Neurosis as a Gendered Disease or a Female Disposition - Essay Example

Neurosis as a Gendered Disease or a Female Disposition? Perkins has chosen a neurotic, married woman as the narrator of her text in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This essay uses close reading to analyze how the text generates the narrator/addressee/reader complex of relationships within a narrative. It defines and explains several key terms first, before it discusses its close reading with the text. The text both persuades and dissuades readers to become addressees through exploring multiple views on gender and neurosis from different reader positions. In particular, the context revolves around neurosis as a gendered disease, though the text allows readers to see it also as a female disposition, which creates resistance in the reading process. As a whole, the text invites the readers to be its addressees by highlighting the oppressive conditions of married women through the case of a neurotic patient. It interpellates people to become addressees through using setting, symbolism, irony, and changes in language to help readers understand what it is like to be married, especially to a doctor. Projection pertains to how people see others based on how they view themselves. Gallop calls this as the “photographic negative of our image of the self” (15). The “controlling value” pertains to what the text seeks to tell the readers, readers who the author wants to “hold” so that they can “see eye to eye with the implied author” (Seitz 146). The “narrator” refers to the “implied author” with whom the readers are supposed to “connect” with (Seitz 141). The “addressee” pertains to the readers who the text wants to influence with its “controlling value.” The addressee is different from the “reader” who can participate in the “reading” of the text through “social engagement which consists of both reception and participation” (Seitz 143). Interpellation refers to how the text aims to engage and influence readers and turn them into “interested readers” who can “persuade themselves” that they also believe in the text's (Seitz 147). The “controlling value” of the text is to emphasize that married women gets the worst deal; they become “women” under “men” and the protagonist of the text has the worse bargain, because she is married to a male doctor, which means two patriarchal structures are combined to oppress her. The narrative works rhetorically by using a neurotic wife's conditions to underline the oppressive conditions of married women and the patriarchal structure of medicine. The narrator keeps on saying “personally” (Gilman 1), but she cannot voice these opinions and ideas at loud. It means that her “person” or “voice” is being submerged underneath the tendency to follow the patriarchal structure. For instance, she says: “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Gilman 1). No one hears her personal opinions, however, because she knows that they will be dismissed, or rather, her own husband will dismiss her. As a husband, the focus is on “self-control” with John doing the controlling over his wife. He tells her to “take pains to control” herself, which makes her “very tired” (Gilman 1). The text shows that John should be blamed for his wife's neurosis, since he keeps on controlling her, instead of letting her control her life and health. Furthermore, the text shows the “double patriarchal” structures through medicine. As a doctor, John treats his wife with condescending attention. He keeps on reminding her that he is the doctor and therefore, he knows better. Indeed, the text shows that John is more a doctor than a husband. He threatens his wife that he will send her to “Weir Mitchell in the fall,” if she does not recover any faster (Gilman 4). This can render an emotional reaction from readers and turn them into addressees, because they will feel indignation as patients who are talked down and if they are women, they can relate to the feeling of being oppressed by male figures in their lives. Hence, the text asks readers to project themselves on the text. The addressees are anticipated to react negatively to how the narrator is treated as a woman and as a patient. The text interpellates people to become addressees through using setting, symbolism, irony, and changes in language to help readers understand what it is like to be married, especially to a doctor. The setting is mostly inside the woman's room. John puts his wife in a “nursery.” This symbolizes how he sees his wife- as a child who needs to be directed and controlled. Still, despite signs of continued depression, John treats his wife as secondary to his own patients. The narrator states that John is also busy with serious cases. She is happy to say that: “I am glad my case is not serious!” (Gilman 2). Is she truly glad that her case is not serious? Or is she glad that John is also away. In addition, the text shows that John oppresses his wife by using terms of endearment that treat her as if she is a pet, such as “blessed little goose” (Gilman 2). In addition, the “yellow” color stands for light and brightness, but this kind of yellow in the story is “repellent, almost revolting” for the narrator (Gilman 2). The text is inviting readers to see women in a whole new “color,” based on the narrator's own experiences and ideas. In terms of irony, there is situational irony, because John wants his wife to “heal” herself, when he does not let her do what she wants. Instead, he tells her: “... no one but [herself] can help [her] out of it, that [she] must use [her] will and self-control” in removing “fancies” (Gilman 5). The physician also advises rest: “John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can” (Gilman 6). This rest, however, makes the patient worse off. Changes in language, as the narrator becomes more paranoid of her surroundings, also give ideas to the addressees about the impact of being treated as “women” in society. Even as she looks outside her window, she sees “riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees” (italics provided by the author of this essay) (Gilman 3). She already finds nature “threatening” and “ugly” without being aware of it. She used to love writing, but she starts to hate it too: “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!” (Gilman 3). Her language also acquires a violent streak. She describes the other parts of her room as if someone thrashed it in fury: “Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered” (Gilman 3). Later on, she believes that the form under the wallpaper is interacting with her: “It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you” (Gilman 6). These changes in the narrator invite people to understand neurosis as a product of social impositions, specifically patriarchal structures that control women. The text, nevertheless, leaves open, and even encourages, possibilities for reading the relationship between the narrator and addressee, which then allows for other possibilities for interpretation beyond the narrator's intentions, by showing how it is possible that more women are neurotic because they are socially turned into women, but they can also be neurotic because they “are” women, or they have natural tendencies to be prone to mental disorders. On the one hand, the text talks about how “neurotics” are handled. They are supposed to have the right diet and a certain level of care. Their diet consists of “cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat” (Gilman 4). This is implied also in the way that John's sister takes care of her sister-in-law. The narrator says: “Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me!” (Gilman 3). At the same time, neurotics are left alone. The narrator says that she is left alone most of the time, but only to sleep and not to heal herself in ways she thinks will help her. On the other hand, neurosis can also be self-fulfilling, when women act subserviently to males and other women in their surroundings. The text underlines how the protagonist justifies her oppression as a wife and woman. She laments about the lack of power in choosing her own room, but underscores that John is “very careful and loving, and hardly lets [her] stir without special direction” (Gilman 2). She accepts how John controls her whole life, including how she “should” act in order to get well. This includes John providing “schedule prescription” (Gilman 2). Her husband even believes that she gets sick to get his attention: “Bless her little heart! She shall be as sick as she pleases!” (Gilman 5). This portion of the text undermines the relationship with the addressee and allows the readers to also criticize women for being too emotional, which makes them prone to neurosis. Hence, the text also successfully creates resistant readers who will not accept the controlling value and assert that women are neurotics, because they too feminine. “The Yellow Wallpaper” has a controlling value, which stresses that neurosis is a gendered disease, an outcome of double patriarchal structures. It uses literary devices to help readers project themselves into the characters and feel empathy for the narrator. But the relationship with addressees are more complex than that, as the text leaves readers to also question the controlling value. Resistant readers will assert that women, by nature, are prone to neurosis because of their sensitivity that sensationalizes emotional problems. Thus, the text interpellates and leaves room for criticism, where readers are invited to read the text from different viewpoints, which means as closely or as critically as possible, as they explore multiple reader roles, both as addressees and as resistant readers. Works Cited Gallop, Jane. “The Ethics of Reading: Close Encounters.” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (2000): 7-17. Print. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. 1889. Print. Seitz, James E. “A Rhetoric of Reading.” Print. Read More