Charlotte Brontes Villette and Charlotte Gilmans The Yellow Wallpape - Essay Example

Charlotte Bronte’s Villette and Charlotte Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpape Mental illness looms large over both Charlotte Bronte’s Villette and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Within both works, there is a determined exploration of the intricacies of the human mind and the extent to which external factors can contribute to the development of mental distress/mental illness. Of further importance is the fact that both works express an evident distrust in doctors, seemingly suggesting that their treatment programs produce the opposite effect. The reason, as one may deduce from the two texts, is that the doctors and their treatments represent that which the two female protagonists are struggling against and which is at the source of their mental distress – eradication of identity and silencing of voice due to their gender. This essay will argue that both Gillman and Bronte project mental disorder as a consequence of the female condition and, most particularly, her silencing and isolation. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the protagonist is married to the physician who also treats her for post-partum depression using the rest cure. Instead of curing her, the treatment worsens her condition. Crucial to the progression of the patient's illness is both the physician and the husband's expectations of her and their disregard for her reaction to those expectations. The narrator says that she is married, sick, and her husband is her physician: “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage … John is a physician, and perhaps … that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick!” (Gilman 10). Implied is John's failure, as husband and physician, to listen to his wife's beliefs that she is ill. When the wife sees that there is agreement between her husband and physician, both figures gain additional authority. In addition to that dual authority, the patient’s submission is encouraged by her role as wife, which requires her to be dutifully submissive, even to medical treatment that harms her. The wife/patient’s hold on reality loosens when she attempts to communicate with her husband, and he does not listen The wife/patient tells her husband, on various occasions, that she dislikes the room where she is convalescing and would like to move, that she is feeling more ill than he believes she is, and, finally, that she feels there is something strange about the house and she would like to go home. The husband/physician, John, refuses her pleas and in so doing, he restricts his wife in both rational and creative activities and reduces her to the status of a child (Kennard, 81). “He puts her in an attic room, which had been a nursery, and responds to her by either laughing at her, losing patience with her, or identifying himself as a physician” (Wagner-Martin 55). The progression of her madness is symbolized by her perception of the yellow wallpaper. At first her view of the wallpaper is analytical and evaluative: “she sees the pattern as committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 13). As she analyzes the wallpaper, the wife/patient exhibits a good deal of thought and mental energy, although, simultaneously, she is too tired to write. Reading and writing the wallpaper is not against her husband/physicians orders; Gilman shows us a woman who needs an intellectual outlet that does not conflict with her husband/physician. His orders that she stay in the room force her to deal with the yellow wallpaper. As she experiences greater anxiety over her husband, she moves from viewing the wallpaper analytically to viewing it imaginatively, less realistically. She begins to imagine a woman behind the pattern. “By moonlight the moon shines in all night when there is a moon I wouldn't know it was the same paper … at night … it becomes bars … I didn't realize … what the thing was that showed behind, that dim subpattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (Gilman 26). Typically, the narrator discusses the wallpaper after three types of occurrences: when the narrator speaks of her desire for, yet fatigue over, writing, when she asserts herself to John and then feels guilty, and when she conceals her writing and not sleeping from John. In other words, Gilman shows her engagement with the pattern as reflective of her inner conflict. More specifically, the narrator begins to see eyes staring at her from behind the paper. While this vision obviously represents her own imprisonment, her fear of disapproval for intellectual and creative activity, and her insight that exists alongside her physical and emotional paralysis, the vision also changes to show how her logical view of reality is overcome by emotional and visual sensation. When the narrator sees bars in front of the woman, her own confinement becomes more literal, and she begins to exhibit paranoid thinking. “I am determined that nobody shall find it … out but myself!” (Gilman 27). Her separation from reality becomes more evident when she thinks she has accommodated both John and herself. Life is exciting, she eats better, is quieter than she was, and “John is so pleased to see me improve!” (Gilman 27). At the same time, her anxiety is so great that she would jump out of the window if it weren't barred. But she isn't even sure about that decision: “Besides I wouldn't do it. Of come not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued” (Gilman 35). She accommodates John by desiring the yellow over the green, yet knows that she must struggle to accommodate herself when she sees the woman break free of the wallpaper. At the end of the story, she doesn't leave the room but creeps back and forth over her husband/physician as symbolic of her inescapable conflict. Gilman's story ends with John, the figure of dual male authority, literally underneath the victim's creeping body and figuratively underlying her madness. He has fainted in astonishment over the end result of his treatment, indicating perhaps his own inability to face reality and to accept responsibility for his wife/patients madness. Just as in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Bronte’s protagonist is quite effectively propelled towards mental distress through a combination of her doctor’s refusal to listen to her and her social isolation. A close reading of Villette indicates that Bronte suggests that psychological health is dependent upon social integration. Indeed, the first-person narrator strives to participate in her community and often employs many different voices and discourses to better communicate her own intentions. When Lucy Snowe has no listeners to whom she can articulate her experience, she falls ill, discovering that she can find relief only in the healing capacity of conversation. In this novel, Bronte is critical of the nineteenth-century doctor's inability to communicate effectively with his patients. Dr. John uses his authority to silence and dismiss Lucy's attempts to describe her illness even though her narrative proves crucial to his understanding of the complex social factors that cause her physical and psychological distress. Since Dr. John fails to acknowledge the multiple discourses Lucy uses to communicate her illness, he fails to offer his patient either an insightful diagnosis or an effective remedy. This is reminiscent of Gilman’s Dr. John and his persistent refusal to listen to his wife/patient. In Villette, Bronte explores the instability of nineteenth-century psychological discourse through Lucy Snowe's illness narrative. Lucy, ambiguous about the role of the nerves in psychological suffering, refers to her "nervous system" as a means of linking her mental anguish to her physical body. As storms rage outside, she describes the physical pain of her psychological state: “beating rain crushed me with a deadlier paralysis than I had experienced while the air remained serene: but so it was, and my nervous system could hardly support what it had for many days and nights to undergo in that huge, empty house” (180). Lucy also locates her mental distress in physical symptoms: “At last a day and night of peculiarly agonizing depression were succeeded by physical illness . . . I lay in a strange fever of the nerves and blood” (182). Later in this episode, as her psychological suffering reaches its climax. At other times Lucy differentiates between the nerves and the mind while simultaneously acknowledging their subtle interconnectedness. After experiencing visions of the happy Ginevra, connected to and loved by others, Lucy frets: “One day, perceiving this growing illusion, I said, 'I really believe my nerves are getting overstretched: my mind has suffered somewhat too much; a malady is growing upon it-what shall I do? How shall I keep well?” (231). ` The doctor is supposed to “keep her well,” treat her but, unfortunately, he fails to do so in a way that is reminiscent of the case in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Dr. John's approach to patient care corresponds to the era’s attitude towards women and the imperatives of their submitting to male authority, on the one hand, and perceptions of the doctor-patient relation on the other. As the case in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the doctor inhibits interaction by limiting his patient's opportunity to voice her experience and concerns on her own terms. When Lucy first emerges from her bedroom during her recovery at La Terrasse, the doctor initiates the encounter with an inquiry about her health without addressing the patient directly: “How is your patient, mama?” It is Mrs. Bretton who adds, “will she come forward and speak for herself?” (202). As the consultation progresses, Mrs. Bretton disrupts the structure when she recognizes Lucy as her long lost god-daughter, thereby enabling her to join the party as an old friend rather than as a patient. The group continues to converse on more social, casual topics until Dr. John adopts his professional role to end the conversation, and Lucy becomes a powerless invalid once again: “Miss Snowe must retire now . . . she is beginning to look very pale.” He then asserts control over when and how Lucy will be allowed to speak about her health: “To-morrow I will venture to put some questions respecting the cause of her loss of health … As to last night's catastrophe, I am sure thereby hangs a tale, but we will inquire no further this evening” (206). There is a constant silencing of the patient. The doctor's diagnoses are also alienating and isolating. After Lucy has seen the nun in the attic, Dr. John insists that her “vision,” is a product of a physiological malfunction: “This is all a matter of the nerves, I see” (289). While Dr. John scorns the inappropriateness of her solitude in the garret-“that dungeon under the leads, smelling of damp and mould, rank with phthisis and catarrh: a place you never ought to enter” (289)-his diagnosis leaves Lucy feeling even more isolated, a victim of inner processes beyond her control: “I was left secretly and sadly to wonder, in my own mind, whether that strange thing was of this world, or of realm beyond the grave; or whether indeed it was only the child of malady, and I of that malady the prey” In this consultation, Dr. John manifests his detached approach to the patient and his consequent inability shift his perspective, to be moved by his patient's pain. Lucy’s conditions worsens because she is silenced and disallowed a voice, whether as a woman or as a patient. In the final analysis, both stories are expressive of the male/female, patient/doctor relationship in the nineteenth century and highly critical of the stated. Within the context of both, the female protagonists’ mental illness is a product of their silencing and the exacerbation of their condition is a consequence of alienating and isolating treatment wherein the doctor refuses to listen to the patient. Both patients’ need for independence, for social interaction and the right to self-expression are thwarted and the consequence is retreat into the self and mental breakdown, not cure. Works Cited Kennard, Jean E. “Convention Coverage or How to Read Your Own Life.” Charlotte Perkins Gillman: The Woman and Her Work. Ed. Sheryl L. Meyering. Ann Arbour: UMI Research, 1989. Wagner-Martin, Linda. “Gillman’s `The Yellow Wallpaper’.” Charlotte Perkins Gillman: The Woman and Her Work. Ed. Sheryl L. Meyering. Ann Arbour: UMI Research, 1989. Read More