The Yellow Wallpaper Transcendentalism Analysis

Doctor’s Orders
The history of mental health treatment is not a pleasant one, riddled with exorcisms, inhumane asylums, isolation, and ineffective drugs. While the modern age has brought better medication and less barbaric treatment, there is still much left undiscovered about the nature of mental illness. This creates a delicate situation when it comes to the relationship between the patient and the professional. Who decides what is best for the patient? Is it the doctor, who may lack insight into the state of the patient, or the patient, who might lack the ability to maintain their well-being? Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” explores this situation through the story of a young woman in the late 1800s, driven to insanity
after being prescribed rest cure by her physician husband. Gilman incorporates transcendentalist beliefs, arguing that those treated for mental illness are deprived of their individuality and have no say in the matter of their own diagnosis, forced to go against their own intuition to appeal to the medical professional. The doctor-patient relationship parallels the transcendentalist view of society; the doctor acting as society, having power and using it to mold the patient or the individual, who is broken by being forced to conform.
Individualism is an all-important platform for transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. According to him, the loss of one’s individuality is a fate worse than death, a complete surrender to an oppressive society. As Emerson says, “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against man hood of every one of its members” (Emerson 541). The young woman, the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins the story without even a name, and is forbidden from partaking in any stimulating activity but writing, which the narrator states tends to “relieve the press of ideas” off of her (Gilman 1664). The treatment, called rest cure, was popular at the time for patients considered too frail to do anything. Her husband prescribes this, calling “imaginative power” and “habit of story-making” a “nervous weakness” (1665). Unfortunately, being considered frail is only a fraction of the stigma still held against the neurodiverse today. Society often deems the mentally ill as frail, unpredictable, violent, and generally incapable of functioning. They are judged for actions they cannot control and even the actions of others with the same ailment. This careless grouping is part of the cause for the narrator’s very standard diagnosis and treatment. Women with nervous disorders existing at the time of the short story, were treated as a collective that could be cured with one standard treatment, resulting in a complete neglect of individuality and an insight in the relationship between man and society.
Gilman ties another element of transcendentalism into her story: intuition.
The transcendentalist’s belief in the individual finding their own truth, and exhibiting confidence in their understanding of the world, places intuition over reasoning. Emerson argues that every man “knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due” (Emerson 549). Instinct cannot always be used though, especially in the medical field, where a thin line exists between logic and intuition, and crossing the line can lead to ethical mishaps. The realm of mental health is even more ambiguous, making the line thinner. Maladies physical. They can be seen and touched. The mental illness is not tangible. No hard evidence exists, so the professional must treat the patient according the patient’s words and actions. The narrator explains this dilemma, saying her husband “does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him” (Gilman 1668). Treating mental illness requires the intuition that Emerson endorses, rather than medical standards and
procedure.
The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a victim of standardized treatment, caused by the human desire for consistency.
Consistency is what brings about the narrator’s descent into madness. She is neglected by her husband because of his desire for it, but also practices it herself in her compliancy. Consistency provides security and practicality, and generally aligns with human nature, but Emerson warns against it. He says consistency “scares us from self-trust”, and ultimately forces humanity to conform to society (Emerson 545). As time goes on, she begins to feel more and more confined, and less and less stimulated, obsessing over the intricate wallpaper of her room, imagining a shadow woman stuck behind it. In the finale, she breaks down, losing the last shred of her sanity, exposing the true state of her mental being to her husband. She becomes an example of what happens when the individual is suppressed, deprived of individuality, and forced into an unchanging routine. Gilman truly understands, that “with consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall” (547).
A connection exists between the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and the transcendentalism. While not a transcendentalist, Gilman uses her argument on the treatment of mental illness to support some of their ideas, such as individualism, non-conformity, intuition, and the break from consistency. She does this successfully, making the relationship
between the narrator and her physician a representation of society, with the narrator as the individual, attempting to follow her intuition, and the physician as the masses, the norm, the standard, holding her back.