The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Book Report/Review Example

The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Is it still relevant today? In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, first published in 1899 by Small & Maynard of Boston, MA, a woman slowly loses her sanity as a result of her inability to conform to societal norms. In the story, an unnamed woman and her family take up residence in a remote mansion as a means of giving her the rest her husband has prescribed for a small case of depression she is experiencing. At every stage of her illness, it can be seen that the husband has little understanding of how she feels and little regard for her own input regarding what might help her. They take up residence in an upper room of the house, thought to be a nursery, with bars on the windows and old faded yellow wallpaper attached to the walls. This wallpaper plays a large role in the progression of the woman’s illness as she begins to see women creeping around inside it, trying to escape the oppression they, too, have experienced. In the end, the woman is completely insane, creeping around the walls herself after peeling the wallpaper off as high as she can reach, even creeping over her husband, who has fainted against the wall, in order to continue her progress unimpeded. The story, an exaggerated account of an event from Gilman’s own life, stands as a statement against the male oppression of women experienced throughout much of history, but particularly as it was still experienced in the late 19th century when this story was written. In many ways, the story represents the extreme manifestations of what Betty Friedan calls ‘the problem that has no name’ in her 1963 novel The Feminine Mystique in that the woman of the story suffers from the same general malaise experienced by the women described in Friedan’s novel. Although many advances have been made on the part of women to explore their own dreams, ‘the problem that has no name’ discussed by Friedan and illustrated by Gilman remains an issue as women continue to find, in an overly busy life trying to fulfill the needs of the entire family, little time to identify, much less pursue, their own dreams and goals. The general feeling Friedan identifies in the voices of her contemporaries in the 1950s compares nearly point by point with that impression expressed in Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper. Friedan calls it “a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone” (Friedan, 1963). This is very similar to the way the woman of Gilman’s story feels. Although she realizes there is something wrong with her, she writes that the men of her world, her husband and her brother who are both physicians, do not agree that she is sick, describing her condition as being a “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman, 1899), which nearly mimics Friedan’s ‘strange stirring’. While the diagnosis is to rest, with absolutely no burdens placed upon her, this treatment does not seem the wise course to the woman. “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” While women of today are not as constrained in their life choices as they once were, they are still trapped within lives of constant running to serve their families. It remains up to the mother of the family to pick up kids sick at school, get them to soccer practice and music lessons, keep the house clean, do the shopping, ensure the family is fed and, if there is any time left, she is able to pursue the career she once dreamed of. In most cases, however, the mother is either forced to accept whatever position she is offered in order to bring much needed income to the family or to give up the career she dreamed of in order to dedicate her life to her family, fulfilling the obligations she feels are her responsibility alone. It seems obvious to the woman of Gilman’s story, just as it seems obvious to Friedan, that the answer to ‘the problem that has no name’ will not be found in yet more idleness or meaningless activity. The woman of The Yellow Wallpaper feels completely helpless and trapped within the world that has been fashioned for her. Within this trap, one can sense the woman straining to find some sort of release as she attempts to distract herself with a close examination of the house. An examination into the words expressed by the women to Friedan sound hauntingly similar. “Sometimes a woman would say ‘I feel empty somehow . . . incomplete.’ Or she would say, ‘I feel as if I dont exist.’ Sometimes she blotted out the feeling with a tranquilizer. … Sometimes, she went to a doctor with symptoms she could hardly describe: ‘A tired feeling. . . I get so angry with the children it scares me . . . I feel like crying without any reason.’” (Friedan, 1963). All of these symptoms are also experienced by the woman in Gilman’s story written before Friedan’s time as well as symptoms reported by women of today. The fact that women still feel these issues is evidenced in the rise in numbers of depression cases and popularity of such medications as Prozac and Zoloft, popular drugs prescribed as solutions to these symptoms. In terms of lifestyle, the woman of Gilman’s story fits almost perfectly into the identification of the typical suburban woman of Friedan’s period. Friedan describes her as “the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. … She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment” (Friedan, 1963). This idea of the perfect woman is reinforced in The Yellow Wallpaper in the characters of Mary and Jenny, who collectively replace the narrator in her own home, indicating the easy interchangeability of women within this society. “It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby” is the only information we’re given of this ideal of motherhood while Jenny is described as “a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession” (Gilman, 1899) as a good woman should feel. Women of Friedan’s concern also felt the proper place for a woman was in the home. According to Friedan, suburban women of the 1950s and 60s “were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights – the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for” (Friedan, 1963). Then, as now, there was something missing from the lives of women that no one could quite determine. “The women who suffer this problem have a hunger that food cannot fill. … It is not caused by lack of material advantages; it may not even be felt by women preoccupied with desperate problems of hunger, poverty or illness. And women who think it will be solved by more money, a bigger house, a second car, moving to a better suburb, often discover it gets worse” (Friedan, 1963). The numbers of women out doing exactly these activities today speaks to the void that is still felt among women of the suburbs now. All this is not to say that women have been oppressed maliciously, or even without their own consent. Starting in The Yellow Wallpaper, it becomes apparent that, although John’s actions are all wrong to help his wife recover her health, his intentions remain the best. “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction … He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get,” she says at one point and “Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. … And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read till it tired my head” (Gilman, 1899). A great many women still felt the responsibility to care for their family over their own wishes or intelligence deep into the 1900s based on what Friedan says regarding the responsibilities of the mid-century housewife. “If a woman had a problem in the 1950’s and 1960’s, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought. What kind of a woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor? She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it. If she tried to tell her husband, he didn’t understand what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself” (Friedan, 1963). With as busy as women’s lives are today, the responsibility of house and home still falls on her shoulders. Despite the fact that women often find themselves working in jobs that keep them as many hours as their husbands, it is still the woman who is looked to any time the house needs cleaning or the children misbehave. Women remain the primary figure seen in advertisements featuring cleaning products or working with children’s booster clubs. However, all this attention given to fulfilling the needs of the family with little to no time devoted to fulfilling the needs of the self leads to this malaise Friedan refers to as ‘the problem that has no name.’ In her devotion to her family, the woman of The Yellow Wallpaper ignores her own inner voice that continues to tell her what she needs to do to get well in favor of the advice of her husband, who she disagrees with, but hasn’t the ability to do so openly. Because of this inability to seek her own remedies, this woman completely loses her mind as well as her family. Women cited in Friedan’s work also tend to lose themselves in a neverending effort to both serve the needs of their families, especially in retaining the feminine image they imagine their husbands want, while not giving into the desperation of their hearts. “In a New York hospital, a woman had a nervous breakdown when she found she could not breastfeed her baby. In other hospitals, women dying of cancer refused a drug which research had proved might save their lives: its side effects were said to be unfeminine. … They ate a chalk called Metrecal, instead of food, to shrink to the size of the thin young models” (Friedan, 1963). The prevalence of weight loss ads, diet pills, cosmetic surgeries and other controversial ‘feminizing’ procedures indicates that not only are woman still attempting to fit into the perfect form, but that they have not managed to find the answer to that gnawing emptiness inside. Tracing the complaints of women, as they can be seen in today’s advertising, the observations of the middle 1900s and the fiction of the late 1800s, it can be seen that although much has changed in terms of the opportunities women can take advantage of, one fundamental issue remains as true today as it was more than 100 years ago. This issue is the sense of responsibility women feel to establish themselves as the hub of their home and family. Regardless of what other opportunities she may wish to take advantage of, this central theme of her life makes the pursuit of these goals nearly impossible. Either she neglects her family or she becomes too busy in the activities of the family to be able to pursue her own life. “It is easy to see the concrete details that trap the suburban housewife, the continual demands on her time. But the chains that bind her in her trap are chains in her own mind and spirit. They are chains made up of mistaken ideas and misinterpreted facts, of incomplete truths and unreal choices. They are not easily seen and not easily shaken off” (Friedan, 1963). Not until women are able to shake off the shackles they have strapped to themselves with ‘the problem that has no name’ begin to be solved. References Friedan, Betty. (1963). “Chapter 1: The Problem that Has No Name.” The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. (1899). The Yellow Wallpaper. Boston: Small & Maynard. Read More