Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wall-paper” is an extremely profound warning against the lack of authenticity and imbalance in personal relationships, and at the same time it is a fascinating description of a developing mental illness. This short story written by a radical American feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman brings forward a powerful statement on a very general issue - “the problem of the other”(Todorov).  It also focuses on the 19th century stereotype of a “lunatic”(active, self-expressive) woman oppressed by her “loving”(controlling) husband and/or “caring” (ignorant) physician. Interestingly, the story connects two conventional dialectic oppositions which have always been central to the philosophical problem of the other, i.e. madness (irrational forces) as opposed to sanity (ratio), and womanhood (passivity) as opposed to manhood (activity). These oppositions are elaborately questioned in the story.

Historical Background: Female Writers Killed by a “Rest Cure”

In any case, Gilman intended to warn the reader. What she was willing to warn against was not only general problems, but even more importantly, it was a highly contemporary issue – the pseudo-scientific methods of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, probably the most famous American psychiatrist of that day. In the first part of this essay, we will deal with this particular aspect of the story, while in the second part we will focus more on the formal and philosophical aspects.

In a secret diary the female narrator of the story describes the wicked results of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell’s “rest cure” which her husband, a physician, forces her to undergo, and which gradually drives her into a seriously pathological state of mind. Gilman explicitly described her own encounter with Mitchell’s methods in her commentary on the story called “Why I wrote The Yellow Wall-paper”: “This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to ‘live as domestic a life as far as possible’, to ‘have but two hours’ intellectual life a day’, and ‘never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as I lived’.(…)I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the border line of utter mental ruin that I could see over.”[1]

In this quote we can trace the basic principle of Mitchell’s psychiatric mistreatment of “hysteria”[2]. His approach was apparently negligent about the seriousness of the illness[3] since the women-patients unable to live in conformity with male ideals were seen as resistant children who became ill because they did not obey properly. According to the standards of Victorian science, the theory that the illness was the woman’s own fault or fancy could have been easily justified by the fact that the physical condition of “hysterics” was usually “normal” (at least before the cure was imposed on them). Like disobedient children, the women were punished in order to “recover”, i.e. be obedient and passive again: “…Ann Wood who has studied Mitchell’s theories…argues that Mitchell was an outspoken misogynist, whose methods punished deviant and discontented women by forcing them into an allegedly therapeutic female role.”[4] Mitchell obviously did not take into account the consequences of the illness, which threatened to destroy the mental health of his patients; however, he seems to have been deeply interested in those which threatened to defy the contemporary Victorian/male concepts of womanhood. These inconvenient consequences (women’s active reactions and responses to the male version of reality) were supposed to be nipped in the bud by prescribing the cure consisting in ignoring the woman’s will and creating a tight bond of dependency between the wife (in the humiliating position of an infant) and the husband (in the position of absolute authority).

It was Gilman’s own narrow escape what made her write “The Yellow Wall-paper”, a copy of which she sent to Mitchell[5] since her primary aim was to “convince him of the error of his ways”[6]. Mitchell had never responded, but later on Gilman found out that he “had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wall-paper”[7].

Since Mitchell’s name is directly mentioned in the story, there is no doubt that this piece of writing was meant to be shocking, and importantly enough, it succeeded in provoking the public to wild reactions by speaking openly about a serious issue, which had been deliberately kept in silence by the society controlled exclusively by men who were considered (i.e. would like to consider themselves) intellectually superior.

The story brings a bleak but highly realistic image of a woman abused by a man who sways all the power due to his education and social status – things that women were carefully prevented from achieving so that men could adore them, posses them and violate them as if they were dolls (i.e. objects) rather than human beings. On the one hand, readers were utterly shocked by the story, but on the other hand, as Elizabeth Ammons claims “neither charged Gilman with lying. Rather the story was too true, the information in it too depressing”[8].

Another famous victim of Mitchell’s “therapeutic” technique was Virginia Woolf. She had to spend some time in a nursing home for “female lunatics” where she was sent by her husband Leonard. Her “cure” led to suicidal attempts, one of them being successful.[9] Similarly to “The Yellow Wall-paper” the story of Septimus Smith in Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” presents an autobiographical account harshly criticising the pseudo-scientific methods used by psychiatrists at that day. In Septimus’ case it is the fear of an inhuman psychiatrist which directly causes his committing a suicide.

Summarising, in the 19th century, Mitchell’s rest cure must have been a great threat to female intellectuals suffering from depression because, in fact, it “was a sinister parody of idealized Victorian femininity” defined by “inertia, privatization, narcissism, dependency”[10]. It was exactly this image of womanhood that Charlotte Perkins Gilman as well as Virginia Woolf condemned, and rebelled against, not only in their writings for public, but also in their private lives.

In spite of the fact that there were many new psychiatric methods introduced in the 20th century, and the relationship between men and women became much more equal, we can find other “female lunatics” in Anglo-American fiction of the 20th century with feelings and moods similar to those of Gilman and Woolf. Moreover, these writers also wrote about, and eventually committed suicide: the poet Sylvia Plath and the playwright Sarah Kane.

Although “the woman condition” nowadays is different from what it had been in Gilman’s time, there must be something which remains, and which makes Gilman’s work still topical. First of all, it might be the fact that this excellent story in a very poignant way renders the objects, and thus it comments upon the human ability or rather inability to be open for the other. Then, another general human tendency to treat people (even those very dear to us) as important aspect would be the rebellious nature of the story which overtly attempts “to claim sexual and textual authority”[11]of women.

Alter Ego on Paper: Writing Oneself into the Text

The narrator may have considered her husband, who she is dependent on, as someone who could help her; however, he starts to seem to her more and more an enemy than support:

“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.”

“it is lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see…”

“The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John…”

“He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind. As if I couldn’t see through him!”

“’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!”[12]

John as a physician in the position of undisputable authority does not accept his wife’s own opinions on her condition; he even refuses to admit that her mental health might be seriously endangered since the only criterion important for him is the physical state of the patient. In accordance with Mitchell’s methods, he carefully prevents her from writing, open discussions, friendly visits and all other expressions of her authentic personality. As there seems to be nobody who could help the narrator apart from the husband who is, however, blind to her needs, the only option for her to take in order to extricate from the situation is to destroy all the rules of male rationality which put her into separation. As a result, she drives herself “mad”, the process of which Gilman renders in “The Yellow Wall-paper” in such an impressive way.

The story, as we mentioned above, is written in a form of a diary which the narrator keeps secretly. The style successfully corresponds to the contents mainly due to the unusual technique Gilman used for paragraph divisions (most of the sentences represent only one paragraph), thus, the text becomes a vivid depiction of the disjointed thoughts of the narrator. Hence, Gilman achieves a highly intense and highly fragmentary way of expressing the narrator’s exasperation and despair.

In writing the story, Gilman undoubtedly drew upon her own “love experience”: in her autobiographical notes she described her mother abandoned by a beloved husband as someone who “grew bitter and fiercely repressed, deciding not to show any affection for her daughter in order to toughen the child”[13]. Gilman’s own first marriage was also not a very happy one; she even believed it threatened her sanity. After divorce, she married for the second time and lived with this husband until his death. A year later when Gilman was 75 she committed suicide.

 “Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day…And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder – I begin to think – I wish John would take me away from here…The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.”[14]

The creeping woman on the paper who the narrator fancies to observe at moonlight certainly is her own alter ego. It is the depressed and humiliated ego which wants to be liberated from the world where it is imprisoned. Hence, the awful front pattern may be interpreted as a representation of the irritating male order behind which there is a sub-pattern - a woman who wants to flee out of it.

The point is that such liberation would mean destruction. The narrator certainly wants to liberate herself from her husband, but she is afraid of even greater isolation, she wants to liberate her alter ego, but that, of course, makes her think about committing a suicide. Finally, she becomes mad, but still, her thought remains in a way obscurely rational and her speech ironic until the very last sentence of her diary. From the following extract, the reader can infer that the narrator is openly describing her psychopathic behaviour as a drive towards anarchy, rebellion and revenge from which she could not be prevented despite the physical limits:

 “I want to astonish him. I’ve got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!

But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!

“I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try.

Besides I wouldn’t do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.”[15]

Apart from the slightly ironical tone of the narration, one of the most eccentric features of the story is the final description of the narrator’s “line of flight”:

“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.”[16]

At this point, it is not possible to resist the temptation to ask when and under what circumstances this final part was written, and why the diary ends here…

In conclusion, Gilman’s story questions the very notion of rationality by suggesting that it could be connected both with sanity and insanity as there clearly may be different kinds of ratio. Gilman also undermines the Victorian concept of a happy marriage and reveals what the woman’s role in wedlock is like. Moreover, she criticises the fact that the nature of love relationships is rarely authentic. Her aim is to revolt and to warn.

Nevertheless, Gilman left her critical hints open, and most of the key thoughts unfinished. Thus, “The Yellow Wall-paper” is at any rate a text of great aesthetic value which leaves enough space for readers to inscribe freely into it, to change it and at the same time to let themselves be changed by it.

Sources:

N - Reidhead Julia, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology (Gilman Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wall-paper, Why I Wrote The Yellow Wall-paper), New York: Norton, 1998.

EA - Ammons, Elizabeth. Conflicting Stories. American Women Writers at the Turn into the Twentieth Century, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp.34-43.

ES - Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own. British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing, London: Virago Press, 1982.