1. Both The Yellow Wallpaper and The Bloody Chamber deal with the perennial feminist theme of the confinement of women in particular rooms, chambers, houses and roles. Discuss.
This is essay attempt to discuss the role of the women in literature, both about the protagonists and the authors of the stories. As an example two influential short stories will be discussed in depth in order to shed light into the lives of the two authors and their stories.
The short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (18601935) and Angela Carter (19401992) both sideway the same idea; the confinement of women in particular roles and positions in both personal and professional lives, posed on them by patriarchal figures. Toril Moi quotes in her examination of feministic criticism, Sexual/Textual Politics (2002), Elaine Showalters idea that women writers should not be studied as a distinct group on the assumption that they write alike, or even display stylistic resemblances distinctively feminine (Moi, 2002: 49), which comes across when reading the two stories which are stylistically already very different. It might be so that a feminist reader of both times (theres some 80 years difference between the two stories) did not only want to see her own experiences mirrored in fiction, but strived to identify with strong, impressive female characters (Moi, 2002: 46), and looked for role-models that would instil positive sense of feminine identity by portraying women as self-actualising strong identities who were not dependent on men (Moi, 2002, 46). The two stories bring out two female characters, very different by position and character; the other a new mother, scared and confused of her own role, and the other a young newly-wed girl, still a child, being fouled by a much older man, mainly as a mark of his authority over women in general.
The readers of feminist literature were demanding authenticity, which for them superseded all other requirements (Moi, 2002: 46), and therefore of the two stories, The Yellow Wallpaper might for a female reader be more accessible, identifiable and approachable, as the protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper could like any woman, and especially any new mother, although the female reality holds many nuances and variations it is not by any means monolithic (Moi, 2002: 47). Moi also points out that any women writers should not be studied as a distinct group on the assumption that they write alike or even display stylistic resemblances distinctively feminine (Moi, 2002: 49).
Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper (1899) is an autobiographical story about postpartum depression and the way she was told to deal with it, against her own intuition. The protagonist is suffering from postpartum depression (when she talks about her baby, even though she loves the child a great deal, she just CANNOT be with him, it makes [her] so nervous (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 3)), which was not recognized at the time, and so she was plainly considered to be hysterical and suffering from nervousness and ordered to rest, even to abandon her writing, which she finds extremely difficult but as a good wife, she obeys her husband, who happens to be a physician. She does not herself believe to be really ill, but is convinced otherwise by her husband. She even says, that if a physician of high standing, and ones own husband, assures friends and relatives that there really is nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression a slight hysterical tendency what is one to do? (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 1) She is thus defined into a certain position in time and place. As it was expected of her (and women in general) at the time, she did not oppose to the orders given to her, they were suppose to be for her own good. Even though, she says, personally I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 1).
As in the case of the protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper it is never strictly admitted that a case of Female Hysterics was considered. The way Gilman describes the hallucinations of the protagonist, who sees a woman trapped behind the patterns of the tapestry, who is trying to find a way out, it can be sensed that the situation was more serious than just nervous depression, slight hysterical tendency. As the protagonist explains: I really have discovered something through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern DOES move and no wonder! The woman behind it shakes it! (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 10). She hides this finding from her husband, and thus the reader knows she is ashamed and afraid of her discovery, and this can be interpreted that she feels just as imprisoned, behind patterns she hates, as the woman in the wallpaper does. But as she is being convinced she is ill (the power of ones mind and manipulation), she begins to believe it herself, even when writing which has been her cure and way to let out built frustrations, she starts believing that it does exhaust [her] a good deal (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 1), though what exhausted her was not the writing itself, like her husband claimed, but the fact of having to be so shy about it, or else meet with heavy opposition (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 1).
It was believed that Female Hysterics was the first emotional disorder to be recognized as having sexual connotation and was caused by individuals troubles with sex and own sexuality. As in The Yellow Wallpaper, the protagonist has just become a mother; her role in her husbands eyes has changed as much as her role in her own eyes, and to the protagonist as for any individual sexuality and sex have been the core of their identity, freedom and has now become more on focus and highly repressive. The fact that the protagonist sees this woman behind the wallpaper she hates, and in the bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 10), the reader can sense her want and need to shake the bars of her own. Being a wife of a physician, she must have been expected a certain behaviour (the bright spots) but secretly, internally, she must have been rebelling against those expectations, looking for those shady spots to let those emotions out. She had been confined into a certain role, which after her role changing yet again (from childhood to youth, youth to a adult, adult to a wife and now from wife to a mother) had sent her mind into a deep turmoil that was now looking a way to express itself. Earlier on in the short story, the protagonist had rightfully stated that; I think sometimes if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 3).
For the protagonist and, as the story is autobiographical, for Gilman it must have been hell on earth having to stop all normal living, even things they enjoyed the most, in order to heal herself, the way she had been told by the doctor. The protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper tries to reason with herself, I dont know why I should write this. I dont want to. I dont feel able. And I know John would think it absurd. But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way it is such a relief! (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 6) Even the woman she sees in the wallpaper reminds her of herself, dim sub-patter who is by daylight subdued, quiet, kept under a pattern that she feels unfit for herself. To heighten the fact that the protagonist is under the husbands oppression, no matter how subconscious it might be, as he assures her he does everything just out of love towards her, Gilman uses the ugliness of the wallpaper and the uneasiness the protagonist endures because of it, as a way to express this position of power between the two. She, even when hating the wallpaper, will not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 3).
As Deborah Thomas explains in her essay The Changing Role of Womanhood: From True Woman to New Woman in Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper (1998); prior to 20th century men assigned and defined womens roles (Thomas, 1998, WWW), and as Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper at the very end on 19th century, her role was determined by society and, more so, by her husband. It is clear from the very beginning of her story that the husband is trying to pin her down into a certain role, by being her guardian when she is diagnosed ill, mainly by telling her what she is and is not allowed to do. This was mens way of perpetrating an ideological prison that subjected and silenced, and legitimized the victimization of women (Thomas, 1998, WWW). This way, women were detained in the home and private sphere of their small living surroundings, as servants only required tending to the needs of the family and especially the husband (Thomas, 1998,WWW). It was often required, that women stayed virtuous, pure and keep up modesty and religious piety, even in some cases especially after marriage, and yield into a silent submission (Thomas, 1998, WWW). It was believed that religion would pacify any desires that could cause deviation, while the submission ensured and implied dependence on the patriarchal power, this is why men aimed at ensuring docility and passivity of women (Thomas, 1998, WWW), in marital as well as personal matters.
The patriarchal power in The Yellow Wallpaper is the husband and the godlike presence of medical profession (Thomas, 1998, WWW) demonstrating the arrogance of the men towards womanhood. This is where the Weir Mitchells rest cure is one of a great example of that arrogance. Mitchell himself said:
American woman is, to speak plainly, too often physically unfit for her duties as woman, and is perhaps of all civilized females the least qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man. She is not fairly up to what nature asks from her as wife and mother. How will she sustain herself under the pressure of those yet more exacting duties which nowadays she is eager to share with the man? (Thomas, 1998, WWW)
This assured men that they had a right to call their wives, who bear a condition now known as the postpartum depression, and were thus suffering from nervous depression with hysterical tendencies. As any woman who did not want to automatically take care of the children all by herself and more so enjoy it, must have been insane. Men thus enjoyed the freedom of mobility, reaping the benefits of both private and public sphere, whereas women were obliged to be content just with the private (Thomas, 1998, WWW). And to press matters further, men also enjoyed the opportunity to return home to be nurtured by women, who existed solely in the private arena just for that purpose. As these women were held captive in certain roles posed upon them by the patriarchal society, they were expected not to venture out into the public sphere where they obviously did not belong (Thomas, 1998, WWW).
Gilman writes more symbolically, embellishing her own experiences, of the traditional roles of women, which bind them to home and family (Thomas, 1998, WWW). These women were, like the protagonist of The Yellow Wallpaper, conditioned to accept certain boundaries set upon them and remain there, silently and obediently (Thomas, 1998, WWW), and if a woman dared to oppose these rules and conditions, she was damned to be hysterical or even an enemy to God and the modern civilization (Thomas, 1998, WWW). But women forged onwards, and the protagonist begins to use the woman behind the wallpaper as her personal scapegoat; a way to break free from the role she was pushed into and free herself from the confinement of the cure that was to redeem her. The woman inside, tangled in the bars of the wallpaper, was a way to express those oppressed thoughts and feelings she had but was unable and forbidden to express and deal with in a normal way.
In the end it is recognizable, that the woman outside and inside the wallpaper are one and the same, as the other (the one trapped in the wallpaper) is a mere reflection of the others torment and the only passageway to her to express it. The protagonist more than once had tried to rescue the one behind the patterns of the wallpaper (I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 11), and later states suppose I have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 12); she still feels the need to hide herself behind the set codes and role posed on her, till she actually breaks free and even when the husband enters the room, she kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder, Ive got out at last, said I, in spite of you and Jane. And Ive pulled off most of the paper so you cant put me back! (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 12). Finally, to her success the reader as well as the protagonist witnesses a sort of a loss of the patriarchal power, as the husband very unmanlily faints so she had to creep over him every time! (Pagebypagebooks, WWW: 12).
Angela Carter was an exponent of magic realism, surrealism, fantasy, feminism, science fiction, postmodern and gothic (Vandermeer, 2001: I) so strongly, that in all her stories of categorys and at the same time none of them fit perfectly. During her productive, wide-ranging career, she added to literature a perspective of gothic violence and eroticism. In her literary works, she utilized the language to its full, as can be seen in The Bloody Chamber Carter uses the language to show the changes of mood in the story, from the romantic fairytale-like love story to more gruesome gothic tale. The way Carter portrays her stories protagonists and situations she puts them in, shows her enchantment to fairytales and Freudian unconsciousness. Carters literature was reshaping contemporary literature, as she recreated the 19th century bourgeois novel, and gained nicknames and acknowledgements such as high-priestess of postgraduate porn (Kirjasto.sci.fi, 2003) and avant-garde literary terrorist of feminism (Kirjasto.sci.fi, 2003)
In the beginning of The Bloody Chamber, Carters protagonists describes the sensation she has of wearing her new satin nightgown, like an erotic experience full of sensuality (nudging between thighs, teasingly caressing and egregiously insinuating (Carter, 1979: 8)). Few pages later in the story, whilst reminiscing the night at the opera, where her new husband had took her the night before the wedding, she depicts the necklace she had received from her husband bright as arterial blood (Carter, 1979: 12) and how it looked like a precious slit throat (Carter, 1979: 12) and moving on to describe the way her husband looks at her, or the sheer carnal avarice (Carter, 1979: 12) the look itself. The disposition if the story has suddenly shifted to a new level; from shy new erotic experiences, she is suddenly rushed into a whole new world of brutality of sex and sexuality when she stumbles into a book that to a 17-yearold virgin proves to be excitingly shocking and even for the feminist reader, or any reader for that matter of the late 70s, Carters descriptions of the pictures in that particular book, seem deliberately provocative, intrusive and offensive, giving the reader the sense of gruesome that await yet to come later in the story. The girl on the other hand suddenly realizes that neither her life nor her marriage will ever be the way she had imagined it to be.
After he had bed her, she recalls that:
in the course of that one sided struggle, [she] had seenhis deathly composure shatter like a porcelain vase flung against a wall: I had heard him shriek and blaspheme at the orgasm; I had bled. And perhaps I had seen his face without its mask; and perhaps I had not. Yet I had been infinitely dishevelled by the loss of my virginity (Carter, 1979: 20)
And to a young girl like the protagonist, the way she lost her virginity, was a sign of emotional state of the future. The fact that she had been impaled so atrociously was a warning for her, she did not enjoy her marriage the way she had imagined she would. Her distress is soon momentarily relieved as he assures his love for her, which connects The Bloody Chamber to The Yellow Wallpaper in a way; in both stories, the women seem to give themselves into the oppression of the men, as they are being convinced all is done out of love and for their own good. The girl in The Bloody Chamber clings to her husband after his declaration of love, as though only the one who had inflicted the pain could comfort [her] for suffering it (Carter, 1979: 21). And he, as her husband, objectifies her when he talks about knowing for a fact that he had bought the child with a handful of coloured stones (Carter, 1979: 21), and even more so, when he is signing her faith (she does not realise this yet of course) with the ruby necklace she is to wear whenever he is near, as a sign of possession.
When Deborah Thomas talks about The Yellow Wallpaper in her essay, it can be linked into other feministic approach stories of the 20th century; women were emotional servants whose lives were to be dedicated to the welfare of their homes and families (Thomas, 1998, WWW). When in The Bloody Chamber, the protagonists husband gives her a key to a room, which he then forbids her to enter, arousing her curiosity, he still expects her to obey him, as he is the master of the house and the marriage. As she does not fulfil this expectation, the husband is more than happy and obviously in his own mind obliged to punish her. The point where she disobeys her husband and enters the unlit hallway (making the story yet more gothic, that part of the castle has no electricity, but she is forced to lit a torch to see her way) which takes her to the room, the room where she believes to find a little of his soul (Carter, 1979: 33), and what drives her further even when realising the possibility of violating the privacy of her husband and stirring trouble, it was the consciousness of the possibility of such a discovery, of its possible strangeness, that kept me for a moment motionless, before, in the foolhardiness of my already subtly tainted innocence, I turned the key (Carter, 1979: 33).
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