The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s gothic tale of “The Yellow Wallpaper” took nearly a century to finally find an understanding audience. Initially, readers at the time were struck by its grisly tale of a story; however it was not until years later that the story was recognized for its thematic societal undertones hinted with feminist connotations underneath its façade. Written in first person, the reader gets to witness first-hand through the eyes of the narrator in her path to insanity, rather than from a described third person perspective retelling her actions. And so, the reader gets to see her experience her struggles, hardships, and daily encounters first-hand throughout her stay at a vacation house (which was used a place of treatment and rest)
with her demanding, authoritative, and patronizing husband, John. Upon first glance, the reader may assume John for being solely responsible for the narrator’s progressive mental instability to ultimate madness; however when observing the subtext of the story with much scrutiny and taking its context into consideration, the narrator, in actuality, descends into madness due to society itself from being pressured to conform to its standards.
Gilman writes the story as a representation of the society she was a part of at the time, paralleling her unfortunate experience of mental illness with the narrator’s. In doing so, Gilman depicts her experience through literature to demonstrate her own personal life of living in an era that confined and disregarded women as independent. Suffering from hysteria for years, Gilman sought help from neurologist S. Weir Mitchell who treated her with the “rest cure”, a regime that enforced only passivity, idleness, and bed rest. “The result of his treatment, [Gilman] claimed, was a complete breakdown” and that she was only able to cure herself of her nervous disorder by disobeying his orders (Herndl 52). Thus, Gilman wrote to protest the “rest cure” treatment for women, combating society’s medically ignorant ways by using the narrator as a window to show her autobiographical resemblance in the story. This is exemplified when the narrator shows how John, a physician, fails to acknowledge and properly identify her sickness and symptoms in the same manner as Gilman’s doctor. Therefore, doctors in Gilman’s time were unknowingly clueless about how to properly deal with patients that were mentally unstable, a notion that is reflected with John and the narrator.
Furthermore, Gilman uses the narrator and her relationship with her husband John as a microcosm of the gender inequality and female oppression of the society that they lived in.
Gilman does so in order to mock the standards of society through representation of a woman and her physician husband. By having the narrator unnamed, Gilman uses her to speak for women who were mentally unstable, such as herself, and to represent the subordinate status and confinement of women in the nineteenth century as seen when the narrator states that “John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious” (546). Here, John is free to roam and go out while the narrator must stay confined to the house, illustrating her restricted freedom. Also, John’s behavior towards his wife is that of an adult to a child, calling her as his “little girl” (550). This behavior is also showcased when the narrator tried to “talk with John about [her] case” hoping to convince him that his treatment isn’t working and that she “wished he would take [her] away [from the house]” (550). In response, John does not take her seriously, overriding her judgment and refuses to take her input into consideration, replying to her: “…you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know” (550). John’s ignorance, manner, and dismissal of his wife’s opinions stem from society’s depiction of misogynist views and follows patriarchal ways. The narrator’s self-suppression continues
throughout the story to the point where she finds it impossible to oppose her husband in any way, thus, John’s authoritativeness is confirmed due to the narrator’s feminine submissiveness. Therefore, the narrator is forced to give in and to conform to societal ways through John, deeming her helpless. As she succumbs more to societal norms, she contributes more to her progression towards madness because of frustration and helplessness. Eventually, the narrator regresses towards a weakening of motor-cognitive skills, seeing writing as becoming more of an effort. She also finds herself spending much of the day in sleep as a result of the “rest cure”.
The narrator’s negative response to the “rest cure” represents a negative effect of society’s treatment towards women, a response that is leading to her madness. She is deprived of physical activity, expression of creativity, and writing. Soon, she becomes more lethargic and sicker and dares herself to begin challenging John’s treatment. The only way she can eventually get better is if she challenges John as well as to following his “rest cure”. At the same time, she must understand the position that society has forced her in, however, John, representative of society’s oppressor, acts as a barrier in the narrator’s path towards health restoration. This is foreshadowed and proven when the narrator states:
I did write for a while in spite of [John]; but it does exhaust me a good deal-having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition. I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus - but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. (545)
Here, the narrator had a correct initial idea that was formulating and was on the right path with her meaningful thinking, but John interjects and dismisses her train of thought, again, hindering her ability to recovery.
In the words of Jeannette King and Pam Morris, “[the narrator] constantly retreats to within the prescribed limits, countering any assertion of her own viewpoint with ‘But John says….” (King and Morris 27). Now that John takes on an influence in his wife’s own mind, she cannot truly fully think for herself. With a deteriorating mind that is lacking much innovation and complex thinking, the narrator starts to intensely dwell and become fascinated with the yellow wallpaper in her
room.
On the same track, John’s refusal to remove the yellow wallpaper in the room reinforces the narrator’s inability to escape the entrapment of society’s fixated views on women. The narrator states: “At first [John] meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (546). By refusing to remove the wallpaper from the wall, John is refusing to overlook the medical bias against women that society has instilled upon the female gender. As the narrator’s madness progresses, she begins to see visions on the wallpaper and claims that a woman is trapped behind the paper: “The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind… she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern – it strangles so” (552). Here, the narrator’s observations represent how society locks up women, bearing the responsibility for their entrapment. In this case, the woman on the wall is a reflection of the narrator’s own entrapment, with society being held responsible for her own lock-up.
Although Gilman uses John as a scapegoat as the one responsible for his wife’s descent into madness, further interpretation of the subtext of the story and textual evidence suggest otherwise. Throughout the story, it is suggested that John indeed has good intentions for his wife and that he cares and loves her, however, society has bounded him to its own traditional gender roles. Therefore, John does not realize that his measures are unknowingly harming his wife’s recovery. Since he is constricted to his own gender role, his ability to effectively prevent his own wife from descending into madness is limited. Although the reader may assume that John purposely hinders his wife by restricting her from activity, further reading suggests that the society that the narrator is living is possess terms that inevitably made her helpless. By ending the story with the narrator descending into madness, Gilman sought to caution against “rest cure” treatments and to warn her audience of the dangers of societal ways towards women by showing its consequential effects on women and the brutal measures that women took (using the narrator) in order to escape social situations that were detrimental to their mental wellbeing (as represented by John).