The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman - Research Paper Example

of Learning: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Gilman, can be included in the feminist literature genre owing to many characteristics of this story. Though this story has been included in the psychological thriller genre and horror story genre by many, when viewed in the backdrop of the socio-political and literary context and also the life of the author, this story surely can be included as a remarkable member of feminist literature genre ( Rkhuber; Showalter). The core image that runs through this story, and from which it derives its title is the yellow wallpaper and this itself can be viewed as a symbol of an all-pervasive and suffocating male dominated society (Gilman).A wallpaper can be representative of many things, especially in literary imagery. It can represent an environment, a mood, a cover that hides something within, and even a mirror of the emotions of the protagonist. In this short story, the yellow wall paper initially functions as a hostile environment in which the reader is introduced to the protagonist, then it starts to transform into a reflection of the mental state of the protagonist and towards the end, it is seen as the wall of a cage in which the protagonist gets trapped in and eventually breaks free of (Gilman). This kind of metaphoric presentation of the wall paper correlates with the feminist notion of a patriarchal society that serves as the environment for the oppression of women, unconsciously gets accepted by women as their own mental reflection, and at some point in future, has to be torn down by women themselves who realize that it is a cage that entraps them. It is the famous feminist dictum, 'personal is political' that gets substantiated by this story. The narrator, a woman, is living a life completely based on the prescriptions, both medical and personal, of a man, a physician, her husband (Gilman 1). She also has a history of living under the domination of her brother, who also happens to be a physician. The very fact that the two men in her life are men of science, indicate the authority of the scientific/rational/objective male world (Gilman 1). The experiential/subjective and oppressed female realm is a contrasting theme that becomes the centre of the narrative as it progresses. The self-talk that gets documented in the journals kept by the female protagonist has a fragmented and highly subjective format and content that moves beyond reason and common sense (Gilman). It is highly personal. This is similar to how female experiences and struggles often seem irrational and illogical to the mainstream society. There are many direct allusions in the text to the sheer authority and power exercised on the female protagonist by her husband (Gilman 1-10). For example, in the first few sentences themselves, the heroine told the reader that, “John (the husband) laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (Gilman 1). She is more comfortable with dead paper than a live man (Gilman 1). She further has said that she always has to fake self-control before her husband so that she does not have to endure his patronizing reprimand (Gilman 1). The repeated mention of how the husband of the female protagonist disapproves of her writing down one's inner feelings is a metaphor of how the male world suppresses female expressions. Though the female narrator readily agrees with the husband's orders regarding her writing, the way she continually and secretly disobeys his orders, suggests a constant craving for freedom (Gilman 1-10). This sense of freedom is satirically depicted in the form of some affliction, some weakness, in the heroine (Gilman 1-3). In spite of this, the message that the reader gets is that the heroine is a sensitive and creative person caught in the boredom of the mundane, non-imaginative world of the men, who are born to rule. It is always the husband who decides what is good for her, yet another narrative device used to illustrate the gendered nature of the society. There is a mutually contrasting dualistic wish-pattern expressed by the protagonist and this contradiction is inherent to the female psyche in a gendered society. For example, the heroine does not want too much sunlight that is there in the room, a space to which she is confined to live, yet she craves for the life outside the windows of this room (Gilman 2-3). When examined from a feminist angle, the sunlight inside the room is something imposed on her by her husband and thus something unwelcome, while the world outside the windows is the freedom that she herself aspires for. The room of her has barred windows previously meant to prevent children from falling through, accidentally (Gilman 1-2). But these very barred windows become a cage for the heroine of the story, who also is living a child-like existence, controlled and stage-managed by others (Gilman, 1-2). She has a spirit that is haunted by a wish to be protected yet to be free as well. The story has a message that says, you can be free only through facing and tearing down the walls that restrict you. The way the heroine gets over the depressive mood imparted by the yellow, fading, wall paper, is finally by facing it rather than moving away from . She starts identifying its patterns, and the truth beyond that intriguing mirage. What she finds is a self-reflection. It has to be noted that she does not suddenly arrive at her realizations but is painfully slow in her progress towards them (Gilman). This is reflective of the real struggle that a woman undertakes in an oppressive society. By identifying a sub pattern within the pattern of the wall paper, the protagonist is eventually learning to read within the lines of the social text, produced by a male dominated society (Gilman 7-10). It is only natural that she who values her freedom alone can read this sub-text. This is why her husband's sister finds nothing unusual about the way world is. The gender bias that existed in the era of this story in health sector has been clearly depicted in this narrative. There is a direct allusion to it. When approached in a literary sense, the way in which the society, doctors and medical institutions defined female non-conformance as mental disease can be seen as the prominent theme of this story (Gilman). In those times, mental illnesses in women were also perceived to be an attribute of intellectually inferior status of women (qtd. in Rkhuber 1). Though Rkhuber has said, “the narrator has descended from a condition of nervous weakness, or 'neurasthenia', to one of disintegration, hallucination, and infantile animalism”, the fact that the heroine is candidly recollecting her own behaviour and making a journal of it, negates a complete disintegration of self (14). Rather, the hallucinations of the protagonist are 'irrational' responses to a society that never gives credit to the rationality of female thought (Davison 60). All the above features of this short story puts it in the genre of feminist literature. Here, it has to be stated that this story is not a ghost story or psychological thriller as is opined by some reviewers (Rkhuber 14; Showalter,133-4). Though the narrator is talking many times about the house being haunted, the end of the story does not substantiate this proposition (Gilman 10). Nobody other than the heroine is finding any ghost, even towards the end of the story (Gilman). Hence this is not a ghost story, to be sure. To a reader who looks at this story with an open mind, at least in the beginning, the protagonist will appear as a sober person who is only slightly depressed by a dominating husband and her helplessness to overcome that forceful submission Hence, this story cannot be put under the psychological genre as well. It is the “female Gothic” explanation offered by Davison that is more logical and this explanation endorses the view that this story come in the feminist literature genre (48). Davison has attributed the chilling turn of events inside the story not to any ghost phenomenon but to the “fear of power” that the female protagonist experiences in a male-dominated society (48). The “fear of power” in Gothic romance represents not only the fear of the unknown but equally the socially oppressive forces as well (Davison 48). Similarly, the typical Gothic house is a space where there is an ambivalent admixture of a woman's wish to be protected and all the same to be free from entrapment (Davison, 53). Last but not least, this short story has also been observed as autobiographical based on the gendered personal experiences of the author herself. The author having a history of mental depression, oppressive marriage and feminist self-reflections, can be understood to have put her own struggles in fiction format in this short story (Shore 481). This context of writing also endorses the argument that the theme of this short story is gender rather than psychology or supernatural phenomena. The author (Gilman) was also writing in the historical context where in the second half of nineteenth century, feminist literature was emerging as a strong literary movement (Showalter, XVI). Wang has also supported this notion by comparing the “woman's fear” in The Yellow Wallpaper to that in another text written by Margaret Atwood (10). The entrapment inside a room and the silencing of self-expression have been pointed out as the common feminist themes that run through both (Wang 10). These analyses also support the notion that this story comes under the genre, feminist literature. To conclude, the social context (gender bias in health sector), the literary context (emerging feminist writings) and the personal context (life of the author) strongly suggest that this story be included in the feminist literature genre. As discussed above, the imagery, theme and situations in the story perfectly fits in into the slot of feminist genre. The ending of the story can be interpreted either as a breaking free act by the protagonist or as her succumbing to the pressures of domination. Both readings point to the same feminist concern of domination and liberation. The Yellow Wallpaper can thus be seen as making a strong feminist statement through allegory. Works Cited Davison, Carol Margaret. “Haunted House/Haunted Heroine: Female Gothic Closets in “The Yellow Wallpaper.”” Women's Studies 33 (2004): 47-75. Print. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Chicago: Mundus Publishing, 1973. Print. Rkhuber, Verena Sch. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wall Paper”: An Analysis. Berlin: GRIN Verlag, 2008. Print. Shore, Miles F. “Wild Unrest: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 42.3 (2012): 481-483. Print. Showalter, Elaine, “Introduction”, In Elaine Showalter (Ed.) Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin-de-Sie'cle, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Wang, Fanghui. “Trapped and Silenced: Claustrophobic Fear in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Handmaid's Tale”, Studies in Literature and Language 5.2 (2012): 10-15. Print. Read More