Theme Of Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the female protagonist veers from the majority of patriarchal societies because of her distinct feelings of frustration, alienation, and emotional and creative repression within this social formation. Ultimately, in order to escape this early twentieth century state of mind, the female protagonist goes insane. However tragic this may appear on the surface, the suggestion of deliverance from her restricted environment is one of freedom of the dominant culture. Although the narrator escapes the narrow restraints of mentality through insanity, the underlying themes of The Yellow Wallpaper help to shed light on the narrators’ delirium. The Yellow Wallpaper was written in 1892 and is from the vantage point of a woman. This story was written in a time when women were not supposed to have individual thoughts or personalities. At this point in history, the social roles of women were very well defined: mothers and
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caretakers of the family, prim and proper creatures that were pleasant to look at, they were seen but not heard, and were considered unreasonable and emotional. Men on the other hand were the active workers of the family: they had jobs, knowledge and everything the women didn’t. This story is about a woman, known as the narrator, who is suffering from depression and a nervous breakdown. Her husband John is a physician who believes that she is not sick but is suffering from a temporary stint of nervous depression. He assumes that his own superior wisdom and maturity is at its climax but it leads him to misjudge, demean, and dominate his wife, all in the name of “helping” her. He decides to take her to an isolated country house to help her recover. Although his intentions might have been good, her recovery is not being helped by the fact that her husband has forced her to inhabit a room with irritating features, that is to say the wallpaper. From the beginning, the most intolerable aspect of her treatment is the dormant and unavoidable silence of the “resting cure.” The mental constraints placed upon the narrator are what ultimately drive her insane. She is forced to hide her anxieties and fears in order to defend her marriage and to make it seem as though she is winning the fight against her depression. Ultimately, she is forced to become completely inactive. She becomes forbidden from exercising her mind in any way. The narrator thoroughly enjoyed writing. She mentions that she is “absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again” (Gilman 164). But she later goes on to declare, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Gilman 164). John warns her several times that she must use her self-control to restrain her imagination, which he fears will run away with her. The narrator is constantly longing for an expressive outlet, even going so far as to keep a secret journal where she says, “I must say what I feel and think in some way—it is such a relief” (Gilman 168).
Of course, the narrator’s eventual insanity is a product of the repression of her imaginative power, not the expression of it. The narrator does not have a say in anything and when she finally mentions something to John, he always come up with an excuse. For example, “At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterward 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” (Gilman 165). After he makes that excuse he continues on to mention “You know the place is doing you good and really, dear, I don’t care to renovate the house just for a three months’ rental” (Gilman 166). What John doesn’t realize is that by not giving way to these “fancies,” he is making his wife’s condition worse instead of
better. As the narrator is slowly slipping into insanity her sentences begin to reflect the state of her mind. At the beginning of the story when we meet the narrator in the room with the yellow wallpaper, she is quite naïve about her new surroundings. She seems to think that the room was originally a nursery by stating, “It was nursery first, and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge, for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things on the walls”(Gilman 165). Her first impression is of the ugly wallpaper which she’s “never seen a worse paper in her life” (Gilman 165). By the second week of her stay, even more commotion manifest itself in her description of the wallpaper. While she admits that it is “inanimate,” she also mentions that she does not like its “expression.” To an ordinary person entering the room they would say that is looks like a pattern in the wallpaper. To the narrator, the wallpaper begins to look like a face with “a broken neck and two bulbous eyes that stare at you upside down” (Gilman 166). Soon she begins to see not one face in the wallpaper but many creatures. The wallpaper creatures anger her with their “impertinence;” this is the first time she mentions them crawling around the room. Before long, the narrator states, “I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper” (Gilman 167). The narrator seems to think that the wallpaper is helping her to get better, but in reality it is helping to drive her into insanity. The changes in the wallpaper become an unfolding event that she is paying close attention to. She tells us that she is trying to follow “that pointless pattern to some kind of conclusion” (Gilman 168). She eventually starts to use more incredible images to describe the wallpaper: “bloated curves and flourishes—a kind of debased Romanesque with delirium tremens” (Gilman 168). Soon she begins to note that the “dim shapes” skulking behind the overlaying patters are getting clearer; they have begun to resemble a woman who was stooping down and creeping along to wall. Eventually the different lighting in the room causes the narrator to think the wallpaper is changing. “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars. The outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be” (Gilman 170). At first she thinks the wallpaper starts to resemble fungus during the day, but then she realizes that “By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour” (Gilman 170). Just like the woman in the wallpaper, the narrator stays still during the day to watch the wallpaper whereas at night she tends to move around more because that is the time of day where the woman in the wallpaper is able to move. The narrator begins to feel that “Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see, I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was” (Gilman 171). John seems to think that his wife is getting better, but the narrator is putting on a front because she does not want him to know that it was because of the wallpaper that was making her better. Eventually she begins to rip all of the wallpaper off the wall and by the end of the story, in imitation of the wallpaper woman, the narrator begins to crawl around the perimeter of the room. At this point she has completely gone insane because when John enters the room she says, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (Gilman 175). At this point she becomes one with the “woman” in the wallpaper therefore believing that she is the woman in the wallpaper. She tore down the wallpaper because as she first started watching the wallpaper she realized that the woman was trapped and without the wallpaper she could be free to creep around the room. Although the narrator escapes the narrow restraints of mentality through insanity, the underlying themes of The Yellow Wallpaper help to shed light on the narrators’ delirium. What Charlotte Perkins Gilman has done is shown what happens when a woman is allowed no creative expression at all. She has no mental motivation, and no access to the things that fulfill her. She keeps trying to go deeper, further inside, to reach a place where she can truly reach a sense of selfhood; but she is denied any chance to achieve this, which causes her quest to become a nightmare.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature: Pasco-Hernando Community College Collection. 2nd ed. Comp. Joseph F. Trimmer, C. Wade Jennings, Annette Patterson and Richard Downing. Cambridge: Heinle & Heinle, 2004. 163-175
caretakers of the family, prim and proper creatures that were pleasant to look at, they were seen but not heard, and were considered unreasonable and emotional. Men on the other hand were the active workers of the family: they had jobs, knowledge and everything the women didn’t. This story is about a woman, known as the narrator, who is suffering from depression and a nervous breakdown. Her husband John is a physician who believes that she is not sick but is suffering from a temporary stint of nervous depression. He assumes that his own superior wisdom and maturity is at its climax but it leads him to misjudge, demean, and dominate his wife, all in the name of “helping” her. He decides to take her to an isolated country house to help her recover. Although his intentions might have been good, her recovery is not being helped by the fact that her husband has forced her to inhabit a room with irritating features, that is to say the wallpaper. From the beginning, the most intolerable aspect of her treatment is the dormant and unavoidable silence of the “resting cure.” The mental constraints placed upon the narrator are what ultimately drive her insane. She is forced to hide her anxieties and fears in order to defend her marriage and to make it seem as though she is winning the fight against her depression. Ultimately, she is forced to become completely inactive. She becomes forbidden from exercising her mind in any way. The narrator thoroughly enjoyed writing. She mentions that she is “absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again” (Gilman 164). But she later goes on to declare, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Gilman 164). John warns her several times that she must use her self-control to restrain her imagination, which he fears will run away with her. The narrator is constantly longing for an expressive outlet, even going so far as to keep a secret journal where she says, “I must say what I feel and think in some way—it is such a relief” (Gilman 168).
Of course, the narrator’s eventual insanity is a product of the repression of her imaginative power, not the expression of it. The narrator does not have a say in anything and when she finally mentions something to John, he always come up with an excuse. For example, “At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterward 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” (Gilman 165). After he makes that excuse he continues on to mention “You know the place is doing you good and really, dear, I don’t care to renovate the house just for a three months’ rental” (Gilman 166). What John doesn’t realize is that by not giving way to these “fancies,” he is making his wife’s condition worse instead of
better. As the narrator is slowly slipping into insanity her sentences begin to reflect the state of her mind. At the beginning of the story when we meet the narrator in the room with the yellow wallpaper, she is quite naïve about her new surroundings. She seems to think that the room was originally a nursery by stating, “It was nursery first, and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge, for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things on the walls”(Gilman 165). Her first impression is of the ugly wallpaper which she’s “never seen a worse paper in her life” (Gilman 165). By the second week of her stay, even more commotion manifest itself in her description of the wallpaper. While she admits that it is “inanimate,” she also mentions that she does not like its “expression.” To an ordinary person entering the room they would say that is looks like a pattern in the wallpaper. To the narrator, the wallpaper begins to look like a face with “a broken neck and two bulbous eyes that stare at you upside down” (Gilman 166). Soon she begins to see not one face in the wallpaper but many creatures. The wallpaper creatures anger her with their “impertinence;” this is the first time she mentions them crawling around the room. Before long, the narrator states, “I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper” (Gilman 167). The narrator seems to think that the wallpaper is helping her to get better, but in reality it is helping to drive her into insanity. The changes in the wallpaper become an unfolding event that she is paying close attention to. She tells us that she is trying to follow “that pointless pattern to some kind of conclusion” (Gilman 168). She eventually starts to use more incredible images to describe the wallpaper: “bloated curves and flourishes—a kind of debased Romanesque with delirium tremens” (Gilman 168). Soon she begins to note that the “dim shapes” skulking behind the overlaying patters are getting clearer; they have begun to resemble a woman who was stooping down and creeping along to wall. Eventually the different lighting in the room causes the narrator to think the wallpaper is changing. “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars. The outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be” (Gilman 170). At first she thinks the wallpaper starts to resemble fungus during the day, but then she realizes that “By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour” (Gilman 170). Just like the woman in the wallpaper, the narrator stays still during the day to watch the wallpaper whereas at night she tends to move around more because that is the time of day where the woman in the wallpaper is able to move. The narrator begins to feel that “Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see, I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was” (Gilman 171). John seems to think that his wife is getting better, but the narrator is putting on a front because she does not want him to know that it was because of the wallpaper that was making her better. Eventually she begins to rip all of the wallpaper off the wall and by the end of the story, in imitation of the wallpaper woman, the narrator begins to crawl around the perimeter of the room. At this point she has completely gone insane because when John enters the room she says, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (Gilman 175). At this point she becomes one with the “woman” in the wallpaper therefore believing that she is the woman in the wallpaper. She tore down the wallpaper because as she first started watching the wallpaper she realized that the woman was trapped and without the wallpaper she could be free to creep around the room. Although the narrator escapes the narrow restraints of mentality through insanity, the underlying themes of The Yellow Wallpaper help to shed light on the narrators’ delirium. What Charlotte Perkins Gilman has done is shown what happens when a woman is allowed no creative expression at all. She has no mental motivation, and no access to the things that fulfill her. She keeps trying to go deeper, further inside, to reach a place where she can truly reach a sense of selfhood; but she is denied any chance to achieve this, which causes her quest to become a nightmare.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature: Pasco-Hernando Community College Collection. 2nd ed. Comp. Joseph F. Trimmer, C. Wade Jennings, Annette Patterson and Richard Downing. Cambridge: Heinle & Heinle, 2004. 163-175