Summary of The Yellow Wallpaper - Essay Example

Assignment Summary – The Yellow Wall Paper Introduction The Yellow Wall Paper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in 1892. The story has been written in first person and the contemporary time period is covered. Hence, the story has a plot that is set in the 1890s, a time when the world was approaching a new century. The place is in American countryside, where a couple decides to spend their summer in a large colonial mansion. The story is written in a journal form of the narrations of the wife. John, her husband, is a physician. Her brother is also a physician. However, through the journal entries of the narrator, the reader comes to know that the lady is suffering from some psychological condition. Plot John, the narrator’s husband with a typical authoritative attitude, instructs the narrator to sleep in an upstairs room of the mansion. Not only this, John instructs the servants to take care of her whereabouts so that she might not get down. John asks the narrator to take rest, while she is ardent to do some work. Hence, the situation becomes near-confinement. Upstairs, in her room, the narrator does not have impressive furniture, any sort of leisure or recreation, any book, or even any pen and paper. She is bored and terribly lonely. Gradually she begins to watch the yellow wallpaper on the walls of her room. She carefully examines the design of the wallpaper and starts remembering all the yellow things she saw in her previous life. Slowly, she develops an impression that the house is haunted and another woman is staying there inside the yellow wallpaper. The wallpaper is relatively old, and probably that is why it is torn at one place or another. However, the narrator clearly takes this otherwise. She imagines that a lady and/or some children too, might have been confined in that room before her. They might have tried to escape and hence torn the yellow wallpaper. What is more, the narrator imagined, and at times she actually saw, that a lady was creeping inside the embroideries of the wallpaper. From her descriptions, the reader comes to know that the windows of the room are barred; doors leading to downstairs are closed or restricted by the servants. So instead of getting well in her resting room, she becomes more restless and discovers a kind of emancipation but addiction in the yellow wallpaper. At the end of the story, when her husband finally comes to take her downstairs as the summer is over and the couple is supposed to return home, the narrator reacts strangely. She herself creeps all around the room and claims that John can no longer confine her with the help of his servants. The strange sight is so unusual and appalling to John that he faints away. On the other hand, the narrator goes around and creeps over her husband’s unconscious body. Analysis The story has been analyzed by different critics from different angles. However, the psychological perspective appears to be most appropriately describing this story. The description of the story has to be analytical, while the story itself in the form of a narration in first person. This creates an impression of a psychoanalytic approach, which is often interrupted because the narrator herself gets confused time and again. At the first sight of the mansion, where the couple arrives at to spend their summer the narrator is bewildered and very dissatisfied. She states that the mansion appears to be “a haunted house” (Gilman, 1). But at this very beginning point, the reader is hinted about something is going wrong with the narrator. The narrator further thinks, “Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.” (Gilman, 1) In the beginning of the story, the narrator is able to understand her situation and surroundings, willing to work, and quite disturbed with her husband. This disturbance originated from her husband’s tendency of regarding as a patient who has “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman, 1). Her brother also supports her husband in this matter. Both of them are “high standing” (Gilman, 1) doctors. In this way, lots of things are told to the reader right in the very first page of the story. In the later half of nineteenth century, isolation and rest for a mental patient were regarded to be the most reliable healing practices. And this treatment technique, or more precisely, experimentation, was conducted by the male doctors. In fact, at that time, majority of the American doctors were male. So it can be assumed that when they came across a female patient, they could not be able to treat her with empathy. They did not interpret the mental imbalances from a feminine perspective. The narrator cannot overcome her confinement by material means. She slowly becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper she found in her room. She imagined another woman was creeping inside the designs of that wallpaper. And the narrator says that whenever she looks at the wall, she remembers the ugliest yellow things she ever saw. In that way, the chromatic impression of her psychological imagery appears to be pale and almost colorless expect for yellow. So the author helps the reader to visualize the mental state of the narrator at this point. But then there is a dangerous flux in the narrator’s attitude. This flux of attitude might be due to the fact that the narrator genuinely had some mental problem. However, this mental problem was not made worse intentionally by her relatives (e.g. her own husband). This mental problem was worsening due to the wrong treatment regimen prevalent at that time. At first, the narrator wished to work and go outside the confinement. This attitude was considered unsuitable for an effective treatment plan. Hence the narrator’s husband sought to confine her. And thence, her initial attitude (which could have been used by the psychiatrist to better her mental situation) changed. Now she wanted to stay in the room. The narrator says, “I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again. How those children did tear about here!” (Gilman, 13) From this point, advanced hysterical state sets in which would later amount to a consistent state of hallucination. The narrator feels that the wallpaper is a secondary existence of her own person, where the designs of the wallpaper act as restraining elements. In the terms of psychology, excessive self-projection can be a possible explanation to this situation. This excessive self projection culminated at abnormal envisioning of the future since the narrator was unable to accept the normal dimensions of time and space. She began to think she could enter the wall and the wall paper. Then she imagined multiple secondary personalities. These personalities and characters existed before or were existent at that instance. In sum, her core brain network appears to have been devastated due to constant isolation and captivity. In this advanced stage of illness, she starts to tear off the wallpaper and images herself as creeping though the room and also the walls in search of emancipation. This imagery translates into action, and at the end of the story, John discovers his wife creeping on the floor of the captive room and have torn off the wallpaper at different places. The narrator reports John’s reaction in the following words: “What is the matter?” he cried. “For God’s sake, what are you doing?” (Gilman, 15) But the narrator is not in a state to give a proper reply anymore. Most astonishingly, John does not realize his grave mistake even now. He is still unable to understand the futility of the contemporary technique to treat mental patients by the means of isolation, confinement, and rest. He is horrified to see his wife’s extremely strange actions and faints away. Conclusion The final sentences of the story have an apathetic tone. The narrator says, “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time.” (Gilman, 15) From a feminist perspective, it can be said that these conclusive sentences hint at subconscious feminine supremacist desires against the male dominated society. But a psychological analysis can reveal that the author has successfully envisaged and presented a grave state of mental trouble, where temporary mental problems are taking almost permanent form. Work Cited Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The New England Magazine, Boston: J. N. McClinctock and Company, 1892. Print. Read More