Charlotte Perkins Gilmans short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the story of a woman suffering from depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" shown during that time period and the narrators reaction to this kind of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own suffer as she herself went through such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like her who suffered through such treatments. Because of her experience with the rest cure, it can even be said that Gilman based the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" based on herself. But I believe that expressing her negative feelings about the rest cure is only half of the message that Gilman wanted to send. Within the inside of this story lies the theme of the rights of women especially inside of marriage. Gilman was using the woman behind the wallpaper to express her personal views on this issue.
The two common threads that connect Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the narrator in her story are depression and suffer within their roles as of women. Specifically, Gilman and the narrator are trying to escape the role that society has placed on them. First, after fulfilling their expected duties as wife and mother, both Gilman and the narrator become depressed after the birth of their child. It is this depression that leads them to the rest cure so much, which was shown during the late 1800s. Linda Wagner-Martin, in her essay on "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes Dr. Mitchells treatment of the typical female seeking his world famous rest cure. Wagner-Martin states that the rest cure "depended upon seclusion, massage, immobility, and overfeeding; . . . it had at its root complete mental inactivity" (982). Carol Parley Kessler, in her essay on Gilmans life, quotes Dr. Mitchells prescription to Gilman as, "never touch pen, brush, or pencil" (Kessler 158). Gilman subjects her narrator to the same prescription. You can tell from the story that the narrator wants to write and that she thinks that being allowed to do so would help her mental and emotional condition. She says, "I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me" (Gilman 85).
Kessler further explains in her essay that Dr. Mitchells treatment only made Gilmans depression worse and that eventually "she ceased to follow his regimen" (Kessler 158). The character she creates in "The Yellow Wallpaper" also fantasizes about ending her regimen saying, "I wish I could get well faster" (Gilman 86). Both seem to view the rest cure as an unwanted reason in their lives. It should be no surprise then that Gilman draws from her own experience and Dr. Mitchells treatment. She even finds a way to show it in the story as a kind of threat to the narrator. The narrator in the story is thinking about the reaction of her husband, who is also a doctor, if I dont pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall" (Gilman 87). The context of this statement and the overall tone of the story make this a threat. I believe Gilman intended it to be taken in just that way.
Gilman must have nearly gone mad of not being able to write or "relieve the press of ideas" that were trapped within her (Gilman 85). While receiving treatment from Dr. Mitchell, Gilman wrote a verse called "The Answer" which expressed "her anger at both inequality in marriage relation and pain experienced" (Kessler 158). She was not yet the well-known writer she wanted to become. Dr. Mitchell not letting her to write might have been a death sentence to the creative side of Gilman. It was both for her, mental and emotional order to be followed by her doctor, rather she stopped taking treatment. At the same time Gilman also made the tough life decision to leave her husband, Charles Walter Stetson. Ironically Stetson was another writer like his wife. It seems that just like the narrator in the story; Gilman too found her freedom and happiness by ending her marriage.
The second common bond between Gilman and her female narrator in the story is the idea of freedom from societys female roles. I believe that society is represented by the wallpaper in the story and escape is Gilmans theme. She devoted much of the story and much of her own life to escaping. The woman in the story is trying to escape from behind the wallpaper; the narrator is trying to escape the rest cure and possibly the treatments of her husband; and Gilman wants to escape from the gender traditions of a male-dominated society. In Carol Parley Kessler piece on Gilman in the Modern American Women Writers, it gives several examples of her using the theme of freedom or escapes in her other stories. Kessler found that typically "the heroine is freed from dependence upon men, often as the result of death or temporary separation from her husband, often with the aid of another woman who acts as her patron" (Kessler 162). "The Yellow Wallpaper" is just one of many stories that Gilman wrote that deals with women trying to gain their freedom from something or someone.
The woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper is nearly a perfect metaphor for Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Kessler, in her biographical essay on Gilman, makes the point that this one short story seemed to most closely show the views of Gilman toward the rights of women in her society. Kessler also writes, "This once she was able to join her public and private expressions in a work of devastating impact" (Kessler 159). Gilman, a very active involved in the womens rights movement, tried to show the gender role that women plays in our culture, just as the narrator in her story tries to pull off the wallpaper in her room to free the trapped women behind it. The society in the story was represented by Gilmans wallpaper. She had to work hard at trying to force through society changes. Just like the old wallpaper in her story, ridged and yellow with age, Gilman had much difficulty in pushing through the wallpaper of traditional society.
Unlike the narrator in the story, who eventually frees from behind the wallpaper all the women with "strangled beads and bulbous eyes" (Gilman 95). Gilman did not live to see her lifes work complete. While some advances were made by the womens rights movement before her death in 1935, Gilman must have thought the changes were really slow and painful too. In her story, slowness in the form of all "of those creeping women" trying to escape from the oldness wallpaper that trapped them, acted as the biggest change in womens rights movement (Gilman 95). For Gilman and her story "The Yellow Wallpaper" life is imitating the art of freedom from the dominant male gender and the so called society.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Literature: A Portable Anthology. Eds. Gardner et.al; Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2004. 82-96.
Kessler, Carol Parley. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860 -1935." Modem American Women Writers. Ed. Elaine Showalter, et al. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1991. 155 -169.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Reference Guide to Short Fiction. Ed. Noelle Watson. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. 981- 982.
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