Analyzing
The Yellow
Wallpaper
Published by:
Debbie Barry
2500 Mann Road, #248
Clarkston, Michigan 48346
USA
Copyright © 2013 by Deborah K. Barry. All rights
reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without
the written permission of the author.
ISBN-13: 978-1490372365
Originally submitted as a college assignment:
Ashford University
ENG380: Literary Research
Miranda Saake
Analyzing
The Yellow
Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a semi-autobiographical American Gothic novel with vivid
psychological and psychoanalytical imagery and a powerful feminist message. Gilman uses the traditional Gothic literary devices of
the “distraught heroine, the forbidding mansion, and the powerfully repressive male antagonist” to frame her indictment of patriarchal marginalization of women and of
women’s issues (Johnson, 1989, p. 522). The narrator is distraught by the forced inactivity of the rest cure for which she is taken to a country mansion by her
authoritarian husband. In an article in
American Literature, Barbara Hochman (2002) explains how The Yellow Wallpaper
This escapism is illustrated in Gilman’s
book as psychological markers and feminist
themes in the story work together to present a theme of escape from repression, escape from imprisonment, and escape from an unfulfilling life.
The Yellow Wallpaper is rich with symbolism and imagery. The narrator of the story seeks, and ultimately finds, escape from physical imprisonment, from a forced state of infantilism that is imposed by her husband and by the patriarchal society of 19th century America, from the perceived scrutiny of the floral elements of the wallpaper that gives the story its title, and from her own identity.
The narrator experiences physical, mental, and emotional imprisonment at the
hands of her husband, John, and his sister, Jennie. Throughout the story, the upstairs
imprisoning the woman the narrator imagines to be behind the lurid, floral
design. “At night in any kind of light ... it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean,
and the woman behind it as plain as can be”
(Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.467). The narrator, who is imprisoned by the male-dominated culture of 19th century, middle class America and by the confines of the isolated upstairs bedroom of an isolated country estate, projects the image of a prison onto the design of the wallpaper in the room that serves as her physical prison. In her furtive writings, the narrator states that “it is
the pattern that keeps her so still” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.467). She imagines that the design on the paper keeps the imaginary woman behind the design still in the same
way that her husband imprisons her intellectually by commanding that she be
however, as Gilman writes: “The front pattern does move ... The woman behind
shakes it!” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.468). This reflects the narrator shaking the bars of her intellectual prison by continuing to write in secret.
The imprisoning bars in the
wallpaper mimic the actual, physical, metal bars on the windows of the nursery room. The bars are mentioned throughout the story, reinforcing the idea that the narrator is imprisoned and needs to escape. The
narrator reports that “the windows are barred for little children,” and she later mentions
“the barred windows, and then the gate at
the head of the stairs” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, pp.461-462). John S. Bak writes: “By placing her in this room, John, the narrator's
husband, resembles the penal officers of the eighteenth-century psychiatric wards or
and not as a means of punishing a criminal, making the nursery more like the psychiatric
ward than the penitentiary. Women in her class and culture are treated as children by their society, but they are not seen as evil or as wrong-doers. Late in the story, Gilman writes: “To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too
strong even to try” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.470). This suggestion of suicidal thoughts again signals the unifying theme of
the narrator’s need and desire to escape from
the nursery room and, presumably, from her life of repression under male control.
Just as the narrator seeks escape from imprisonment in her physical
surroundings, she also seeks escape from a kind of repression exerted by her
contemporary society. She experiences enforced infantilism at the hands of her
following the nineteenth-century equation of non-maternal women ... with helpless
children” (p. 524). The narrator is seen to be treated as a child because the room in which she lives is meant to be a nursery. She is kept in the nursery, but the baby is not. Although John shares the nursery with his wife, she is often kept there by herself while he is away from the house on
business, so it is as though she is confined in the nursery by herself.
In addition to placing his wife in the nursery, John forbids the narrator to do any work. This is a primary feature of the rest cure, but it also casts the narrator in the role of a child who does not work for the support of her family. The narrator experiences forced dependence on her husband and his
sister, who take parental roles in the
narrator’s life. These circumstances
society, and she seeks to escape from the restrictions on her work.
The infantilizing of the narrator progresses in her own mind until she is reduced to crawling on the floor like a
young child. The narrator writes: “here I
can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around
the wall” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.471). Gilman describes a mark or smooch on the wall where the narrator’s shoulder has rubbed the design off the paper as she crawls about the room (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.468).
Gilman’s narrator
anthropomorphizes the floral elements of the yellow wallpaper. These elements represent the scrutiny society makes of lives of
women, and especially of creative women and of women who are not obedient to their
informs her marital and feminine
disobedience. While she is not scrutinized
by members of contemporary society while she is sequestered in the country mansion, her internal feelings of guilt at violating the rules of her society cause her to imagine that the wallpaper watches her. Gilman writes that “the pattern lolls like a broken neck and
two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down”
(Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.462). Bak (1994) discusses the scrutiny the narrator experiences from the eyes that she perceives in the wallpaper (para. 10). The narrator seeks to escape the scrutiny of the wallpaper and, by extension, the suffocating scrutiny of society and the behavioral requirements of society, when she systematically tears the wallpaper from the walls of the nursery
throughout the story. The narrator expresses
how society’s scrutiny represses women when she says of the pattern on the
strangles them off and turns them upside
down, and makes their eyes white!”
(Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.468).
The narrator’s anthropomorphizing
of the pattern on the wallpaper assumes a darker aspect when the narrator writes:
“when you follow the lame uncertain curves
for a little distance they suddenly commit
suicide” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.461). The word choice in describing the pattern as committing suicide is significant because it
again reinforces the narrator’s need to
escape from the nursery and from the repressive, patriarchal society that the room and its wallpaper represent. “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious
influence it had!” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.462). Not only does the narrator
that she recognizes that being trapped is something undesirable.
The narrator experiences a break with reality in the course of the story, which represents an escape from her ordinary life. She begins to relate to the woman she perceives behind the wallpaper. “I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that ...
front design” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.463). At first, she only perceives the woman vaguely. At this point, the woman in the wallpaper is a completely separate entity
from the narrator. As the narrator’s need for
escape increases, she begins to associate herself more and more deeply with the woman. “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get
out” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.465). The narrator knows on an unconscious level
imagination starts to have the woman in the wallpaper try to escape from behind the
floral design with its watchful eyes. The woman shakes the pattern of the wallpaper just as the narrator wishes she could shake herself free of the patriarchal controls of society. As the narrator entertains the imaginary idea of escape, she becomes more
hopeful for her own escape. “I think that
woman gets out in the daytime! ... I’ve seen
her!” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.468). The narrator projects her desire for escape onto the woman, and the narrator imagines that the woman has become free of her imprisonment, if only for short periods.
This coincides with the narrator’s periods of
escaping her husband’s control by writing
during the day when he is away at his work.
“The wife in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ escapes by denying one self and merging
physical escape from contemporary society and from the constraints of her own life is
impossible for the narrator, she is able to find escape in the imaginary woman in the wallpaper. Bak (1994) writes that “the madness to which Gilman's narrator is led ... paradoxically frees as it destroys” (para. 20). The narrator seeks freedom at any cost, even contemplating suicide at times, and the destruction of her sanity is a small price to pay for her escape from imprisonment.
“I’ve got a rope up here ... If that woman
does get out and tries to get away, I can tie her! ... I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.470). The narrator first claims that she will tie up the woman, but she has tied up herself instead. In fact, she has done
exactly what she says she will do, since she has become the woman and by tying herself
jumping out the window and finding escape from life by ending her life.
The narrator’s identification with the
woman in the wallpaper is complete when she declares: “I’ve got out at last ... in spite
of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”
(Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.471). In an article in Women’s Studies, Barbara A. Suess writes: “Jane is no longer Jane, floundering in what she perceives as an orderless world. Instead, Jane is the woman who fought her way out from behind the oppressive bars of the outside pattern” (Suess, 2003, para. 37). Through her complete identification with the woman, the narrator has achieved freedom in her own mind. Physical reality is no longer relevant
for her since she has succeeded in tearing the wallpaper from the walls and releasing
society, but she has succeeded in
symbolically freeing herself by destroying
the wallpaper that represents, in her mind, her imprisonment.
Shawn St. Jean (2002) describes The Yellow Wallpaper as “a story exposing patriarchal oppression” (para. 35). The story addresses the feminist issues of a
woman’s status in society and of the patronization of women and women’s
creative efforts by a repressive,
male-dominated society. “The story, then, is ... an effective indictment of the
nineteenth-century view of the sexes” (Shumaker, 1985, p. 598). The narrator in Gilman’s story is controlled by her husband, John, who iconically represents male-dominated society in 19th century America. Shumaker
writes that “the story does indeed raise the
issue of sex roles in an effective way, and
may not do. He suppresses her creative urges by denying her need to write to
express herself. The control exerted by the
narrator’s husband becomes a prison from which she must escape. “With its dominant pattern, its subordinate pattern, and its emerging image of a woman behind bars, the wall-paper has often been seen to
represent the ‘patriarchal text’ in which
literary women —in fact, all women—are trapped” (Hochman, 2002, p. 91). The narrator represents all middle class women in 19th century America and her husband represents all men in contemporary society. When John controls his wife, the reader sees that the patriarchal society of the time controls the behavior of women, and that women are trapped by that control.
“Woman is often seen as
representing an imaginative or ‘poetic’ view of things that conflicts with (or sometimes
complements) the American male's
(Shumaker, 1985, pp. 589-590). The narrator is forced to endure a rest cure,
presumably to combat the effects of postpartum depression, which has not yet been defined in this period. She is required to desist from writing, and to be quiet and undisturbed. Her creative and imaginary impulses and expressions are dismissed by
the dominating male. “He laughs at me so
about this wallpaper! ... he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that
nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 462). When the husband discovers that the narrator is unsettled by the pattern of the yellow wallpaper, he laughs at her as a parent might laugh at a child who fears a monster under the bed. By
the conventions of her society to submit to the superiority and the authority of her
husband.
“I ... am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 460). Following the
pattern of social conventions, the narrator’s
husband treats her as a weak person, incapable of making decisions. “John’s view of his wife as fanciful serves his effort to dismiss her ideas, keep her from creative work, and confine her to domestic
functions” (Hochman, 2002, pp. 95-96).
John’s insistence that his wife not do any
work not only creates and reinforces the prison from which she must escape; it also provides her with the means of achieving her escape. The narrator sees that her work is dismissed as unimportant, something she can just give up, but she resists this control by her husband. She continues to write the
madness. This rebellion against the patriarchal authority of her husband is the
first step in the narrator’s escape. It is a model for women of her class to emulate as they seek to overthrow, or to escape, the yoke of repression in their male-dominated society.
The Yellow Wallpaper uses vivid psychological and psychoanalytical imagery and a powerful feminist message to present
a theme of women’s need to escape from
imprisonment by their patriarchal society.
The narrator’s identification with the woman
in the wallpaper is also symbolic of her identification with women of her class in the greater society beyond the confines of the country mansion. She experiences the scrutiny of society through the perceived
scrutiny of eyes in the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. Her isolation from social contact
to find physical escape from the nursery of the country mansion or social escape from
male domination. The Yellow Wallpaper is a cautionary tale against the subjugation of women by men, against the repression of
women’s creative expressions, and against
References
Bak, J. S. (1994). Escaping the jaundiced eye: Foucaldian panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Studies In Short Fiction, 31(1), 39-46. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Delashmit, M., & Long, C. (1991). Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Explicator, 50(1), 32-33. Retrieved from
EBSCOhost.
Hochman, B. (2002). The reading habit and
‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. American Literature, 74(1), 89. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Johnson, G. (1989). Gilman's Gothic allegory: Rage and redemption in
"The Yellow Wallpaper". Studies in Short Fiction. 26(4), 521-530. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Kirszner, L. G. and Mandell, S. R., eds.
reacting, writing. (7th ed.).
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage
Learning.
Shumaker, C. (1985). "Too terribly good to be printed": Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper". American Literature, 57(4), 588-600. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
St. Jean, S. (2002). Hanging 'The Yellow Wall-Paper': Feminism and textual studies. Feminist Studies, 28(2), 397. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Debbie Barry and her husband live in
southeastern
Also look for these titles by Debbie Barry:
Books for Young Learners:
Around the Color Wheel
Colors and Numbers
Stories for Children:
Bobcat in the Pantry
Born in the Blizzard and Freshet
Expressing the Trunk
Gramp’s Bear Story
When Mary Fell Down the Well
Writing Competition
History and Genealogy:
Family History of Deborah K. Fletcher
Grandma Fletcher’s Scrapbooks
Nana’s Stories
Property Deeds and other Legal Documents of the Fletcher and Townsend Families
Property Deeds and other Legal Documents of the Fletcher and Townsend Families, 2nd Edition with Digital Scans
The Red Notebook, 2nd Edition with Digital Scans
Zoa Fletcher’s Photos
Zoa Has Her Way
Other Topics:
A Journey Through My College Papers: Undergraduate Series
Advantages of Brain-Based Learning Environments
African Americans in Post-Civil War America
American Students Are Crippled By Cultural Diversity Education
Debbie’s Vision in Art, Volumes 1-4
Debbie’s Writing
Identity Within and Without
Indifferent Universe
Loss
More Than Just Monogamy
Nature in Early American Literature
Picturing The First Writing
Religion and Myth in English Poetry
Responsibility to a Broader Humanity
Speech Codes in Education
The Evil of Grendel
The Heart’s Vision
