The Yellow Wallpaper
The story The Yellow Wallpaper was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. The narrator of the story suffers from depression or an over active imagination which leads itself to schizophrenia. She is motivated to keep a secret journal of her encounters at a summer rental because her tyrannical husband disapproves of her of worrying or speaking about her condition because he has brought her here to rest and relax with the hopes that her condition will improve. He means well, but without her having anyone to listen to her about her condition she begins to use her imaginative mind to document her thoughts for comfort. The solitude of her thoughts leads her to fixate on the yellow wallpaper that is laced across the walls in the bedroom of their summer rental. She becomes obsessed with this wallpaper and progressively dissociated from reality and discovers a symbolic meaning in its purpose which leads to her self discovery.
The narrator has utilized her imagination to connect her with the world since her childhood. She states,
I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store. I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend. I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe. (293)
As an adult, her imagination is no less creative because upon seeing the summer rental she immediately imagined it to be haunted but settled her thoughts on it being queer (292). Her being prohibited to focus her attention on the condition of her health, she places her attention on the house, particularly the top floor of the nursery which they utilize as their main sleeping quarters that her husband chose for them. She did not care for the room, but could not have her opinion taken into consideration because her husband would not hear of it (291). Her main objection to this room was the torn yellow wallpaper that was upon the nursery walls. She describes it as almost revolting: a smouldering unclean yellow (292). The distaste of the wallpaper gives her mind the fuel needed to disconnect herself from the condition of her health and the opportunity to write about her experience of giving life to the wallpaper. She was empowered but in the same event rendered her power over to the wallpaper when she states, This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! (293). Her imagination becomes her reality. She uses her vivid imagination to self medicate herself through her intense study of the yellow wallpaper. The wallpaper was no longer inanimate, but it was a living being. Her disconnection from reality became the connecting portal to the yellow wallpaper.
Through the progression of the story the narrator describes the various sceneries throughout the home, but her main focus is on the wallpaper. This yellow wallpaper consumes her and motivates her simultaneously. She is originally horrid of the paper but becomes engrossed with the comfort it brings as the story progresses. She studies the patterns on the wallpaper looking for the origins and conclusion of the designs. Soon realizing that this study is feeble and senseless, but she is determined to make an understanding of its relevancy, as if finding it would reveal some point in its existence. The narrator states, I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of conclusion (294). She eventually surrenders this effort because It makes [her] tired to follow it (295). Her initial condition worsens as the days pass because It is getting to be a great effort for [her] to think straight (295). However she continues to stare at the paper for hours on end until she visualizes a ghostly pattern beginning to emerge in its bottom pattern. She tells no one of her visions neither the time she spends searching out this pattern because of the disapproval it would bring from her husband, whom she desperately attempts to please despite her internal suffering. This single image eventually gives way to multiple images that occupy the space behind the wallpaper. She likens the one image [to] a woman stooping down and creeping about behind [the] pattern (295). But as her mind increasingly distorts her reality she is quite sure it is a [literal] woman (297). From that point, her true thoughts are hidden from the outer world, and the narrator begins to slip into a fantasy world in which her life now is purposed to bind the woman inside the wallpaper.
Being naturally a social creature by design, she begins to create a false reality and share this reality with no one but her journal. She feels hopeless to the will of her husband. It is the result of her repressed emotions she has to bear because her well meaning husband will not entertain one thought she has about her condition or opinion. It is why she states, But what is one to do? (291). Her mind begins to rapidly prey upon itself for an emotional outlet. Her schizophrenia is becoming prominent. She evens smells the wallpaper. She describes the smell as very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met (298) The narrator even believes the smell is hanging over [her] in the night (298) She notices a smudge along the mopboard that runs around the room and ponders how it was done and who did it (298) Well she did it, but could not recollect, however her housekeeper Jennie informs her she is finding yellow smooches on her and her husbands clothes and asked them to be careful. The narrator is now having out of body experiences due to her deteriorating mental condition. The woman she could only see as an impression in the pattern of the wallpaper, she is now able to see her in the daytime creeping throughout the summer estate (298). The wallpaper patterns are representation of bars to narrator which keep the woman enclosed in the wallpaper; symbolic of the confinement that engulfs the narrator by not being allowed to make a decision without the approval of her husband. Now the creeping woman is free able to roam in the daytime, but trapped during the night by the bars until towards the end of the story she assist the creeping woman out by each of them ripping the wallpaper from the wall. The narrator finally looses herself when she visions many creeping women outside her window and wonders the question if they all came out of that wallpaper as [she] did! (300) She is the woman trapped behind the wallpaper, but now she is free. When her husband questions why she locked the room door, the narrator explains, I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. Ive got out at last . . . in spite of you and Jane. And Ive pulled off most of the paper, so you cant put me back! (301).
The narrator at the end of the story indentifies herself as the woman trapped in the wallpaper and finally makes a decision in self interest not to be put back in. This freedom of self awakening came at the expense of her losing her mind in order to find herself. The independence she has captured from her husband will only take place inside of her imagination because her physical presence, her husband is surely to place in a mental institution.
Work Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkin. The Yellow Wallpaper. Literature: An Introduction to
Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 5th
Compact ed. New York: Longman, 2007. 209-301
Already have an account? Log In Now
3271