The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman depicting a 19th century family. The author, who speaks in the first person, shares a real life experience that paints the American society in relation to the place of a man and a woman in marriage. The main character in the story is a female who is confined to a room that has yellow wallpaper, hence pointing to the origin of the title. She cannot either write, or take care of her newborn baby, or go out to visit her friends. While in the room, she is preoccupied with the wallpaper on which she imagines women trying to break free from some forces. It is as if the women she envisions, including herself, were in slavery.01yellow-wallpaper-Top-F87

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This paper maintains that gender freedom is necessary to prevent depression. According to Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, gender is manmade rather than biological. The society accords authorities and opportunities for men and women respectively. As a matter of fact, it is the society that begun to bring division between men and women writers when, for example, analyzing their writing. The issue of gender inequality is not young. However, feminists have emanated throughout history to fight for women’s rights who felt they were less disadvantaged in every sphere of life. They were advocating for rights to do things (Rosenberg, 1985). This explains the vivid description of the author of the yellow wallpaper which is tightly interconnected with Gilman’s own situation in her 19th century marriage.

The speaker in the story who is married to John, a doctor, is a homemaker. Although she writes as either a hobby or a profession, she is forced to abandon writing and enjoy peaceful rest in a large room in their summer home rental. Her brother, who is also a doctor, and sister-in-law, Jennie, ensure that she does not go back to writing at all costs. In addition, the speaker longs to meet with fellow writers to give her advice and keep her a company. John, however, insists on her remaining at home (Gilman, 2007). The character of Jennie further emphasizes the role of women in the society of that era, staying homebound with no freedom of movement.

The author of The Yellow Wallpaper cannot do what she loves, looking after her baby herself. Although the author thinks that the nanny is good at what she does she pities her because that is the only job she will ever get to do. She has no freedom to climb up the career ladder or find jobs that allow her to be outside the home setting. As long as she is a woman, she has to work in the confinement of a house (Gilman, 2007). This is because according to Nicole Smith, a working class woman ended up married because of low wages and lack of other better opportunities (Smith, 2011).

The woman is forever in a dependency cycle of support from either an employer or a husband. The employer pays less and the husband restricts the woman from discovering her full potential because he provides according to his power. Hence, the woman is forever dependent financially on a man anywhere. The result of this is gender inequality and depression because the woman always comes as a second class individual. Men appear to be superior to women. The men maintain the position of being head and shoulders above their women by denying them the chance to venture into new opportunities.

Women of the 19th century were also dependent on men psychologically. The men were the sole providers in the homes. The speaker in The Yellow Wallpaper has to settle in the room her husband deems fit for her. John prefers a larger room because it gives her lots of fresh air, while she prefers the one that is good to look at. She cannot air her views because, according to John, who is a physician, he knows what is best for her. Furthermore, John does not find it practical to pay for repairs in a three-month rental home because that would mean wasting of his hard earned money. As a result, the speaker in the story has to go by the thinking of her husband in spite of her thinking differently. Further still, her husband considers her incapable of making sound decisions, and that is why he makes every single decision for her on where she goes, who pays her a visit, and what she does (Gilman, 2007).

There are also symbols in the speaker’s room that add to psychological incapacitation. The bars in the room were used as either a nursery or a gymnasium. According to the speaker, they make the room look like a prison. The pieces of furniture are also old making the room look lonely and cold. The speaker also has to be under lock and key, just like a prisoner. The wallpaper is also nauseating with regard to its color and smell. It fills the entire room and the speaker has no choice but to analyze it because she is stuck in that room. In effect, the room makes her want to go mad (Gilman, 2007).

Women of the period discussed had no possibility of getting out of their marriages, as Caroll Smith-Rosenberg points out (Rosenberg, 1985). In the author’s mind, however, she imagines women who are able to get out of depressing marriages. She envisions women who dominate instead of their counterparts. This is seen in the way the author describes how the speaker in The Yellow Wallpaper crawls after John has collapsed. Similarly, she tears away the yellow wallpaper that has been a symbol of the lack of freedom since she gave birth to her baby (Gilman, 2007).

The tearing of the wallpaper is a symbol of supporting feminism, an aspect that amazes other women, as seen in her sister-in-law, Jennie. Feminism has brought freedom for women since time immemorial. John, the speaker’s husband, collapses in astonishment of what the women are able to achieve after a long struggle, and probably in respect of their efforts.

The Yellow Wallpaper depicts a society with gender inequalities starting at the family level. Just as the society decides that authorities and opportunities are best suited for women, marriage partners should do the same, especially if living in a civilized society. A civilized society means that everyone’s rights are respected despite gender differences. The parties should cooperate without having to look down on others. If the man is the head of the family and a sole provider, then there is no gender balance. The rights and responsibilities should be shared equally between partners. Both the man and the woman should play their roles so that equality is not compromised in any way. By doing so, both genders will feel respected and of importance in the society they live in.

One of the most important gender themes is the concept of marriage. For a woman, marriage often becomes her sense of life or life goal number one. Analyzing the way the family relationships are represented in The Yellow Wallpaper, one concludes that they are complex and negative. It is believed that marriage and family life brings happiness to, at least, women. However, it is obvious that the narrator of the story is suffering. Her husband John being himself a doctor does not understand his wife at all. He is far from her needs and feelings. Moreover, according to Smyth (2011), John behaves autocratically towards his wife. The reason why John decides to isolate his wife is by stressing simple limitation of creative writing, while the real reason could be hidden.

However, writing for this woman is like freedom and way of self-expression or revelation. Forbidden to write, she feels like in prison, because she lacks that freedom of writing that eventually lead to her full devastation. When John is too tender towards his wife, it makes her furious and she is constantly trying to find a way out of that prison.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the narrator seems to spend much time not only in isolation, but in silence too. This silence is associated with notion of family life and marriage in this short story. However, the silence of the woman is rather symbolic. Her father-in-law devastates her creative writing skills. This symbolic silence play important role in the narrator’s way of life and her attitude to it. She cannot express what she is really thinking and feeling (Wang, 2006). Thus, such condition of the woman accentuates her passive position in her own life. She is locked-in and silenced.

The woman chose to get married and eventually she lost almost everything she had her personal freedom and her freedom write. Her state can be described like intellectual imprisonment symbolically shown with the help of yellow wallpapers on the walls. Thus, the narrator has neither freedom, nor choice. The walls of her room have symbolic meaning of obstacles or hurdles.

Furthermore, the place described in The Yellow Wallpaper resembles an earlier mental institution. But the narrator manages to find her cure or the way to her freedom in reading wallpapers. Writing and reading are opposite activities where one is active and the other is passive. The woman is happy to employ even passive activity to get out of her prison. Such activity helps the woman to keep in touch with the world.

The actual entrapment is a symbol of other entrapment by the gender role division. So, a woman is expected to be a homemaker and a caregiver in her family. If a woman has other than family life interests and goals in life, she must be contradicting with herself, because she is unable to reach her aim. Because the narrator is entrapped and she can do nothing about it, while her husband goes on keeping her there, it can be concluded that gender inequality is one of the major themes of this literary work. One can explain such situation by norms of male-dominated society, which has been existing for quite a long period. Minor role of a woman in general and awkward condition of the narrator eventually lead her to devastation as a result.

Being unable to build self-sufficient female individuality in real world, woman’s attempts to fight her way through in her imaginary word is metaphorically presented with the help of spatial allegories. Even absence of narrator’s name diminishes her role as an individual (Ford, 1985). She will be able to survive, when her room with yellow wallpapers is unlocked. It is doubtful that a male individual will understand the entrapped woman. To be understood she needs to write from her female perspective to another female, who will certainly understand her. She need a type of spiritual support and understanding that can come from other woman.

Regarding her creating writing, the woman admits: “this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind” (Gilman, 2007, 2). She likes writing, because it brings her both satisfaction and spiritual relief. However, her husband that it will be better for her not to write at all removing intellectual entertainment. So, the narrator has to hide anything which would reveal her secret writing. She is imprisoned and is not allowed to do what she wants.

The woman from The Yellow Paper decides to substitute her ‘forbidden paper’ with ‘wallpaper’. No one is able to guess that yellow wallpapers is the narrator’s paper. This reveals the metaphoric meaning of her entrapped position. It is not that she wants to be there or that it is healthy for her to be in that room. Male-dominated norms of society and male-oriented culture restrict females from self-expression and freedom of choice. The narrator is just one representative of the entrapped in households and suffering women. A female who is denied freedom of choice and intellectual growth as a way to self-realization is doomed to self-destruction.

Thus, being unable to get free in reality, the woman resorts to inventing some imaginary world, where she finds freedom. In the reality the woman is psychologically destroyed. In order to go on living she needs penetrate into another, imaginary, world to save herself. The world, where she is free, successful, and winning. Therefore, her artistic strength leads her to activation of her imagination activities. The narrator ultimately creates an image of another woman who is creeping by nighttime. The woman, whom the narrators sees, is a direct reflection of herself. An exaggerated meditation over the wallpaper is a strong attempt to break the ideological perception of women as a social group. Even though she gets into imaginary world of a mysterious woman that is not reality, she finds herself free there.

Female writing and art was not regarded as something worthy at time Gilmer lived. Without being able to create and develop intellectually, the woman becomes eventually mad having created an imaginary world and mysterious woman. Her story can be described as the narration of desolation. The writer presented narrator’s madness as a form of revolt and a defining moment of her move towards independence.

In conclusion, the paper highlights the theme of gender role in the literary work by Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Paper. The story is told from the feminist position. Role of a woman in a male-dominated society is tied to family duties like raising children, cooking, cleaning the house, etc. John and his wife in this story is a classical family of Gilman’s time.

Male character is strong, successful, and professional doctor, while his wife is sick and week, who need support and help of her husband. The woman in The Yellow Wallpaper has to keep silence about her writing needs, because her husband hates her writing. Thus, the narrator will never reach self-realization due to male-oriented society, where a female is lower in ranking and has less rights and a male (Lancer, 1989).

The entrapment in the room with yellow wallpaper has symbolic meaning of actual restriction from self-development and intellectual realization. A role of a woman imposed by society does not allow her to step aside the boundaries of her wife role. Inability to get free in reality, the narrator finds her freedom in mad imaginations. Since, she is forbidden to write, she substitutes paper with wallpaper. She seeks for personal freedom as a woman, not simply as a person that defines the gender theme, which is central in this short story. A mysterious woman, who is crippling behind the yellow wallpapers, is reflection of the narrator. She gets her freedom, but her freedom is in madness, while in reality the family life of the spouses is destroyed completely. The paper presents a picture of functioning of different gender roles in society: male role is strong and intelligent and woman role week and insecure. However, the narrator does not agree with her role. Thus, she finds a way to disobey social rules rejecting imposed role.