The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an autobiographical short story that explores the challenges faced by women in the early twentieth century, particularly regarding mental health and societal expectations. The narrative centers around a woman, often referred to as Charlotte, who is confined to a room by her husband, John, under the guise of a rest cure for her nervous condition. This confinement serves as a metaphor for the constraints placed on women, reflecting a broader social dynamic where female voices and needs are often ignored or belittled by male authority figures.
The protagonist's isolation is further emphasized by the room, previously a nursery, which symbolizes both imprisonment and the infantilization of women. Despite her husband's patronizing demeanor, Charlotte attempts to assert her autonomy by keeping a secret diary, a rebellion against the oppressive norms surrounding her. However, her efforts are thwarted when John discovers her writings and punishes her, showcasing the detrimental effects of enforced submission.
As Charlotte's mental state deteriorates, the oppressive pattern of the yellow wallpaper becomes a powerful symbol of her entrapment. She envisions a world of other women behind the wallpaper, echoing her own desire for liberation from the constraints of her environment. Ultimately, "The Yellow Wallpaper" serves as a poignant commentary on the intersection of gender and mental health, encouraging readers to consider the impact of societal norms on individual well-being and autonomy.
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Subject Terms
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
First published: 1892
The Work
The Yellow Wallpaper is an autobiographical novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in which she describes the treatment of women during a rest cure prescribed for nervous disorders by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, who was a famous physician. The story describes the submissive, childlike obedience of women to men authority figures that was considered typical at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Charlotte, the protagonist of the story, is helpless to express her own needs. She is taken by her husband, John, to a country house so that she can recuperate from a nervous condition. The reader is immediately aware of the condescending attitude of the physician husband toward his wife. She is relegated against her will to a third floor room of the house, a room that the owners previously used as a nursery. Symbolically, the room with the yellow wallpaper serves as a prison where the wife is restricted, like a child, from the intellectual activities of reading and writing. At first, Charlotte rebels against the constraints by keeping a secret diary. When John discovers her disobedience, Charlotte is chastised and her diary is cruelly destroyed.
Social interactions are also held to a minimum. The husband lectures in other cities, so Charlotte is often left without emotional support for days at a time. When John is at home, his conversations are patronizing, and he dismisses Charlotte’s concern about her condition. Clearly, her role is to comfort him and trust blindly that her own condition is improving. John’s self-absorption does not permit him to see that Charlotte’s condition is deteriorating.
Jennie, who manages the household, is another example of the restricted role of women. She busies herself with decorating and supervising the kitchen. She unquestioningly carries out John’s orders to monitor Charlotte’s activities, even when her own contacts with Charlotte make it clear that what the doctor orders is not what the patient needs. She nevertheless obeys blindly until it is too late to reverse the effects of Charlotte’s descent into madness.
The powerful pattern in the yellow wallpaper resembles bars that confine the protagonist in her world of loneliness, helplessness, and infantilism. Deprived of intellectual stimulation, Charlotte’s imagination conjures up a world behind the paper where captive women wait helplessly to be freed. Ironically, she is one of the women seeking to be liberated. Destroying the paper seems to be the only way she can destroy the hold of stifling mores that demand female subservience to men and free women from male dominance.
Bibliography
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979. One of the premier critical works on nineteenth century women writers. Includes a discussion of The Yellow Wallpaper linking the pattern in the wallpaper to patriarchal text patterns that women writers had to escape.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper.” Forerunner 4 (1913): 271. A one-page article in which Gilman explains that her main reason for writing The Yellow Wallpaper was to save other women from fates similar to her own under the rest cure.
Golden, Catherine. The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on “The Yellow Wallpaper.” New York: Feminist Press, 1992. This indispensable compilation includes the text of The Yellow Wallpaper with the original illustrations, useful biographical and background information, well-selected critical essays, and a solid introduction.
Kolodny, Annette. “A Map for Rereading: Or, Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts.” New Literary History 11, no. 3 (1980): 451-467. In this article, Kolodny argues that Gilman’s contemporaries did not understand the implications of The Yellow Wallpaper because they did not have the context to understand her point.
Meyering, Sheryl L., ed. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Woman and Her Work. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1989. An important collection of critical essays on Gilman and her works, including one by Linda Wagner-Martin focusing on The Yellow Wallpaper.