Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Yellow Wall Paper

Even though the Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper was repressed for fifty years, it was rediscovered along with the feminist movement. This story is an autobiography due to the fact it is based on the writer’s real life experience. Gilman portrays the process of the downfall of women who are suffering from mental illness in a very dramatic sense, and how men and women in the late nineteenth century are treated differently. The story shows how women struggled against the power of men.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman gets married to Charles Walter Stetson in 1884 and gives birth to a daughter. After having a baby, she suffers from postnatal depression and doctor gives her a prescription “put her life into house work, reduces the time in work outside of the house less than two hours and never grasps a pen or a pencil.” It makes her condition worse. The Yellow-Wallpaper is published in 1892. She realizes that writing is much more helpful to her mental health and to fulfill herself.

In the 19th century, the feminist movement begins as a radical, fringe ideology, largely dismissed by the main stream. Before the feminist movement, the rights of women were not guaranteed and women were controlled by their husbands, or fathers. While men, as superiors, freely go to work in the outside world, women, as subordinates, “absolutely forbidden to work,” just stay inside the house under the superiors’ (husbands) supervisions. Even women could not vote or own property, furthermore women were to be pure, pious, domestic and submissive. As a result, women were discouraged from writing and expressing themselves, because men were afraid that writing and expressing themselves and writing would make women more independent. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the lack of rights for women is shown; narrator does not even have a choice to choose her own room because “John would not hear of it.”

There are three significant characters in this novel, narrator, the narrator’s husband (John) and the narrator’s sister-in-law (Jennie). The narrator represents the general women living in this age. On the other hand, she differs from stream of times by protesting against her husband and her subordinate role. John, the narrator’s husband, is a traditional man of the late nineteenth century. John is treated respectfully. John shows his dominance over the author and he is portrayed as “John is a physician,” and not just a physician but a “physician of high standing.” The man in her life has prestigious, active job and brings home the income to support his family while the narrator is a general woman in that time, domesticated and submissive unable to work. Jennie, John’s sister, she is perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. John’s sister Jennie embodies the ideal woman of this age. The narrator might envy her or want to be like her because the narrator lacks Jennie's custodial traits and the narrator’s inability to complete household tasks is a symptom of her nervous disorder.

This story is about the self-awareness of a woman, and it has an omniscient narrator. This story begins with a woman suffering some mental illness in a mental hospital surrounded by somber yellow paper. The husband, John, is a very proud doctor. He doesn’t tend to agree with his wife’s treatment for her disorder by doing job, instead her puts her in some house. She is unchanged by his treatment, and she is trapped in a fairly antique house to “cure” her mental disorder by his requirement. This dark and gloomy space has an atmosphere like something might happen. The windows have bars installed, that look like a jail. The husband believes that she is getting better from an early symptom, but she doesn’t agree with his opinion. In addition she is getting worse by an obsession with the yellow wall paper. She writes in a journal to check her symptoms, avoiding her husband and his sister. This journaling is only available at the time they are not in the house. So usually she writes in the night and takes naps instead of sleeps. This life pattern makes her husband feel like uncomfortable. However, he still believes that she is going to completely recover and does not listen to her words. Finally she goes insane. She makes a decision that there is a presence behind the yellow wall paper, at night, and then it goes around the house in the daytime. She is completely crazy and crawls on the wall, scratches and rubs her body and tries to help the presence behind the yellow wall paper to get out. The husband blacked out and the story is over.

The yellow wallpaper functions as a metaphor for the narrator’s mind and inspires her to find her true self. As we discover, the narrator describes the yellow wall paper like “repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, not bright yellow.” This shows the bad situation her mind is currently in. Moreover, pattern of the wallpaper in The Yellow Wallpaper symbolizes conflicts between paternalism and feminism. The conflicts in the story cannot be avoided like the “yellow smell” which the narrator hates but cannot avoid. Also, Gilman looked at objects out of standard context. Her writing tends not to perceive meaning or explain the definition of the object, such as the wallpaper, but to create a special perception. However, there cannot be a real victory in the end of this novel because the author would be regarded as an insane woman and separated from society afterward. However, it is also not a victory for paternalism because the narrator’s behavior has changed John’s attitude: “John who never was nervous in his life cried” Both sides changed throughout the event, but there is no winner at the end. Even though no one gained victory in the story, it is a victory for every woman who is fighting against unfairness in their own way. The entrance into, she might not be driven insane if her husband would give her the right treatment, she might be getting well. Who makes her go insane? Someone behind the yellow wall paper? Or the husband? Or just her schizophrenic tendencies?