“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist writer from the Victorian period who used her writing to challenge the stigmatizing and confining ways of patriarchal society that were limiting the vision and aspirations of women. Though Gilman eventually found “liberation” in her own life, she suffered from the mental illness and interior struggles she depicted in The Yellow Wallpaper (Stetson, 1892). The dreary confinement Gilman experienced also likely mirrors, at least in part, the suffering of her female contemporaries. Its retelling unmasks the power of patriarchy, the debilitating impact on women’s self-perceptions, and their limited prospects for advancement.
It’s not entirely clear what Gilman’s official diagnosis would have been, but what we do know is that she suffered from post-partum depression after the birth of her first child, a condition that may have been related to the loneliness she suffered as a child. Decades later in 1932, she committed suicide, though, it was apparently intended as a form of euthanasia, to avoid the deepening pain and sickness caused by her incurable cancer (Knight, 1994).
Gilman injected herself directly into her works, which as a result, contain highly autobiographical elements that are most obvious in The Yellow Wallpaper. The central character is confined to a house, as Gilman was, for what was called, at the time, a “rest cure.” “John’s wife” is experiencing a dissociative state, descending into complete madness, and seems incapable of breaking free of it. Victorian society saw women suffering through the trauma of motherhood as weak creatures, which required total social isolation, a “treatment” that may well have prolonged their psychological distress. Gilman was at the mercy of her husband, who supervised the conditions of her incarceration at a rural estate, where she was unable to leave her room, let alone the house.
As the narrator begins to respond to the conditions of her confinement, a small bed in an attic, she imagines a character – Jenny – perhaps a representation of Gilman‘s real-live baby daughter or an alter-ego, which she sees trapped inside the intricate pattern of the room’s wallpaper. Over time, the narrator envisions this woman “escaping” from the wallpaper as she grows more manic and dissociated from her surroundings. She eventually imagines herself, like Jenny, “freed” and later, finds herself walking on all fours over the body of her captor – the husband, who is somehow lying on the floor after witnessing her deteriorated condition.
The Yellow Wallpaper does not contain chapter headings and lacks a straightforward chronological unfolding of the narrative. This free-form structure reflects an emphasis on the shifting states of mind and emotion of the character, along with her memories, fears, and judgments, as she navigates the moral strictures and constraints of Victorian life. And though “John’s wife” has already “come undone,” rambling and nearly raving, especially as her delusions about her world start to overwhelm her, one “sane” person emerges, her husband or confiner, whom she barely recognizes.
The good news, of course, is that Gilman did escape from her deep sense of repression and was able to redraw the boundaries between herself and male-centric environments, for instance, by breaking with the social conventions of the time and divorcing her husband. She also moved away and went on to become a women’s rights activist. In the searing honesty and frank exploration of her own psyche under duress, Gilman has provided enormous inspiration to millions of women seeking to wrestle with their own demons, to face the challenges of survival, and to transcend social entrapments on the way to discovering their authentic selves.
Written by: Stewart Lawrence