Beyond the Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote, "The Yellow Wallpaper" in 1892. It is a short story that was supposed to expose the dangers of the then-popular “rest cure”. Although Gilman had written in her essay “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper” that she was only trying to raise awareness about the “rest cure”, her story also criticizes restraining gender roles in such a powerful way. She tells the story of a woman that was so suppressed by her husband that she goes completely insane. Her story symbolizes in so many ways how women can never flourish in a society that hinders their opportunities and belittles their intelligence. By drawing attention to patriarchal oppression in her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman serves her purpose of pushing for women’s equality.

Gilman’s characters in her story are written to communicate how the expected careers of men and women created by a male-dominated society inhibit opportunities for women. Besides the sick, fragile housewife narrator, there are two other female characters in Gilman’s short story named Mary and Jennie. Mary is the nurse who takes care of the baby and Jennie is the housekeeper. Jennie is described as "a dear girl" because she is a “perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession". Being a “dear girl” means that one has no aspirations, lacks ambition, and stays within the house-servant role. Conversely, the narrator’s husband and brother are both “physician[s] of high standing” and the only male characters in the story. All the female characters stay within the limiting sphere of the home while the men have impactful jobs saving lives out in the real world. Within the real world, there are so many things to learn, but men keep women out of it. None of the female characters have a career. Female career women are not presented because no women are expected to be one. In a world that strives to keep women inexperienced, isolated, idle, and dependent, a career is the last thing the patriarchy wants for a woman. Women are robbed of a meaningful life when the world advises them to aim low from the very start. Gilman uses the occupation of her male and female characters to point out how in this “man's world”, women are encouraged to be nobody while men are encouraged to be the best, most intelligent, worldly, and successful versions of themselves.

There is a sharp power imbalance between the narrator and her husband that Gilman uses to symbolize how women are not taken seriously in our society and are expected to be completely subservient to men. Specifically, when the female narrator started feeling increasingly weakened by her mental illness, she wanted to take a break from the isolation of the mansion. Cautiously, she asked her husband, John, permission to visit her cousins, however, John “said [she] wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after [she] got there". Not only is John dictating where the narrator goes as if the narrator is an incapable child, but he is telling her what she will feel in the future. It seems as though women are not allowed to have their own thoughts and feelings, but rather accept their husbands’ perspectives as their own. After John tells her she cannot leave, he goes on to invalidate her concerns by labeling them as “silly fancies”. John treats the narrator like an irrational child that needs guidance instead of the grown woman that she is. A women’s perspective was not considered valuable. By including this power dynamic in her story, Gilman is conveying how women are not being validated and respected as people, but rather considered objects that must obey. Women were mere vessels that had to absorb and honor the will of their husbands. For instance, after discussing how she does not agree with the way her husband treats her illness, the narrator casually states, “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition”. She has more than enough reason to be angry at a partner that does not listen to her, but the narrator is invalidating her own emotions as though her husband could never be in the wrong. A big part of patriarchal oppression is this idea that men are rarely to be considered wrong. In the midst of patriarchal oppression, the “my husband knows best” mentality is ever so popular. Her thought process here says a lot about men’s capacity to be viewed as incorrect and women's capacity to be viewed as correct at this point in time. The main character's self-doubt exposes how it is nearly impossible to have any power when one is always going to be viewed as wrong or irrational.

Women’s oppression in the world is directly symbolized by Gilman’s inclusion of the nursery’s hideous wallpaper. As the narrator builds a habit of analyzing the wallpaper, her descriptions of it become more and more reflective of her restrictive environment. When the narrator’s analysis turns to outright obsession, she begins to see the shape of a woman trapped behind the paper, “By daylight, she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still”, but by nighttime, “she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard”. This mysterious woman being held prisoner to the wallpaper is an extension of the female narrator. During the daytime, when her husband can observe her, the narrator sleeps. Come nightfall, however, the narrator is up, alive, and feels free to do what she pleases. Women must be subservient in the eyes of others, or by the light of day. Only in the dark, in secrecy, can women be who they want to be, and do what they want to do. Women’s oppression is stood for by the wallpaper and its pattern which subdues the woman so that she may only “shake” it by night. For example, the narrator says, “nobody could climb through that pattern-it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads. They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white”. The “heads” in her description represent the heads of the many women trying to fight the restrictions of a society characterized by male dominance. A patriarchy is the pattern that “strangles” and suffocates these women, keeping them at home, docile, robbing them of the right to think or do for themselves. This symbolism is taken to another level when the narrator eventually tears wallpaper from the nursery, believing that she indeed was trapped woman all along, “‘I've got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!’”. Again, the wallpaper is being used to represent the prison of oppression that can drive women, like the narrator, mad. By turning the wallpaper into something that traps, suffocates, and subdues women by the light of day, Gilman does a wonderful job at having the wallpaper embody a maddening and restrictive misogynistic society, and stresses the importance of women’s rights.

Writing stories is often an act of social commentary when one reads between the lines, and Gilman’s short story makes a huge stride in the name of feminism. Her story symbolizes what happens to women's lives when they live in a suffocating patriarchal society.