Women Lives From Gilman's Perspective - Essay Example

Women Lives From Gilman's Perspective Women have been traditionally perceived as a less dominant gender and women has been fighting for their due rights from time immemorial. Although there has optimum elevation in the status of the woman socially, in most cultures of the world, women have always been portrayed as the inferior and less-dominant sex. They have been stereotyped as individuals, whose function or purpose is getting married, and then be a submissive housewife, who should take care of their husbands and children. This inferior view of women, which was more prevalent in the earlier part of the last century, also got reflected in many fictional works that were written in those periods as well. Most of the times, authors create fictional works based on what they have seen, heard and even felt in their own lives. Thus, these authors could ‘fictionalize’ the real life events, particularly the ‘injuring’ or difficult aspects. American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman constructed one such short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, basing it on the distressing parts of her life, and also based on the suppression and subjugation the women of her times faced. So, this paper will discuss how the female protagonist or character is subjugated and suppressed by the male character throughout the story, and was not given any chance to express her power, even the ‘power of authorship’. Charlotte Perkins Gilman came up with The Yellow Wallpaper in 1891 as a kind of a personalized story, basing it on the struggles; she went through because of her mental illness. As, Gilman’s work dealt with mental troubles of a female in a disturbing way, that too showing opposite sex in a bad light, many editors (naturally many male editors) rejected it. This can be seen in the light of the social system, which had become oppressive to the feminist interpretive community. (Kennard, 1981, p.83). So, The Yellow Wallpaper was published after many unsuccessful attempts. As Gilman’s own mental struggle was fictionalized through the female protagonist, she got encouragement from the feminist press, which only lead to the publication of the short story. The protagonist is an unnamed young upper middle class woman who has been suffering from depression after giving birth to her son. What accentuates her suffering further is her husband John’s apparent lack of sympathy for her condition. He puts her within the confines of a large house, subjugating her and so she feels like trapped like the pictures in the yellow wallpaper, which was pasted in one of the walls of the house. The pasted yellow wallpaper due to the complex patterns gives a complicated feeling to the female protagonist that some other character really exists behind it. So, her dependency on her husband, which leads to a mistaken hope that he will cure her problem and her husband's lack of care, only causes further aggravation of her mental illness. Women of today have elevated themselves and are also elevated by their male counterparts. This wholesome transformation has taken place, since the times, when this short story was written. As the work reflected the suppressed status of women in those times (late 1800’s and early 1900’s), the female character was suppressed and subjugated by the male character in her day to day living. The underlying theme could be said as a study of relationship between husband and wife, the economic and social dependence of women on men and how their freedom are being controlled. The Yellow Wall-Paper is a rare work among the works of the nineteenth-century female writers as form of confronting the “sexual politics of the male-female, husband-wife relationship.” (Hedge 1973, p.39) At the outset itself, John wrongly diagnosis her to be mentally insane, thereby subjugating indirectly. This misdiagnosis was made by an ‘all male crew’ and the narrator had no choice but to accept it. Diagnosed by her doctor/husband, her doctor/brother and a world-renowned male medical expert, she is ordered to stay in bed inside a room, and she has to blindly follow it. (Kreisberg, 1992, p.1). This blind faith of the narrator to the decision of the husband can also been seen in her words, “If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing” (Gilman, 1973, p.1). After the diagnosis of her mental condition, she gets no constructive and apt medical help from her doctor husband. Instead, he treats her as a spoilt child who needs to be locked in solitary confinement to recover. “From John's perspective, the narrator is a hapless romantic, a little girl, a blessed little goose, in other words, a regressed creature.” (Feldstein 1992, p.404). The theme of solitary confinement, which is a common aspect of women's life in those times, is best illustrated by setting her in a vast colonial mansion with closed windows. The setting of the colonial mansion, particularly its nursery room which was fixed with opaque windows, provides an image of loneliness and isolation in the mind of the protagonist. That is, like her mind which was 'closed' and suppressed by her husband, without giving any chance to think and explore, the room in which she lived is also closed in many ways. Also, the "sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin" found in the wall paper pasted in the nursery room complicates her already confused mind (Gilman, 1973, p.4). John puts the narrator within the confines of a nursery mainly with the intention or guise to treat her for a mental condition in the aftermath of delivering a child. That is, the story hints that the narrator has recently given birth to a baby, and so the physical and the mental toll the pregnancy took, may have caused her mental breakdown, insinuating what now called postpartum psychosis. In those times, women are viewed as ones who are more susceptible to mental illness than men due to reasons like genetics or their DNA as well as because of pregnancy. Vulnerability of women to insanity was caused by some constitutional weakness (Showalter, 1987, p.60). The husband confines her, even separating her from the newborn. As it is always the mother’s instinct to take care of the newborn, the narrator always wanted to take the child in her hands, caress her and wanted to do all the motherly duties for him. Although the baby is cared by her sister-in-law, Jennie and nanny, Mary, the narrator always wanted to do things, which she loved to do. However, this suppression and separation initiated by her husband prevents her from carrying out her motherly duties and this depresses her very much. “But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing… Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” (Gilman, 1973, p.6). The subjugation mainly after her pregnancy and the resultant isolation of her from her child brings out the perspective of how woman’s reproduction is viewed as a weakness and not as a identity of power. “The female personality was still inherently defective, this timed due the absence of a penis, rather than the presence of the domineering uterus” (Ehrenreich and English, 1973, p.44). In addition, the narrator was also prevented from writing and exhibiting her authorship related power. The narrator always wanted to write things that are intellectually stimulating and has written a lot of works before. But, after her confinement she was forbidden from writing by her husband. That did not stop her from writing, because when John went out, she wrote secretly, thereby fulfilling her passion. “I am sitting by the window now, up in his atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please” (Gilman, 1973, p.5). Then when he returned, she had to hide her journal entries safely. However, this secretive continuation of her positive passion got obstructed, when her mental state worsened due to continuous confinement. As she did not get any chance to venture out, even into other rooms of the mansion, she became depressive and had high fatigue levels. With sapping of her energy and mental torture, she could not muster even a little energy to write her secret journal. The narrator was deprived from doing what she loved. Thus any intellectual stimulation she got from her writing in the godforsaken place also got extinguished, making her become obsessive with the wallpaper. “The woman becomes increasingly obsessed with The Yellow Wallpaper since, deprived of companionship, exercise and any intellectual stimulation, she has nothing else to do but look at the walls.” (Oakley, 1993, p.7). The central character/narrator gets so ‘consumed’ by the wallpaper; she becomes oblivious to the surroundings including her husband, thus reaching the point of no return. During the course of the story the individual personality of the female character, her personal interests and importantly her power gets lost or subdued, as she changes to her husband’s wishes, orders and restrictions. Because of her imposing and suppressing husband, the character’s life becomes monotonous, frustrating, vacant and lonesome. The high degree of insanity among middle-class women in early 19th century America is attributed to the monotony of their lives. (Wood, 1973, p.29). In The Yellow Wallpaper, the central character's lives destructs due to suppressive actions of her husband. Throughout history specifically at the turn of the century—19th to 20th, women have unsuccessfully tried to break the oppression and other stereotypes including the ones related to mental illness. Likewise, the unnamed female character in The Yellow Wallpaper had to put an unsuccessful fight against "temporary nervous depression — a slight hysterical tendency" and her dominative Physician husband. (Gleason, 1999, p.171). Another perspective is, the female protagonist in order to escape from the patriarchal society lands up being insane. However, the fact is, before her marriage, she lived a very happy life, but all gets transformed because of her husband’s suppression. She was shifted to a new mansion and kept in isolation to recover from the mental illness. However, without getting opportunities to perform her motherly duties and take care of her newborn baby as well as pursue her passion of writing, her mental condition deteriorates further. In the end, the character does not recover at all, further pushed into the complicated conundrum, thus reflecting the pitiable lives and the deterioration of power of women in those times. References Ehrenreich, B and English, D (1973) Complaints and disorders: the sexual politics of sickness. New York: Feminist Press. Feldstein, R. (1992) ‘Reader, Text, and Ambiguous Preferentiality in the "The Yellow Wallpaper"’. In Keesey, D. (2002), eds, Contexts for criticism. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 401-457. Gilman, C. P. (1973) The Yellow Wallpaper. New York: Forgotten Books. Gleason, W. A. (1999) The leisure ethic: work and play in American literature. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Hedges, E. R. (1973). "Afterword" to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. New York: Feminist Press Kennard, J. E. (1981) ‘Convention Coverage or How to Read Your Own Life’ New Literary History vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 69-88. Kreisberg, S. (1992) Transforming power: domination, empowerment, and education. New York: SUNY Press. Oakley, A. (1993) Essays on Women, Medicine and Health. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Showalter, E. (1987) ‘The Rise of the Victorian Madwoman’. In: Showalter, E., The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980. London: Virgo, pp. 51-73. Wood, A. D. (1992) ‘The Fashionable Diseases": Women's Complaints and Their Treatment in Nineteenth-Century America' Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 25-52 Read More