When Charlotte Perkins Gilman first wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, she was heavily criticised for the reality of what she was saying. “Such a story ought not to be written,” one Boston physician said. A Kansas physician identified directly with the book’s themes however – and even wondered whether Perkins Gilman herself had been in such a state before.
Aside from medical realism, the book is a very harsh and unyielding feminist study too. It depicts the roles of women as merely something to pass the time with and suggests that even the clever women are being forced to give up their professions – either because of housewifial duties or because their husbands have driven them insane.
The Woman in the Wallpaper
As far as identity in YWP goes, the Woman in the Wallpaper seems to be the greatest and most poignant symbol of her struggle – though it does, at times, get hazy as to what the metaphor is here. Is she trapped in the depression or the confinement of a woman’s role in society? Is it both? We don’t know.
Isolation of the Room = Isolation of the Mind, of the Person
The isolation of the Narrator is what gives the book the majority of its solitary feel. The fact that she doesn’t know she is being oppressed or controlled by anyone but herself and her want / need to write and the fact that she is clearly an educated woman makes her intellectual imprisonment all the more worrying.
The Nanny and Housewife hired by John rid our Narrator of her duties as even a wife and mother and leaves her even without the job of comforting John or the baby. This leads to the collapse of her mind and the lack of control in her life.
This then suggests a feeling of inevitability; a sense that she is now destined to be trapped for ever in her own mind.
Isolation in Society
The sub-textual comparison here between mental and physical entrapment is one of the main themes of the book. The lack of choice / free will that the narrator has is paralleled by the increasingly patriarchal society surrounding the books publication.
The importance of work to the narrator is, in many circles, considered to mirror the same feeling of many women in the late 1800s. The role of women was largely as housewives and nannies, so, when the Narrator is rid even of these tasks, she, perhaps, has a right to seek refuge in her writing; something that Gilman herself had been told not to do.
The Wallpaper and Our Narrator’s Depression
Another theme running through the book is the wallpaper itself – obviously. There is the suggestion that the Narrator sees it as a literary work in itself and that there is a story in it if she could just figure it out. Perhaps this is what she feels would free her from her depression – perhaps the wallpaper is the biggest metaphor for her depression. Maybe if she could work out why she was depressed it would all be fine – just like the paper.
Imprisonment
One major theme of the book – that takes many different contexts – is that of imprisonment. There is the physical imprisonment of the Narrator in the room; the mental imprisonment of her mind from her work; on a larger level, the imprisonment of women in a male dominated, patriarchal society; and, due to the fact that very little happens in the book, there is her imprisonment of herself in on set of circumstances and one place in time. The Narrator has no purpose; that is the butt of her problems, and she seems destined to remain that way so long as John is in control.
Style and Ideology
Gilman’s direct style of writing helps her dramatic devices to really shine through to the surface here. The wallpaper is one obvious symbol of her journey, but there are many others. daylight, and its contrast in moonlight, is one such symbol as the daylight represents men’s strength and the moonlight the women’s. This is when she is most secure in herself.
Finally: The Room
The descriptions of the room, in all their bizarre splendour, lead many critics of Gilman to dub the book as “Poe-esk”, suggesting that the book has overtones of horror writing; which is understandable and probably true when you consider the smaller details: somebody gnawing on the bed post; the bed being nailed to the floor; the possibility of somebody once being tied to the bed; it all leaves you wondering who else had been in that room, and why?
Sources:
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman.
Daniel Lambert - Daniel Lambert is a screenwriter and essayist. Born in Warrington, Cheshire in 1990, he attended Frodsham High School, Helsby High School ...
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