from the walls where it had hanged. To accomplish this, she uses much will power and patience, but she finally manages to get the work done. She is convinced that John would reprimand her for tearing down the wallpaper, but for once, she is not bothered. To her, taking control of anything even if it is the “odious wallpaper” is better than just sitting and doing nothing.
Indeed, tearing down the wallpaper seems only to be the first step toward her freedom. To her, she seems to have concluded that her life was in her own hands and not on Johns or any other male for that matter. Within a short time, she seems to have developed mentally as a woman. The narrator’s final victory comes when John arrives home and realizes what she has done.
To begin with, he is shocked when he realizes that she has locked the door, something that she had never done before. However, the climax arrives when he enters the room and realizes that she has torn down the wallpaper. There is no doubt in John’s mind that his wife has finally developed mentally and regained the freedom that he had for so long denied her. In fact, the shock is so much for John such that he faints.
The proof that the narrator has gained mental control comes shortly after when she says that “now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall so that I had to creep over him every time.” (Gilman) At this point, she is not perturbed by what he thinks, and his fainting does not even surprise her. To her, tearing the wallpaper out of the walls is a sign of showing that she is willing to take matters into her own hands, and this is what scares the husband and makes him faint.
Conclusion
The Yellow Wallpaper is a clear representation of life in the 19thcentury. During this period, women seem to have been under male domination, and society seems to have accepted this fact. Throughout the story, the narrator seems to be fighting to get a voice of her own.
However, her husband decides that he knows what is best for her, and he does not even give her the freedom to choose what she wants. Instead, he embarks on making all the decisions for her even on matters that directly affect her well-being. At the end of the story, the narrator regains control of her life, and this scares her husband to a point where he even faints.
“Yellow Wallpaper” is a series of diary notes written by a young woman during her three months in a secluded mansion in the countryside. Her husband, a successful doctor with a high position in society, brings her here for the summer to improve her health. In doing so, he is guided by the principles of the so-called “relaxation treatment” developed by Dr. S. Mitchell2, and deprives his wife of society, books, and entertainment, leaving her alone for a long time. The narrator, whose name Gilman does not name in the story, secretly disagrees with her husband, and therefore keeps a diary, unable to trust the “living soul.” The image of the doctor’s husband, who has authority, correlates with the traditional patriarchal social order, within which traditions and prescriptions limit the behavior of women. Placed in a yellow wallpaper room, the storyteller immediately recognizes it as disgusting, and the color and pattern of the wallpaper repulsive. Remarkable is the fact that the space chosen by the husband was a former nursery, and his condescending attitude towards his wife infantilizes her. Thus, in an environment devoid of any intellectual and emotional stimulus, the narrator is carried away by the wallpaper pattern. After some time, she begins to distinguish a particular background: a woman behind bars. The story’s ambiguous ending is marked by an act of disobedience and aggression (the narrator locks herself in the room, tears the wallpaper off the walls, crawls in a circle). Feminist readings interpret the heroine’s madness as rejecting the patriarchal system and escaping from it, and the process of becoming insane as a search and finding of her female identity.
Since its re-publication in 1973, critics have appreciated and read Gilman’s text from a feminist, psychoanalytic, historical, and cultural perspective. The magic of the story arises from the innovative transfer of the experience of insanity in the first-person storytelling, showing the evolution of the image of the wallpaper and indicating their symbolic significance and ending, provoking further interpretation of the text. In this regard, it is curious that the “cult of the house” and the “female sphere” are represented in Gilman’s story as the room’s physical space in which the heroine of the story is forcibly placed. Simultaneously, the room and the experience of being in it turn out to be a kind of laboratory of the female imagination, female self-knowledge, and self-expression. In this paper, attention is focused on the forms of artistic representation of the mobile female experience and the phenomenology of the heroine’s consciousness in their correlation with the room’s space poetics.
The two main contrasting structures of the story are the husband’s daytime world, the rational world, and the irrational nocturnal fantasy world of his wife. The author contrasts the image of John, “practical to the extreme”, ignoring all things or events that “cannot be felt or seen” and his sister Jenny, to the image of an impressionable and nervous wife, who appears in the house as “inhabited by spirits… strange” and intimidating. John, who believed that the reason for his wife’s nervous breakdown was her “violent imagination and penchant for writing,” forces her to the daily solitary residence in the space of four walls, which almost destroys the heroine, actualizing her fears. However, the essential semantic oppositions of the story are control (or discipline) and imagination.
It is the refusal to control from the outside and the vivid imagination of the heroine that determine the dynamics of the story’s internal plot. Let’s trace its implementation, paying attention to individual elements of artistic depiction. The room’s main symbol as an instrument of control (discipline) is the marital bed, which is bolted to the floor and looks like “it has seen many battles.” The author describes her as “huge and heavy… immovable.” And the bars on the windows – as evoking associations with a prison cell. The room’s previous use as a gym is evidenced by “rings and various things embedded in the walls.” According to various researchers, these items are of high importance and mark the prisoner status of the room’s former inhabitants. Introducing into the objective world of the work multiple attributes symbolizing the disciplinary practices of suppression (bars, rings, a bolted bed), Gilman unequivocally points out that in marriage, a woman is deprived of her freedom and becomes a prisoner, even if she does not realize it.
The critical point for understanding the writer’s purpose is the room wallpaper, which gives the most detailed picture of the storyteller’s fears. They become a phantasmagoric screen onto which she projects her vision of the situation. Moreover, their intricate psychedelic ornament in the form of “waves of optical horror” maintains a sense of isolation and isolation from the outside world. The heroine’s fears are inscribed in a strange wallpaper pattern, which is both “meaningless” and “painful” for her. The narrator’s hypotheses about the purpose of the room evoke images, implicit the meaning of worrying about invisible supervision and control. The wallpaper’s unusual and incomprehensible external pattern is represented by a repeating fragment in which “the pattern begins to resemble a curled neck with two bulging eyes staring up at you” so that these “absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere.” Under the close and unrelenting surveillance of “bulging eyes”, the narrator’s state changes from obsessive anxiety, to madness (Thrailkill, 560). Wallpapers cause irreversible consequences for the psyche and consciousness of the heroine. The heroine herself says that “I have never met such expressiveness in an inanimate object before”, it seems to her that the wallpaper is looking at her as if they know “what a harmful influence they have on her”. Feeling hatred for wallpaper, the heroine notes their disgusting yellow color as “smoldering, dirty” and disturbing her “yellow smell” of wallpaper. In the end, the heroine of the story rips the wallpaper off the walls, proclaiming the deliverance from supervision and the liberation of consciousness. The wallpaper image occupies a fundamental place in the artistic world of work, being a manifestation of specific modeling categories. The text not only thematically shows the release of a woman from the shackles of the patriarchal regime, but the poetics of space directly reproduces the sequence of the heroine’s actions, transforming her consciousness and ridding her of her former suppressed “I”. It is no coincidence that the wallpaper image’s reception undergoes significant metamorphoses in the heroine’s imagination: from violent rejection and rejection to curiosity, the desire to explore mysterious pictures, to active actions to tear wallpaper from the walls of the room.
The image of women crawling on all fours suggests a return to their natural, free state of growth and development. It was the free development of a woman that was violated by gender prejudices built not only into the treatment schemes for “female diseases” created by male institutions but also by the entire Victorian patriarchal culture, which imposes disciplinary norms that bind a woman in a rigid framework of various rules and regulations, thereby depriving her creativity and freedom to express yourself.
In addition to the opposition we have identified, control (discipline) – imagination, which allows the heroine to break the gratings and restrictions imposed on a woman, the most crucial feature of the poetics of the story in its direct relation to the space of the room is the hidden signs of the heroine’s “I” projection outside, the point of her emotional state (Gilman 260). The story is told in the first person, and, perhaps, precisely because the heroine throughout the information remains anonymous and nameless for us, unable to express her thoughts, feelings, and fantasies to others, she trusts their diary, which she calls “soulless paper” (dead paper) 4. The story consists of 12 diary entries in which the narrator describes her physical condition – “illness” and the emotions she experiences. The first diary entry is the most voluminous of all. It is replete with descriptions of a country mansion and the surrounding nature. In it, for the first time, yellow wallpapers are mentioned, their strange annoying pattern “in which all kinds of artistic errors are concentrated”, their repulsive dirty yellow color. From the moment she recognizes another woman in her inner drawing, the heroine begins to acquire her “I”, her identity. It is no coincidence that this happens at night, at a time when the subconscious mind is free from the work of suppressive disciplinary mechanisms. The narrator begins to associate herself with the woman behind bars, who at first saw her as relatively passive, “bent and hunched over” (Stetson 19). Still, then, just like the narrator, the strength for rebellion and struggle awakens. She begins to “shake the pattern (the grating) as if he wants to free himself. “As you move towards the end of the story, the volume of diary entries decreases: the heroine no longer shows any interest in her husband’s opinion or fear of him.
In this way, the solution of the poetics of space in the story is directly related to the problem of the “female” question, presented through the opposition of control vs. imagination, where power is depicted in specific units (tracking eyes, lattices). The heroine’s imagination, consistently interpreting these images, projects her internal state onto them (passive, depressive, and further interested, active). The artistic concept of the story “Yellow Wallpaper” is also revealed with such categories of the cultural world of the work as color, smell, and form. The ubiquitous smell of wallpaper and their disgusting sickly yellow color, hallucinatory images produced by the heroine’s imagination create an “overwhelming” atmosphere and determine the heroine’s behavior, striving for protest freedom from restrictions. “Yellow Wallpaper” is an allegory of the unequal social order of the late 19th century, in which women were only meant to play a secondary role. The way the heroine’s husband treats his wife causes her a complex of profound emotional experiences, through which she realizes her insignificance in life. A literary work is not so much fiction as a reflection of the real state of affairs in families of that time. According to the drama plot, it is only through depression and anger that the narrator gains self-confidence.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte P. “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper?” Advances in psychiatric treatment, vol. 17, 2011, pp. 256–265.
Stetson, Charlotte P. The Yellow Wallpaper. Hansebooks, 2019.
Thrailkill, Jane F. “Doctoring “The Yellow Wallpaper” ELH, vol. 69, no. 2, 2002, pp. 525-566.
Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward by Horatio Alger and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte P. Gilman are two entirely different books. The books are written in different periods and focus on different issues. For instance, Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward was published in the 1870s. It deals with a boys’ way from rags to respectability. The Yellow Wallpaper was published at the end of the nineteenth century.
The book concerns a respectable woman’s psychological instability and her way to insanity. Nevertheless, the two books share a significant point calling for the change in contemporary American society. The messages are somewhat different since the books concentrate on various issues in society. However, the two authors articulate the importance of such changes that are vital for the development of the personality and the entire society.
The Need for Change in Ragged Dick
Admittedly, the middle of the nineteenth century was characterized by social and economic constraints that the majority of Americans faced. However, many people who worked hard and were persistent enough formed a “middle-class social group” (Murrin et al., “Liberty, Equality, Power: Volume 1” 488).
Thus, respectability was one of the existing values of that period. Horatio Alger depicted one of such success stories about reaching respectability in his Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward. One of the significant ideas of the book is that honest and hardworking people always succeed in life. The author calls for the change in the ways of life in contemporary society. He depicts the result of such change: his main character, Dick, who was not a “model boy in all respects,” changed his ways and became a respectable man (Alger 6).
Dick abandoned his bad habits of drinking, gambling wasting money, and started saving self-developing. Of course, the quite idealistic story tells that even chance is on the side of people of such virtues: the main character saves a boy, and the grateful father shows his gratitude by employing him. However, the author is not concerned with credibility. He only wants to show the way how people should change.
The Need for Change in The Yellow Wallpaper
As far as The Yellow Wallpaper is concerned, it is essential to state that it also contains a call for change in contemporary society. According to Charlotte P. Gilman, the change should occur in the role of women in society and the relationship between women and men. Admittedly, women at the end of the nineteenth century were mainly suppressed by masculine order. Though some women discovered “liberties in dress, employment, dating, and sex,” the majority of them were “unable to rise” and be their own masters (Murrin et al., “Liberty, Equality, Power: Volume 2” 769).
Gilman states that it is vital for women to change the ways women are treated. Thus, the author points out that suppression can lead to very negative outcomes, e.g., insanity. Gilman’s main character confesses that she knows that men (her husband, brother, and a prominent doctor) can be wrong and are wrong in treating her: “Personally, I disagree with their ideas” (2).
Nevertheless, the woman does not know what to do. She is only capable of asking herself the same question: “But what is one to do?” (Gilman 2). The author answers the question in the book. She states that work and active social role can save women from losing their minds, from degradation. Gilman calls for the need to stop women’s isolation. Gilman claims that this is the necessary change which will improve the contemporary society.
Similarities and Differences in Gilman’s and Alger’s Critiques
From first sight, it is possible to state that the two books touch upon different issues and seek for different changes in society. A story of a poor boy cannot possibly contain the same messages as the book about a respectful and well-to-do female’s story. The main characters of the book pertain to different social and gender groups.
The boy is preoccupied with making money for living and becoming respectful. The woman does not have to think about gaining wealth, but she is preoccupied with her psychological problems. However, the two authors claim that work is vital for people: the boy becomes respectable because he works hard, and, on the contrary, the woman loses her mind because of isolation and forced inaction, because of the lack of work. The two books criticize the society of their time for inappropriate order.
The books by Alger and Gilman reveal the constraints of particular groups of people and their longing to the change in contemporary society. Both authors suggest their vision of what should be done. Interestingly, the two books condemn inaction and idleness, which can lead only to poverty or even insanity. Thus, the books can be regarded as certain guidance for people of the nineteenth century who did not want to follow unfortunate examples but wanted to succeed in life.
Works Cited
Alger, Horatio, Jr. Ragged Dick: Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks. New York: Signet Classics, 2005. Gilman, Charlotte P. The Yellow Wallpaper. New York: The Feminist Press, 1977.
Murrin, John M., Johnson, Paul E., McPherson, James M., Fahs, Alice, and Gary Gerstle. Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Since 1863, Volume 2. Boston: Thomson Higher Education, 2007.
Murrin, John M., Johnson, Paul E., McPherson, James M., Fahs, Alice, and Emily S. Rosenberg. Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Volume I: To 1877, Concise Edition. Boston: Wadsworth Publishing, 2010.
In comparing Ray Bradbury’s The Veldt with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper we find that these two works have a great deal in common. Beyond the use of a virtual world as a plot device, the two works use a similar setup for characterization, set a similar mood and use lot of the same kind of imagery in similar settings to make it all seem real to the reader. While Bradbury’s work is rather macabre and Gilman’s is more of a psychological thriller, both works are built around the authors’ special way with suspense and their skill with characterization and imagery.
In Ray Bradbury’s The Veldt a young couple living above their social origins are seeking to give their children every advantage they, presumably, did not have. To this end they purchased a marvelous house with a “living nursery”. The couple is struggling with society and social expectations and a world in which technology has gone wild. Instead of a dream home they are beginning to find that they have purchased a crippling crutch which slowly takes over every active part of being human, turning them into passive receivers and viewers of life. The house does everything for them. They do not even brush their own teeth.
They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them.
The house is almost another character and the nursery, in particular, is a marvelous escape from reality, or so they think. They see it as educational, and it actually becomes a surrogate parent fulfilling every whim of the children. By the time the story begins, the parents have become secondary to the nursery and been found unsatisfactory by the children, because they sometimes say “no”.
You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him a month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours – the tantrum he threw! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery.
At the beginning of the story we immediately know that something is wrong with the nursery, and we find out about the African Veldt and how it seems to be stuck in a rather wild African scene of a pride of lions. We find out a great deal about George and Lydia in the first paragraphs. They have spent an enormous amount of money on a house which does everything. This was, apparently a dream for which they worked. The house was supposed to be the perfect haven, and was supposed to make them happy, hence the name, HappyLife Home. However, the changes it has made in their lives and, particularly in them and their children, are not so good. They are struggling to break away from this affluent prison that society seems to have almost imposed upon them by pressure to succeed and to visibly demonstrate that success. “But I thought that’s why we bought this house, so we wouldn’t have to do anything?”
The use of psychology as they consult a psychologist for help, allows us to understand these characters in a very short time. This is backed up in the dialogue. Lydia is afraid and suggests that they have a psychologist look at the nursery, because their spoiled children have suddenly become obsessed with an African Veldt. “Bradbury’s tale is set in a future where the walls of rooms take on a virtual reality that is constructed out of the “telepathic emanations” of their inhabitants,” (Roth, 2001). The telepathic element shows us that the children are creating these scenes. We then see the different reactions of the two parents after paying a visit to the nursery and being charged by lions. Lydia is genuinely terrified, while George is amused, but he comforts her and agrees to shut off the room.
When the children return from their outing they discuss the nursery and the African Veldt, which the children deny is there at all. George looks and finds it changed, and they claim it was not Africa at all. He sends the children to bed and locks the nursery. He and Lydia discuss the possibilities of the room increasing any inborn neurosis in children. He thought earlier of how bloodthirsty young children were, before they knew of the realities of death. Reid (2000) suggests that the psychological aspects of this tale have not materialized in the current digital virtual worlds, like Second Life, “To be sure, it is an old division; and the trepidation experienced by the worried parents watching their children frolic in the digital world conjured in their playroom in Bradbury’s “The Veldt” is a common reality now.” However, the story remains quite chilling and these characters are remembered for the grisly ending in this tale. “The Veldt” describes how the misuse of technology turns two children into killers.” (Reid, 2000, p. 46)
In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, it is not technology per se, but yet, it is, which drives the narrator into insanity. Roth mentions some controversy of the time of its publishing concerning the effects of certain kinds of wallpaper upon people, especially physically inducing seizures in epileptics or creating more psychological problems for patients (Roth, 2001).The wallpaper is not a digital wonder, but it becomes one in the mind of the narrator.
At first she simply does not like it and feels that something is wrong with the house. The reader makes the connection. Then each time she mentions the wallpaper the words get more serious. She describes the patterns as arabesques and mushrooms. Then she describes watching the wallpaper, which is when the reader begins to fear for her. “…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.” Each description becomes less rational and more serious, until she finally sees a woman trapped in the wallpaper. “And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—” The woman is possibly suffering from postpartum depression and struggling to regain her equilibrium as a mother. Herndl ( 1993, 72,75,103,234) names several instances of the invalidation of women in literature by virtue of their weak constitutions and propensity for developing “melancholy”. One instance he sites is in Bullard’s novel Christine: A Woman’s Trials and Triumphs (1856) “But after almost a year of solitary confinement, Christine begins to doubt herself, fearing that she is sinking into ‘the most hopeless of any kind of insanity, that of a gentle, but settled melancholy.’” (Herndl, 1993, p. 72 )
At the time when this was written her depression was called melancholy, and the prescription was rest, quiet and solitude. It was mostly accorded to women and the popular (male) opinion was that it was the weakness of the female constitution and psyche which caused it. The narrator makes several attempts to escape her eventual fate, to no avail. She suggests that there must be something wrong with the mansion if it is so cheap. She had tried to escape by writing, but her physician husband and brother both concur that writing is unhealthy for a woman and they forbid it. She asks to be moved to another room and is told that the room she wants is unsuitable. When she complains about the wallpaper her husband decides not to repaper as he had planned, so that she will overcome her aversion and will not become obsessed with all the problems of the room. In many ways it is the patriarchal environment which controls her completely that she is trying to escape. There is a parallel between the two stories here in the enforced passivity of the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper, “I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more,” and the care of the house for the people in The Veldt.
As the story progresses and the narrator is bored by the enforced inaction, so she becomes more fixated upon the curious faded yellow wallpaper. We experience her journey into madness first hand as we listen to her thoughts. “There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself and that is that it changes as the light changes.” We listen as she discovers eyes in the wallpaper, fungi and then a creeping woman trying to get into the house from the wallpaper. At the end she has escaped her domestic socially imposed imprisonment in marriage into insanity, though she thinks she has escaped the wallpaper. The characterization of the narrator is made intimate by the first person and even though we consider her an unreliable narrator, the eventual descent into insanity actually validates her fears.
The characterization of John, her husband, as another factor which we, and the narrator, feel is contributing to her illness by his medical treatment of rest and isolation. The inactivity seems to be encouraging her to examine the wallpaper. She has been forbidden to write or even do simple household chores. This was the treatment of the time by concerned physicians, but her husband seems to delight in her incapacity. Perhaps it makes him feel strong and protective. He certainly takes a paternal role with her, so that could be another complication. He may be promoting her illness by his attitude and treatment, because he subconsciously wants someone to take care of (Counseling and psychotheraqpy theories. 2006). The narrator hints at this several times.
The narrator is struggling against a social mores of subservience and weakness in females, the social bounds of marriage in the nineteenth century and the dominant paternal society. She is also fighting some kind of depression or psychosis termed “melancholy” without modern medicine and therapy, and while being immobilized and forced to do nothing. The husband would rule even if he was not a doctor. Being a doctor gives him total control and nobody but his wife will question this. As time passes we hear her imaginings about the wallpaper, how it comes to life, how it has bars in it and how there is a woman behind the bars trying to get out. She see the windows in the daytime creeping outside every window. As soon as she turns the woman is there. Then it becomes many women. She wonders if the women all came out of the wallpaper like her as she rips off the last of the wallpaper. Her husband comes home to find her creeping around the room. She tells John that she has ripped off most of the wallpaper, so he and Jane cannot stuff her back in. She has carried us along down into her very own mental prison. While it is not as powerful an ending as in The Veldt, where the parents vanish and their bloody clothing is seen on the hillside with the lions, it leaves readers to shake their heads to throw off the images painted in the Yellow Wallpaper.
The characterization in The Veldt is accomplished by third person narrative and dialogue. In The Yellow Wallpaper we have a more intimate first person narrative in the form of a diary which the narrator is not supposed to be writing, since writing is forbidden. Bradbury was right to use third person, since the ending would be impossible if it were first person. “And suddenly they realized why those other screams bad sounded familiar.” We have to have some distance and a limited viewpoint for it to succeed. By the same token, we need first person narrative in The Yellow Wallpaper in order to understand the character. We know what is true and how she struggles and we share her fears until she finally makes statements which are obviously untrue, showing us that she is no longer sane. “‘I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”’
The mood of The Veldt is ominous and suspenseful. We know from the beginning that something will or has happened. Bradbury describes the sounds and smells and creates the images of wildness for the reader. He foreshadows the ending several times with the first visit together to the nursery, when they are charged by the lions and the dash out to the hall and with mentions of the savagery of youth. “They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for death thoughts. Or, no, you were never too young, really. Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.” By the time the children get the parents to agree to turn the nursery on again for a minute the reader is fairly screaming, “No!” We instinctively know that something dreadful will happen, since we have heard screams and seen bloody items.
The mood is built as the couple discuss the problems with the children, discipline and tantrums and as they consult the psychologist. We realize that this house literally wipes their noses, or anything else that needs wiping, and we wonder about the cheap price of the nursery. Like the cheap lease price of the mansion with the yellow wallpaper, something seems very wrong, rather like the dope pusher offering free samples. Bradbury builds the mood throughout by interspersing worried conversations about how the house does everything and they don’t belong, “That’s just it. I feel like I don’t belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid….” He uses descriptions of the veldt and discussions of how spoiled the children have become. They talk about becoming superfluous. Then they worry about from where in the children’s minds comes this veldt with its smells and heat and the growing sense of danger. They hear screams from the nursery and find their own personal items there, chewed and bloodied.
The worry of the psychologist heightens the suspenseful mood as we begin to realize that he considers it urgent to get them out of the house. He expects it to take year of therapy to straighten out the kids, and he suggests that they turn everything off and that the nursery should be destroyed. “This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents. And now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there’s hatred here.” Bradbury keeps us on edge as the children wheedle for a few more minutes in the nursery, and George and Lydia keep saying no.
In The Yellow Wallpaper the mood is more curious at first and we are drawn along by sharing the narrator’s thoughts through her secret diary. The reader suspects that she may be an unreliable narrator and that is intriguing. The ending is both a total surprise and yet, somehow, very logical. All through the story we keep hoping she will somehow break free of the cocooned existence within which she has been slowly fading away, but we never expect her to escape in the manner which she does. The vivid descriptions she gives of the wallpaper and its changes keep us reading to see what happens to the wallpaper, especially as the time draws near for them to leave. She never actually describes the other woman which becomes the women, though she gives vivid descriptions her movements and of the arabesques, the fungi, the bulging eyes and the bars. The author even describes the smell of the wallpaper and calls it yellow smell. One very unexpected twist was the husband fainting at the end. It appears he actually had no clue as to what was going on inside her head.
The words used in various descriptions are both poetic and patterns of sound indicating her feelings to set the mood which begins as curious and gradually becomes quite desperate. For example: “The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions — why, that is something like it.” Then further on she describes the smell: “It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.” As her paranoia deepens the narrator uses stronger words and relays ever darker thoughts.
Bradbury uses a combination of dialogue and vivid description to create the mood. He describes all the sights and smells of the nursery, the sounds and even the heaviness of mood it creates. Finally Bradbury shows us veiled threats which foreshadow the ending.
“Will you shut off the house sometime soon?
“We’re considering it.”
“I don’t think you’d better consider it any more, Father.”
“I won’t have any threats from my son!”
“Very well.” And Peter strolled off to the nursery.
Gilman combines interior monologue with description to accomplish the same task. They work equally well, but our own distance is very different with the two stories. While we identify with the couple in the Veldt, we feel more surprise and horror at their deaths. In The Yellow Wallpaper we identify with the narrator, whose name we never learn, as a female imprisoned in the role of her time, helpless and invisible.
I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.
But I find I get pretty tired when I try.
It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now.
We feel a sense of loss as we realize that she has finally descended into madness. Yet, there is also relief, since she actually has escaped what is, to her, an intolerable existence of constant oppression.
I don’t like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.
I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?
The settings for these stories is very different, but the same: a house in different eras. Bradbury’s tale is told in an affluent future when technology can literally do everything for people except be born and die. It can take care of their personal hygiene, cook their meals, clean the clothing and the house, provide a huge variety of entertainment and even create artwork and crafts. It is an interesting, and somewhat amusing, thing that darning socks is mentioned. That is really the only thing I noticed which dates this story, since people in developed nations simply no longer darn socks.
The setting of the house is also a character in some ways, since it interacts with the occupants on a telepathic level. Of course, this is what makes this story so scary. It reminds us that young children should not be given too much power. Children need to mature before they gain that kind of power. We don’t really see anything else outside the house, though we are told that they are still in the US.
The house in The Yellow Wallpaper is a mansion fallen into some disuse. The time period is current for the author, but that was in the 1890s. It was Hedges who brought this story to the attention of readers in the 1970s (Golden & Zangrando, 2000, p. 10) and she says in her lengthy afterward of Gilman’s revised text,
The wallpaper consists of “lame uncertain curves” that suddenly “commit suicide — destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions.” There are pointless patterns in the paper, which the narrator nevertheless determines to pursue to some conclusion. Fighting for her identity, for some sense of independent self, she observes the wallpaper and notes that just as she is about to find some pattern and meaning in it, it “slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you.” (Gilman, 1996, p. 51)
The old house is rented while their own is being renovated. The room where the narrator “rests” was a former nursery, which makes us wonder if Bradbury read this story as his dangerous room is a nursery. However, the larger part of the setting for both is the time period. Bradbury’s is in the affluent future when people seem to have become quite materialistic and everything is automated. Gilman’s is set in the nineteenth century and the repressive society of that era. Women were most certainly controlled. They were considered property under the law of most states, having no rights to handle financial transactions, to buy property or even own much of anything. All property was the husband’s. Gilman wrote from first hand experience, having suffered a month in a sanatorium herself for melancholy, and nearly gone mad there, and then having been told by the doctor there to “never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live.” (Gillman, 1996, p. 46)
What is a most interesting “coincidence?” is that both stories use the walls of a nursery for the element of danger. The nursery is supposed to symbolize innocence, and in these two works it is closer to horror. In Bradbury’s story the walls really do come to life, so to speak, though they are not supposed to actually do that. In Gilman’s story the walls come to life in the mind of the narrator, symbolizing her imprisonment in her time as wife and mother. Near the end, this is extended to all women as she imagines she sees many women, all whom have escaped from the wallpaper. In both stories the main characters are destroyed by the wall, which is why the setting is very important. Without these two settings neither story is possible.
There is also the comparison of haunted houses, as Willis suggests (2007):
A twentieth-century haunted house story, “The Veldt,” by Ray Bradbury, expresses this paradigm in a particularly vivid way, and, since it also takes place in a nursery or children’s room, it speaks more directly to “The Yellow Wallpaper” than many other examples of the form. (Willis, 2007)
Bak describes the setting of The Yellow Wallpaper perfectly in his article:
Gilman’s narrator is isolated “three miles from the village” (11) in an upstairs nursery of a “colonial mansion” (9), its windows barred and its walls covered in a faded yellow wallpaper whose “sprawling flamboyant patterns” commit “every artistic sin” (13) imaginable. It is a room whose wallpaper reduces an artistic and articulate woman to a beast, stripped entirely of her sanity and humanity and left crawling on all-fours in circuits, or smooches, about the room. (Bak)
I cannot improve upon his description.
Once having read these two works it is virtually impossible not to notice the similarities, though there are also many differences. Both authors have masterfully created a heavy mood, Bradbury’s macabre and horrific and Gilman’s tense and amusingly weird in places. We feel the tension as the authors describe the very disturbing images on the wall. Neither images are supposed to be real, but both of them become a certain horrible reality for the characters.
Each set of characters struggle against certain characteristics of their society.
The society in Bradbury’s tale is represented mostly by the house and its many conveniences. The psychologist gives us information about many other people having spoiled children, so we get a hint that the affluence and technological advancement of this society is having the effect upon the people in that they are becoming dependent, ineffectual and spoiled. We do know from the text that there are still some Luddites resisting the technology, since ordinary homes are still available. The parents in the story want to give their children every advantage, but have misplaced their trust in technology. The society, as a whole, seems to have forgotten that personal parenting is more important in raising children than any kind of technology. We guess from the psychologist’s statements that Lydia and George are one couple of many who have fallen into this trap. It is an ironic twist that Bradbury gives the children the names of the lead characters in Peter Pan, Wendy and Peter, who want also to escape reality into Never-Never Land (Smith, 2002, p. 44).
In Gilman’s work, the narrator is struggling against a totally repressive society which relegated women to bedroom and the kitchen. It is interesting that the narrator is never even given a name. She is invisible, powerless and ineffectual (Smith, 2002, p. 110). There was no reliable birth control, so in their roles as sole caregivers, women became overwhelmed by the workload and lack of privacy or freedom which comes with children. Many such women suffered nervous trauma, stress or melancholy when faced with returning to an active sexual life with their husbands after childbirth, especially if they already had two or three children. (Roth, 2001) It was the established paternalistic society which kept women virtual prisoners in their homes. Before the age of majority and marriage, the father controlled the daughters, as he did their mothers, and then the husband took over. Legally a woman did not even have any recourse to a certain amount of beatings, as long as there was no permanent injury, and marital rape was not a crime. In fact, a husband could actually divorce a woman for neglecting her marital duties, while women could seldom get a divorce without the agreement of the husband. Women achieved the vote in 1935, but they still had a long ways to go. In some states, women were still not empowered through the 1970s. Nevada and Idaho are examples of this where any major purchase made had to be signed by the husband. In the society of Gilman’s narrator, women were slaves.
References
Bak, J. S. (1994). Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Foucauldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.”. Studies in Short Fiction, 31(1), 39+. Web.
Bullard, Laura Curtis. Christine: A Woman’s Trials and Triumphs. New York: De Witt and Davenport, 1856.
Gilman, C. P. (1996). The Yellow Wall-Paper (Revised ed.). New York: Feminist Press. Web.
Golden, C. J. & Zangrando, J. S. (Eds.). (2000). The Mixed Legacy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press. Web.
Herndl, D. P. (1993). Invalid Women: Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction and Culture, 1840-1940. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Laureate Education Inc. (Producer), &. (2006). Counseling and psychotheraqpy theories. [Video/DVD] Baltimore.
Reid, R. A. (2000). Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Web.
Roth, M. (2001). Gilman’s arabesque wallpaper.(charlotte perkins gilman’s short story the yellow wallpaper considered for its themes and influences).
Smith, P. A. (2002). Thematic Guide to Popular Short Stories. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Web.
Willis, H. (2007). The unexamined second life isn’t worth living: Virtual worlds and interactive art.
Despite the publishing of The Yellow Wallpaper back in 1892, the discussions about the novel do not seem to stop. Literature experts and fiction admirers have been debating on the one true meaning of the story ever since. Nevertheless, everyone tends to estimate the situation depending on his or her own background and passions. From my perspective, the feministic tendencies are too clear not to see them. However, the ambiguity of the topic raised is how much despair can transform a person, and whether external circumstances can make him or her forget about personal freedoms. The theme and problem of woman’s rights looming over the society of that day is demonstrated as the main issue at the core of the story.
Background of the Story
Understanding the framework of The Yellow Wallpaper is crucial for both academic scholars and literature enthusiasts to shape their points of view on the novel. Owing to the fact that the book is frequently considered to be ambiguous and contentious, research is needed. Multiple interpretations intertwine and disprove one another, and it is significant to analyze the setting in order to arrive at reasonable conclusions.
The plot of the novel describes an average family living at the end of the 19th century. The narrator of the story lets the reader know at the beginning that “it is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer” (Gilman, p. 13). Hence, the situation demonstrated could have happened to anyone at that period of history. The events described in the novel are the illustration of the burning issues existing that day.
Secondly, the author says that women did not always use to get proper medical care. The first ambiguous nuance that may seem feral to a casual reader is the way the main character’s husband does not want to provide his wife with a medical treatment she needed. As the character writes in her journal, “John is a physician, and perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” (Gilman, p. 13). As it becomes apparent later, many women of that time were claimed to have “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman, p. 14).
Lastly, the crucial thing to note is that John emerges as a victim of social stigma. He lacks awareness, which was a common issue of that period. Indeed, the character does not seem to be harmful to his wife intentionally. The man might love the narrator in his own way. Despite his being a physician who is oblivious to what his wife is suffering from for real, the reader is exposed to the scenes where his affection to the woman is unquestionable. Hence, the narrator’s husband is shown as a slave to the issues of the time when he lived.
In general, the novel reveals a regular reality for young American families and marriages during the last decades of the 19th century. There was a tendency to consider young women not bright enough to understand their bodies and their health conditions, both physical and mental. Society was yet to overcome the stigma around females’ intelligence and capabilities. Therefore, significant ambiguities in women’s rights and freedoms were observed.
Dominant Theme and Its Interpretation
As mentioned above, the story was not perceived by the audience identically. The author’s peculiar style may be considered the primary reason for this statement. Charlotte Perkins Gilman decided to select showing instead of telling as the primary technique in this piece of writing. The main character describes the events around her in the way that is similar to a stream of consciousness. What is more, her mental stability is sure to be damaged. Hence, the reader cannot entirely rely on the narrator regarding objectivity. Consequently, after getting acquainted with the novel, one is left with a trail of theories, presumptions, and questions. Gender discrimination may be interpreted as the main reason why the character acted as demented at the end, but this is just one interpretation.
Firstly, the character was not allowed to use her mental potential comprehensively. “He hates to have me write a word” – she writes in her personal journal that tries to keep in secret (Gilman, p. 15). The heroine is “absolutely forbidden to “work” until… well again” (Gilman, p. 15). Unequivocally, the only thing she has left to do to save herself from boredom is to examine the wallpaper. In the end, she starts losing her mind and going mad.
Secondly, since the main character was a woman, no one seems to bother to discover the real reasons she could not feel completely healthy. It was common among people to believe that being smart was harmful to a woman. As a result, a mental condition mentioned in a book as a “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” was thought to be intelligent women’s destiny (Gilman, p. 15). As society tended to believe, a submissive and obedient woman was considered sane and healthy. Doctors presumed that an ambitious female had to face a jail-like routine to become tamed again. Thus, the character had no chance to get better instead of worse.
Thirdly, the heroine was not in control of her life. Being a married woman led her to the chains of having no choice. She knew what she needed in order to make herself feel better. Gilman writes: “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” (p. 15). The result of exerting power over women was everything but benefit. Consequently, a permanent feeling of hatred due to injustice impacted females’ mental health negatively.
Also, depriving the narrator of social connections took its toll on her as well. The character was aware she had to go outside, talk to people, and dive into the opulent world that might be open and available for a young woman. However, the patriarchal regimen of society happened to lock her cage and then clip her wings. Indisputably, communication helps a person stay happier and healthier, unlike loneliness. As a result, the lack of social life started to be destructive for the narrator of the story.
Moreover, after the main character started going insane, the phantom of a woman she saw appeared to raise the same feminist issues. The mysterious woman that was messing with the heroine’s mind symbolized the problems the narrator dealt with herself. The woman behind the wallpapers seemed trapped to the narrator. The main character believed her to be a prisoner, a thrall. However, she felt like she was in captivity herself and could not have a chance for rescue.
Lastly, feministic symbolism can be spotted at the end of the novel. John lost consciousness after seeing his wife became totally crazy. Such a plot twist with the scene of the female creeping over the male and, thus, being taller and more powerful than him may be symbolic. Hence, the ending of the novel may be a token of women’s triumph and victory oven the patriarchal order.
Alternative Ways of Interpretation
An interpretive problem of the novel has preoccupied readers’ minds since its publishing. As Hamilton states, the story was of great importance to its author since Gilman herself survived a stay in a medical ward, similar to the one described by her, during postpartum depression (p. 212). Thus, the autobiographical nature of The Yellow Wallpaper underlines the significance of those subtopics that are affected and may be interpreted as the writer’s personal opinion and not just the thoughts of her fictional heroine.
As another interpretation option, the psychological background of human consciousness may be affected. According to Jing, the main character of the novel chose madness deliberately “to pursue her subjectivity and female voice submerged by the patriarchal world order” (p. 470). Such a desire testifies to the hidden needs of a person in achieving individual goals and overcoming pressure from the outside. Therefore, the criterion of self-identity is a significant aspect of the plot.
Conclusion
The topic of women’s rights and their violation may be regarded as the leitmotif of the story. However, it seems impossible to define the only one theme and interpretation for The Yellow Wallpaper. The style of the novel is too a strong and powerful, and the characters are real and lifelike. The first impression leaves readers with the need for filling in the blanks themselves. Furthermore, the story is open-ended, and one can interpret it individually. Therefore, The Yellow Wallpaper can be explained in many different ways.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wall-Paper. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1996.
Hamilton, Carole L. “The Collegial Classroom: Teaching Threshold Concepts through Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”.” CEA Critic, vol. 77, no. 2, 2015, pp. 211-222.
Jing, He. “Same Plight, Different Struggle: A Comparison of Female Protagonists in Hamlet and “The Yellow Wallpaper”.” Journal of Literature and Art Studies, vol. 6, no. 5, 2016, pp. 468-472.
The short 6,000-word story by Charlotte Perkins Stetson (published under the name of her husband) captures the readers’ attention from the very first pages. The story is written in the first person, like a diary or a journal, which makes readers live through every page and line, every narrator’s thought and word. Since the woman who narrates is alienated from the community and not allowed to work or be engaged in any other activity, she describes her inner thoughts and feelings, and that makes the whole story even more vivid.
The Background: How Alienation Works
In the late 1880s, a decade before The Yellow Wallpaper was published, Silas Weir Mitchel, a reputable American neurologist, invented his theory of the rest cure (“Rest Cure” par. 1). It was prescribed to individuals diagnosed with various nervous conditions, such as hysteria or neurasthenia. Since those health conditions were much more common among women, the regime and kind of treatment did not surprise anyone.
Mitchel claimed that the best way to cure nervous illnesses was the isolation from family, friends, and society per se (“Rest Cure” par. 2). The bed rest, an abundance of fresh air, an absence of any work or activity, and regular feeding (forced feeding, if needed) were prescribed. All of this reached the point that “nurses cleaned and fed” those isolated women and even “turned them over in bed” (“Rest Cure” par. 2).
Nevertheless, many patients (and some of the physicians as well) were convinced that such kind of treatment was “worse than the disease” (“Rest Cure” par. 2). And the story of Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a prime example of that. Being prescribed with the rest cure and after three months of following the physician’s instructions, Charlotte “came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over” (Gilman par. 4). Then she decided to return to a normal life, began working again, and came up with the idea to write a fictional story, which was not so fictional at all. The author wanted to show how the rest cure, in fact, worked and what consequences it caused. One of the physicians even described her work as “the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen” (Gilman par. 2). Indeed, it is.
The Criticism of the Story
The story is written in the first person, and it is the best decision, which its author could have possibly made. Charlotte wanted to convey the feeling of the narrator, and nothing could have done it better than the story in the first person and a format of a diary.
From the very beginning, readers see the following situation. Jane (the narrator) is sick (has a “hysterical tendency”) and is surrounded by physicians (her husband and brother), who do not believe that her health condition should be somehow addressed, apart from isolation, of course (Stetson 647). Since the woman is forbidden from working, as well as from any other activity and communication, she is almost unable to write about anything except her own thoughts and inner feelings.
She describes her surroundings (“There is a delicious garden”), her fears (“there is something strange about the house”), her emotions (“I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes”), and so forth (Stetson 648). However, the most important descriptions, through which readers can make the conclusions about Jane’s state, are those about her room, particularly about the yellow wallpaper.
Firstly, readers see that the woman simply does not like the wallpaper. For instance, she writes, “I never saw a worse paper in my life” (Stetson 648). She also says that the patterns commit “every artistic sin”, and the color is “repellent, almost revolting” (Stetson 648). Hence, for that moment, readers can barely notice anything strange about the paper – it is quite ordinary. However, the words, which the woman chooses to describe the color, have hidden and alarming undertones. Jane says, “It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulfur tint in others” (Stetson 649). The words “lurid” and “sickly” imply that the wallpaper makes Jane feel bad, at least ill at ease (Stetson 649). The next time she returns to the wallpaper, she chooses the word “horrid”, and so on (Stetson 649).
When Jane firstly mentions the subpattern she sees in the wallpaper, she says that it is “particularly irritating” (Stetson 649). Then she gives the descriptions that leave no doubt about the woman’s state. For example, “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Stetson 649). Later she says, “The front pattern does move – and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” (Stetson 654). And this list can be greatly expanded.
Little by little, we conclude that Jane is going crazy, and it is her vision of the wallpaper, which tells us about it. Therefore, readers understand the narrator’s state mainly due to the paper’s descriptions, and those become more and more often as the story goes.
It seems to me that the author has chosen the wallpaper as an object of Jane’s hallucinations on purpose. Its pattern represents something like a cage and the woman inside it can be associated with every female who has ever experienced the best care. Those women did not like such kind of treatment but were unable to contest the physician’s decision. As Jane says, “I disagree with their ideas … but what is one to do?” (Stetson 648). So, the ending, in which Jane identifies herself as a woman on the other side of the cage and believes that she has managed to escape (even though madness), is quite predictable.
If the narrator were someone else (John, for instance), we would probably get to know about Jane’s madness only at that moment when she began creeping around, and her madness became evident. Besides, if John were a narrator, the whole idea of the story would have been ruined since many critics and probably the author herself considered The Yellow Wallpaper as a part of feminist literature (“Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-paper” par. 1).
I realize that Charlotte Perkins Gilman conceived to make readers like the main character or at least sympathize with this woman. Frankly speaking, it is hard to determine whether I like her or not, but I am definitely sorry for her. While Charlotte found the courage to disobey a physician and do what seemed right to her, her character turned out to be unable to do this. Still, the author chose such an outcome on purpose since she wanted to show the world how the rest cure really worked.
To conclude, the story is incredibly well written, and it is almost impossible to stop reading before you find out how it ends. I believe that such kind of effect is achieved due to the story in the first person, and because every description used by the author perfectly conveys Jane’s state and keeps readers involved.
In many occasions, playwrights and filmmakers have portrayed marriage as an oppressive institution whereby the oppressed, the wife or the husband, responds appropriately towards the oppression.
The two texts; the short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins and the play ‘Trifles’ by Susan Glaspell strategically illustrate this claim since they both aim at attracting the reader’s attention to the poor conditions and the mistreatment of women due to sexual inequality in the 19th century and the early 20th century respectively.
How these texts address the issue of women and their existence in society paves the way for the struggle towards women’s liberation from the oppression. The men in the stories are extremely cold when it comes to an understanding of the women, a factor that triggers the women’s defiance.
In both texts, the women stand out as weak and not able to think independently. As the paper unfolds, the two stories portray two separate wives who lived in a state of oppressive authority, forcing them to respond to the obligatory roles of that era in the same way, with atypical consequences.
Women’s Roles in The Yellow Wallpaper & Trifles
Similarities
The two wives in the stories are victims of their husbands in that their husbands repress their efforts of liberating themselves and being happy.
In Perkin’s short story, the physician’s husband denies the female character the pleasure of writing. As a result, she locks her up in an upstairs room where she records her retrogressing health as she sinks deeper into neurosis. She records her experiences in a journal, which forms this short story.
The worsening health is revealed through her interactions with the yellow wallpaper hanging on the wall of the holiday house where her husband, to cure her mental illness, locks her. Glaspell’s masterwork ‘Trifles’ successfully presents the same oppressive conditions as revealed by Meenie Wright, the wife to the slain Mr. Wright.
As the other female characters; Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, later discover, Mr. John Wright had struggled the bird that kept Meenie company, and she might have killed him as a way of getting back to him after he took away her symbol of freedom; the bird (Glaspell 46).
It is this way that women experience mistreatments from their husbands that addressed with a keen interest in the two texts. How men viewed as portrayed in these two texts is evidence that women had little to say in such male-dominated societies. For instance, in “Trifles,” the female characters Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters do not interrogate the situation as a general crime scene as it is the case with the men.
Instead, they observe minute details that point to the exact happenings during the crime. They show solidarity and loyalty to their gender when they conceal the truth o the dead bird. That could have contributed to evidence to use in further tying Mrs. Wright to the mysterious murder of her husband. The men, on the other hand, just see nothing other than “kitchen things.”
That implies the place of the woman in a male-dominated society. These men could not see anything else rather than that what defined a woman according to them.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the physician husband thinks that he knows what is best for his wife and goes ahead to do it without thinking of the possible implications that the healing can have on her. Instead of getting better, she ends up worsening to the dismay of the husband. Despite the woman’s deteriorating mental health, she was aware of the ridicule that her husband held over her.
She says, “…I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wallpaper- he would make fun of me” (Perkins 168). That was when her husband said she was getting better despite the obsession with the wallpaper. That also signals a buildup in her confidence as she prepared to tear down the wallpaper and release the woman. The two wives in the texts are victims of unquestioned male authority in that they have to live under the mercies of their husbands.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the woman compels herself to be locked up in an upstairs room. That implicates badly on her as revealed in the short story as the only thing that is around her is no more than a disgusting yellow wallpaper that further makes her psychologically disturbed and worsens her neurosis.
To make matters worse, the husband does not let her touch any writing materials for the simple reason that she ought to rest rather than doing any other thing. Since she has no other option, she opts to sing the tune of her oppressive husband.
This misdiagnosis and a dubious treatment measure, which does not give the woman a chance to question or suggest a way that she thinks is best for her condition, symbolizes the male chauvinism that was at peak during the times when this text was written. A similar case of male chauvinism is revealed in “Trifles” when the women discover that it is indeed the oppressive state that Meenie was subjected by her husband that led her to result in killing him as a way of liberating herself.
As the details of the crime scene reveal, it stands out that a disagreement had taken place the night before the murder occurred. The ruined fruit preserves, bread that has been left out of its box, an unfinished quilt, a half clean / half messy tabletop, an empty birdcage, and more so the dead bird indicated the wrangles that may have taken place the previous night.
It is clear from this that the husband might have killed the bird, which angered the wife, who took advantage of his sleep to slip a rope into his neck and strangling him to death.
Male coldness towards women seems well displayed in the two texts through a close analysis of the men’s behavior (Holstein 290). For instance, in the ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ story, the husband, although he is not sure of his treatment procedure, exposes his wife to it.
The procedure fails and exposes the woman into more danger as her neurosis worsens. He eventually cannot handle the results of his experiment on his wife as he faints when he opens the door to find his wife crawling on all fours. In “Trifles,” as the title suggests, the men never take women issues seriously and end up dismissing them as trifles. That can be evident through the reaction of the men to the murder of Mr. Wright.
Instead of trying to establish the real cause of the crime, they look for forensic evidence to tie Meenie to the murder of her husband. The women’s wit outweighs the men’s, which makes them succeed in hiding the direct link that could have tied their fellow women to the crime. This paper further contrasts the theme of the treatment of women as manifested in the two masterworks. For instance, the way the two wives respond towards the evident oppressing circumstance differs significantly.
Differences
The difference in the two women’s conditions manifests itself only through how they choose to deal with their respective situations. The woman in the ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ finally succeeds in freeing ‘the woman locked up in the wallpaper’ by tearing it up and finally releasing her.
As a result, she manages to free herself as well in that her husband comes to the understanding that his deeds worsened the situation rather than making it better. The fact that even the woman’s husband could not stand up to see her situation is quite ironic, considering that he acted so coldly in deciding to conceal her in the room.
On the other hand, Meenie decides to liberate herself by murdering her husband, a case that further welcomes the arm of the government that arrests her as the prime suspect, and her fate depends on the forensic evidence that the police conducts in her house. It is not clear whether she ends up free. Still, the fact remains that she actively acts against an oppressive condition as opposed to the woman in the ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ who simply collapses under the weight of her condition.
According to Hocham, the wife in “The Yellow wallpaper” proves her point to her husband as she tramples on him when he falls down unconscious (237). That is an indication that as a woman, she finally emerges the winner. Her husband later realizes that he had committed a mistake in choosing such a harsh treatment method for her wife since she comes worse rather than her condition becoming better.
The fact that her husband becomes unconscious is proof of women emerging victorious despite their harsh treatment. On that stage, she can crawl on him, and he cannot defend himself.
Meenie, on the other hand, liberates herself from one level of male oppression and gets into another. She murders her husband, who oppressed and took away the joy that she had as a young woman before she married him only for the police to arrest and take her into custody.
Her version of the story faces a good deal of ridicule by the male investigators who have no space in their thinking of the possibility of there being another version of the story. That portrays the woman as only a victim in the male-dominated system and cannot liberate herself completely.
Trifles & The Yellow Wallpaper: Literary Criticism
However, critics have set out to give their view concerning the two masterworks. For instance, concerning the yellow wallpaper, they have passed a message to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s doctor Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, to urge him to change his treatment method (Ford 234).
Holstein states that “there are visible parallels between the experiences of the narrator and those of Gilman during the time she was writing the short story” (290). The economy portrayed by Glaspell in writing ‘Trifles’ is a one-act style considered masterful by some critics.
The playwright constructs the play out of small gestures just as the women come up with their theories by connecting trifles to explain the crime. The imprisonment of the woman who intern imprisons a bird is allegorical of the chain that exists in the system. Bigsby (25), states that the play “works by understatement.”
According to Greene, the idea of freedom from oppressive traditional female responsibilities and roles form a common bond between Gilman and her female character in the story. The Yellow Wallpaper is supposed to represent the society as it is for the woman, and that is the reason why Gilman centers her writings on the theme of escape (Gilman Para. 3).
According to Giele, the wife in the Play “Trifles” has devoted much of her thoughts into planning how she can get freedom (49) and so is Glaspell who wants to escape the gender traditions and the male-dominated society by forming a unity of women to defend a fellow woman against oppressive men.
Giele concludes by asserting that the “Yellow Wallpaper” is one of many short stories by Gilman, where she presents characters trying to escape from conditions set by society (35). According to Phyllis Mael, the evolution of the women’s relationships from the tenuous connection to collusion illustrates the female ethos (282).
Mael contends that the “moral dilemma” in the play highlights the perceivable differences between men’s adherence to theoretical principles of morality and women’s empathic, ethical sense of thinking, which considers “moral problems as problems of responsibility in relationship” (282-83).
The two texts give an elaborate description of the treatment of women and their space in a society mostly controlled by men (Ford 237). The theme stories of the women share more similarities in the treatment, as revealed by the writers.
This revelation triggers defiance in women who react in a way to ascertain their overly confusing space in society and claim their equality with men in the society when it comes to making decisions mostly that concern their wellbeing. The implications of these texts are as per the conclusions where the oppressed overcome their oppressors and reclaim their lost freedom.
Works Cited
Bigsby, Charles. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama: Volume One—1900–1940. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Ford, Karen. The Yellow Wallpaper and Women’s Discourse. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature. New York: Random House, 1993.
Giele, Janet Zollinger. Two Paths to Women’s Equality: Temperance, Suffrage, and the Origins of Modern Feminism. New York: Twayne, 1995.
Greene, Gretchen. “the yellow wallpaper and feminism.” New York: Mentor, 1994. 480-496. Web.
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles, The Norton Anthology of American Literature.New York: Norton & Company, 2003.
Hocham, Barbara. The Reading Habit and “The Yellow Wallpaper.” London: Duke University Press, 2002.
Holstein, Suzy. Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell’s Trifles. The Midwest Quarterly 44 (2003): 282-290.
Perkins, Charlotte. The Yellow Wallpaper. New York: Dover Publications, 1982.
Mael, Phyllis. Trifles: The Path to Sisterhood. Literature/Film Quarterly17 (1989): 281-84.
The position of women in the society of the 19th century is one of the most controversial discussion questions from the perspectives of feminist movements and different psychological ideas.
In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents her vision of the problem of the female role in the family and society with references to the theme of mental illness. It is important to note that the depiction of the female character’s depression is the representation of a situation that can be discussed as characteristic for many families in the 19th century.
Moreover, Gilman presents her interpretation of the issue basing on her own experience and autobiographical facts (Ford). However, the narrator’s developing madness can also act as the symbolical depiction of the effects of the men’s dominance on women and the female suppression in the 19th-century society.
Women’s Role as a Discussion Question in The Yellow Wallpaper
“The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published in The New England Magazine in 1892, and this short story became an example of the problematic feminist literature which began to develop actively in the first half of the 20th century (Carnley). In this story, Gilman discusses the problem of the woman’s role in the men’s society concentrating on the questions of marriage, women’s social work, domestic sphere, rest cure as the way to treat depressions and psychoses.
It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that the author’s position is reflected with references to the idea that making women idle is the way to oppress and isolate them from any social activities. Thus, the problem of postpartum depression and the methods of its treatment became the frame for discussing the more significant social issue of gender inequality and women’s suppression (Hochman).
The importance of referring to the mental illness is emphasized in the short story with the help of the used structure. Thus, Gilman presents the thoughts of the main female character in the form of journal entries.
These entries are essential for examining the process of the development of the woman’s illness. The reader learns about the character’s “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” at the first pages of the journal. Then it is possible to follow the further evolution of the mental illness and the characters’ reaction to it (Gilman 7).
The specific organization of the story also helps readers to focus on the female character’s vision of the situation of her rest cure. The character draws the readers’ attention to the fact that “this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind” (Gilman 7). That is why there are no opportunities to state strictly about the events and things described in the journal entries as about the results of the character’s fantasy or reality.
The woman who suffers from confinement in a room with the yellow wallpaper is the main character and narrator of Gilman’s short story. The other characters depicted in The Yellow Wallpaper are the woman’s husband, John, and his sister Jennie. These persons are presented from the perspective of the main character’s vision of them.
Thus, the readers learn the fact that the character’s husband is a physician, and “John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures” (Gilman 7). Providing John’s characterization in such a way, the author accentuates the traditional vision of a man in 19th-century society.
This man is practical and decisive, his word is influential, and his wife should follow his vision of the situation or even obey the orders. From this point, it is possible to discuss the room where John’s wife should live as the place of real confinement. The character of Jennie in The Yellow Wallpaper is presented to emphasize the aspects of the narrator’s illness (Thrailkill). Thus, the woman becomes sure that Jennie is also interested in the wallpaper, but there are also hints in the text that Jennie in The Yellow Wallpaper helps her brother to control his wife.
To analyze the problem of the woman’s oppression and the necessity to obey the husband’s will, one can refer to the idea of imprisonment in a room with the yellow wallpaper. From this point, the examination of the settings is significant for understanding the symbolic meaning of the short story.
The room which becomes the real prison for the main character is in the “colonial mansion, a hereditary estate … a haunted house” (Gilman 7). This house is rented by John in order to provide his wife with the necessary rest cure. However, this treatment of the woman’s depression responds to only men’s vision of the problem, which can be discussed as traditional for the society in the 19th century.
The situation of preventing any work and interactions is not discussed by the woman as good and contributing to her mental health. The woman states, “I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Gilman 8). Nevertheless, according to her husband’s will, the woman has to be imprisoned in the room with the yellow wallpaper, which becomes the single trigger for her considerations and ideas.
The main idea of Gilman’s short story is to depict the suppressed position of a woman in the society of the 19th century. However, the author develops the discussion of the problem creatively with references to the female character’s madness. Thus, a woman is portrayed as a person limited in her rights, imprisoned in the yellow room because of the postpartum depression interpreted as psychosis (Knight).
From this perspective, it is necessary to pay attention to the repetition of the question “what is one to do?” which emphasizes the woman’s impossibility to reject the pressure of the social norms according to which a woman should obey her husband (Gilman 7-8). Thus, being the prisoner of social stereotypes, the woman should be isolated from the other world because of her depression. The only way to avoid boredom is to write the diary and concentrate on the color of the wallpaper.
The author’s message is accentuated with the help of the ironic tone used in the story. Gilman presents some hints to make the readers predict the woman’s madness. Thus, the woman states that “there is something strange about the house” at the first pages of the diary, and the next pages of the diary help the readers realize that the woman becomes obsessed with the color of the wallpaper which even transforms into the yellow smell (Gilman 8).
The final stage of the woman’s illness is the focus on the woman who creeps behind the wallpaper. The dramatic irony of the fact can be observed with concentrating on the woman’s discussion of the situation, “life is very much more exciting now than it used to be” (Gilman 19).
The message of the story is emphasized with the help of definite symbolic features. The position of woman in the society can be interpreted with references to the yellow room, which plays the role of a prison for the woman, and its color is the symbol of madness.
The distinction in the positions of women and men is also accentuated with the help of depicting the qualities of sunlight and moonlight and their impact on the color of the walls. Furthermore, the wallpaper changes according to the alternations in the woman’s state, and the final stage of these changes are the appearance of a woman behind the wallpaper.
This woman isolated behind the yellow wallpaper can be discussed as the reflection of the main character isolated in the room from the other people. Nevertheless, the most dramatic misconception is the woman’s interpretation of the yellow room as the nursery and its possible usage as the room for isolating insane people.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story reflects the tendencies in the society of the 19th century, which led to a controversial discussion about the role of men and women. The woman’s position in relation to the issue is presented in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which can be characterized by accentuating the woman’s individuality and self-consciousness in contrast to presenting the men’s gendered pressure, which is based on the social stereotypes and the drawbacks of patriarchy.
Works Cited
Carnley, Peter. “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Other Sermons. USA: HarperCollins Melbourne, 2001. Print.
Ford, Karen. “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Women’s Discourse.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 4.2 (1985): 309-314. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. USA: Simon and Brown, 2011. Print.
Hochman, Barbara. “The Reading Habit and “The Yellow Wallpaper.” American Literature 74.1 (2002): 89-110. Print.
Knight, Denise. The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings. USA: Penguin Classics, 2009. Print.
Thrailkill, Jane F. “Doctoring “The Yellow Wallpaper.” ELH 69.2 (2002): 525-566. Print.
Does it leave one wondering whether Emily Grierson, in ‘A Rose for Emily,’ should be blamed for her solitude and isolation from the rest of the society much as the woman narrator in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’?
Emily Grierson, in ‘A Rose for Emily,’ treats her solitude and isolation from the rest of society as a norm. When she dies, everyone goes for her funeral not because they liked her, but because she was a monument for the community. Some were curious to peep inside her house known only to a gardener and a cook for almost ten years.
The woman narrator in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ on the other hand, sees her isolation from the community like a plague that will eat on her very soul. She yearns for her husband John, to be by her side but quickly points out that he is out attending to more severe cases. It is from the narrator that we learn that he is a physician.
Emily & the Narrator: Characters Comparison
Emily’s isolation and solitude are enhanced by her father’s influence on her ideas and actions. She is brought up in the era of civil war. His father turned away a lot of suitors to the effect that she was still single at the age of thirty. Miss Emily is brought up with the notion that she is from an influential and proud Southern family: The Griersons. This is supported by the part in which she starts hanging out with the Northerner Homer Barron.
It is regarded as a bad act; the laborer from the North was not her type or class. When her father dies, she in denial agrees to release his body for burial after a lot of pressure. She turns the community women come to pay homage to her away from her doorstep. This enhances her stubborn nature and highlights her isolation and solitude.
In the text, there is every indication that Emily represented the last of the pre-civil war era. She lives in a pre-civil war house. Factories and cotton ginneries have replaced all the other houses close to her. She chooses to hang to her past more than the present, making her an isolated case in the ever-changing society. A lot of symbolism shows her isolation. She lived in an isolated beat-down house that was dark and dusty, a clear indication of her isolation, character, and solitude from the other society.
Emily’s contempt for the new laws and rules show how torn apart from the society she is. An indication of this is when she goes to the druggist to buy poison even when the law requires to abound up a reason to buy the poison; she stares at the druggist once, and she gets the poison she uses for murdering Homer Barron.
Another instance is when the aldermen representatives from the council come to visit her over the remittance of taxes. She tells them off, indicating that her father had loaned the town with special reference to Colonel Sartoris, the former mayor who had passed on for more than ten years. We can assume that she never knew whether the Colonel had passed on, thus highlighting her level of isolation and solitude.
When the Federal State departments issue an order on postal addresses, she refuses to comply, indicating her disregard for the new laws and developments. Her mere mention of her name for the foul smell emanating from her house by her neighbors’ to the present mayor shows how hard it is to deal with her.
The mayor, rather than confronting her, dispatches some men to pour lime around her house at night, and several days later, the smell subsides. In various instances in the story, it is reported that she is rarely seen outside by the people after her father’s death and after Homer was reported missing. This shows us of Emily, who is quite satisfied with her present state of affairs.
Her behavior makes her an embodiment of the pre and civil war era of a true and proud Southerner. We can try to understand it in these terms; she has a black man who, at the beginning of the text, is a young man now stooped and never talked perhaps due to restrictions around him. After he opens the door for the people after Emily’s death, he leaves never to be seen again.
We can conclude Emily’s behavior isolated her from a society that tried to involve her in every way, as indicated in the events in the story. She was so out of place such that when she bought the poison, everyone thought she was going to kill herself. This was thought to have been brought out by her relationship with Homer Barron, whom it was known was not ready to commit to marriage.
Her association with him had even led people to suggest that she be counseled by a church minister who later said he would never wish to engage her again. She was a fascination even after her death, with many coming to her funeral, the women more curious to look into her house where the skeleton body of Homer Barron was found (he had been missing for more than forty years) and a strand of her grey hair on a pillow next to him.
It was now understood of the course of her isolation. She was never the type that liked isolation. It was just that the only man she would have been glad to be with was not committed, resulting in her murdering him and retaining him in her upstairs room where she could see him and lie next to him, a symbol of bonding even after death.
In the ‘Yellow Wallpaper,’ isolation and solitude are well outlined by the dominance of the male over the female. John’s wife is always the one on fault. John is always on the right. The setting of this story is in the late nineteenth century. We come close to a lady who suffers from nervous sickness.
John, her husband, believes that she truly deserves rest and that her writing is doing her more harm than good. We are made to understand that her writing makes her think more creatively and clearly much to the disagreement of her husband, who believes more on facts than anybody else.
We could say that the tattered yellow wallpaper is symbols of worn-out belief of man’s perceived thought of ownership and provision for his wife. She claims to see a woman behind the wallpaper who rearranges the patterns beheld by it. There is a symbolic reflection of herself as she tries to change the perception of a submissive housewife.
She is trying to break free from the predominance of male possession. The woman she talks of seems to be free and creeps in the yard and road in daylight. In this case, male dominance and other misinformation may represent the tattered yellow wallpaper. They are the tattered beliefs and stereotypes of that age when a woman is to heed to a man’s advice and not her own.
The woman in this story has to heed to her husband John’s instruction and his symbol of authority in the form of Jennie, a talented housekeeper. The woman gets used to the yellow wallpaper smell but later on, she is unpleasant of its creepy smell. This symbolically means that she is disentangling herself from the firm possession of out of place belief s that she cannot be party to her conviction. We even understand that when they first moved in, she is eager to leave but later on she is more interested in staying there for a while. It may be due to a self-discovering of her freedom, which she fears will be robbed of her if they move back to their house. It is ironic that John’s projection was to have his wife’s health nurtured back by her resting. She is not supposed to do anything save bathing and dressing. At first, we see the fruits of recovery, but ironically it’s due to her self discovery, not John’s taunted point of view.
An incisive critique can only reveal that Emily in ‘A Rose for Emily’ has no time to discover her self-worth and chooses to spend her time in isolation and self-pity. These two stories tell of two contrasting women in similar influence. They are both squirming under male dominance. In as much as Emily is entangled in this, she is not willing to acknowledge the disastrous effects.
She believes that her fate lies with male dominance and possession. She believes that the only way to survive is to cling to her past. This is evident in her denial of her father’s death, the tax reduction, the death of Homer Barron, and the fact that her house is the placid building left behind by her father (she did not repair it in any way).
When she passed on, people could only imagine the places she would have been with them as indicated in part of the story: “Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road.”
The woman narrator on The Yellow Wallpaper, on the other hand, has discovered her self-worth. She is ready to tear the wallpaper and break loose. She is envious of her husband and Jennie, her house help. She narrates that she has found them both staring at the yellow wallpaper much to their own discomfort and to her great amazement. She is an embodiment of a great breakthrough in the fact that she rediscovers her new energy and point of view.
Her nervousness is by then over. She breaks the bond of isolation and solitude on negative matters and prefers to be possessed with more positive values such as self-trust. She describes the amazement of Jane and her husband due to her new discovery in the last part of her story as: “I’ve got out at last,” said I,” In spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”
“Now, why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall so that I had to creep over him every time!”
Conclusion
In both stories, the writers try to show us the effect of being complacent to change and the effect of restricting yourself to one popular belief. For Emily, she is described as a monument which symbolically means unchanging. As for the woman narrator in the Yellow wallpaper, she is happy to have discovered herself and actually improves in her health. The contrasting effect of isolation and solitude is felt throughout both stories.