Role of Family in the Yellow Wallpaper - Essay Example

Crucial Roles of Family and Portrayal of Patriarchy in the Family Structure in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Introduction Thoughfamily and family life play a crucial role in human life, Charlotte Gilman, in her story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is preoccupied with the negative consequences of family considering it as a suppressive system to suffocate the sustainable and healthy psychology of a member, especially, of a woman. In the same manner, Sylvia Plath, Shirley Jackson, Robert Hayden, Nicolas Cage and Flannery O’ Connor in their literary pieces, “Daddy”, “Lottery”, “Those Winter Days”, “Family Man” and “A Good Man is hard to Find” uphold different negative effects of family and family members as well as positive sides of a family life. Among these authors, Nicolas Cage has tried to uphold the positive sides of a family in his film “Family Men”. In “Lottery”, Shirley Jackson talks about the cruelty and superstition of member family members. Whereas in the poem, “Daddy” Sylvia Plath disparages the conservative control of a father over a girl, Hayden appears to be confused about how to assess his father’s control as well as his care for the child. But in the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’ Connor tells about the fakery of a family member, namely the Grandmother. But she considers all men and women as members of a common human family. After all, authors present both the good and bad sides of family life and family members. They, to a great extent, reflect Charlotte’s view of the negative consequences of family. Thesis: Though family is important for human life, the authors say that it has both the good and the bad sides and some authoritative family members can be harmful for other members. A Father’s Harmful Control over a Girl in “Daddy” Like Charlotte Gilman, Sylvia is preoccupied with the harmful dominance and control of family members such as a father or a husband on a girl or a woman. In the poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath deals with the negative consequences of a father influence on a child. In the poem, the poet compares her father with a number of imagery, such as daddy, shoe, devil, commander of Jewish extermination, etc to portray the unhappiness that her father caused to her. She compares her father with someone protective; but obviously for her protection, this protection is dark and choking. This is evident in her use of the imagery of black shoe. Shoe protects one’s feet but its blackness means that it is a dark protection (Plaths “Daddy”). Both Charlotte and Sylvia agree that conservative attitude of family members like father and husband harmful for a woman because they make her passive and choke her psychological growth. In this regard Head says that the patriarchal attitude toward a woman’s position in a family and the stifling care and after all, the failure to view the harmful effect of “forced inactivity” and “forced passivity” on a woman’s psychology ironically drive the protagonist to the verge of insanity (Head 2). Indeed, both Charlotte and Sylvia Plaths attempt to point out that the harmful effect of male dominance is a built-in construct of a family with all its norms and regulations in modern society in which women are, in a way, mannered to conform to the male dominance while pursuing their own desires. Crucial Roles of Family and its Patriarchal Structure Charlotte does not totally overlook family as ‘the smallest but the most important unit’. For Charlotte family is important for its members. But she simply reminds her readers of how the patriarchal structure of family can be harmful for a woman. Nicolas Cage also in the film “Family Men” upholds the importance of the family. But at the same time, he sees family as a system that can circumcise a man’s freedom, as it is in the case of Jack Campbell. Nicolas Cage’s hero Jack was a free man and he cannot understand the importance of a family. But in the alternate universe, he lives in a family, and understands its importance. He understands that though family cuts one’s freedom short, human being needs it. According to Joel Charon, family has a huge effect on a variety of social constructs, as it plays crucial roles in providing the individuals with emotional catharsis during the hours of psychological or physical crisis (Charon 47-56). Charlotte notes that if the relationship between a husband and a wife is based on equal emotional participation, it will rather drastically damage a woman’s mind. On the surface level, John apparently appears to be a loving and considerate husband, who is extremely aware of her wife’s wellbeing. But a careful reader will notice that John’s attitude to Jane is overt and infused patriarchal notion of a woman’s incapability to do intellectual work, as in this regard Barbara A Suess says, “Any astute reader cannot help but perceive the conscious irony inherent in Janes overt pairing of her awareness of Johns counterproductive medical advice with her (supposed) verification of his sagacity and devotion” (5). John may be wholehearted for Jane’s wellbeing and he will not allow her to write, because intellectual work like writing is not healthy women’s psychology. Charlotte continually objects to this censoring behaviour of John. Referring to the choking situation of Jane in John’s household Hotchman says, “The narrator is reduced to acting like a cross, petulant child, unable to stand up for herself without seeming unreasonable or disloyal” (7). The author says that this male dominated family structure is healthy at all because in it, a woman does not have any “say in even the smallest details of her life” and forced to “retreat into her obsessive fantasy” (7) like the protagonist of the story. Role of Family in Children’s and individual’s Wellbeing Unlike Charlotte, Hayden, in the poem, “Those Winter Days”, says that family is important for children’s wellbeing but parents must know how to behave with a child. Otherwise, children will grow a mixed feeling of respect and hatred for the parents, as the poet has a mixed feeling for his father. The poet’s father is a cold mannered person. So even though his father gets up from bed in the morning and makes the room warm with the fire, he does not “ever thanked him” (“Those Winter Days”). Rather he slowly “would rise and dress,/ fearing the chronic angers of that house”. He feels that his father is a caring person. Yet he cannot love her because he strict follow rules, as the poets says, “What did I know, what did I know / of loves austere and lonely offices?” Now the question that arises here is whether the family that Charlotte depicts in her story is a healthy family or not. Indeed if examined in terms of Kreppner and Lerner’s definition of healthy family, John and Jane’s family is not healthy at all. In such family structure, optimal parenting for is not possible because the wife’s free role is greatly overlooked by her male counterpart. The imprisonment that John’s family imposes on his wife is ultimately not healthy for her. Therefore the readers view the horrifying psychosomatic alteration in the protagonist’s life. A woman who is expected to comply with the expectation of her society as well as the society must be forced to suppress her own desires, as the protagonist of the story does in her condition. Cruelty and Selfishness of Family Members Gilman’s story fairly suggests that even if John is a caring husband, the family is a harmful sanatorium for women, because John is a selfish man. In the same manner, Shirley and O’ Connor, in their stories, reveal that the family members may be cruel and selfish. In the “Lottery”, tells about the cruelty of the friend and family members under the disguise of affections and helpfulness. In the stories, the families push one of their members to death, each time they are selected by the lottery. But they commit this crime of killing under the supposition that they brings good to that man, as Lori Voth says, “A yearly event, called the lottery, is one in which one person in the town is randomly chosen, by a drawing, to be violently stoned by friends and family” (1). In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, John also commits the same crime of suffocating the psychological development of the heroine under the supposition that he is caring for her wellbeing. In this regard she handles several symbols, the yellow wallpaper, the sanatorium, even the character of John himself, to portray a woman’s psychological ailment in it. The distorted figure in the yellow wallpaper symbolizes the forced inactivity of women in a male dominated society. Gilman upholds women’s position as passive pacifiers of men’s sexual hunger and therefore they should not do any type of work more than what the circumstance requires them. Even if the husband is careful for his wife’s wellbeing, it is impossible for them to perceive what the ailment of a woman really is, because they are blindfolded by the social view of a woman. John S Bak says that what men think of the betterment of women is their mere observation from a remote point of view (23). Since men never can merge themselves with a woman’s self and therefore they cannot feel what is felt by women. But as the protagonist herself in the story is restricted and constrained, she can feel the agony of the imaginary crippled woman who is bandit in the yellow wallpaper. She is confined within the sanatorium-like family that represents the entire society, as in this regard, she says, “I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did” (Gilman). Also referring to the symbolic significance of the yellow wallpaper, Barbara Suess says, “To intensify the irony of his transformation, Gilman has her narrator aggressively express her annoyance that John has fainted since she now has to run "right over him.” (6). Conclusion In the modern society there is a mounting trend to demoralize the marital system as a mere social construct of the patriarchal authority. Traditionally it views family as marriage-induced “fatherhood” and “motherhood” as the stereotypes of man’s authority and woman’s subservience. Yet family is “the natural framework for the emotional, financial, and material support essential to the growth and development of its members, particularly infants and children”” (International Year of the Family). Accordingly Charlotte’s story also does not undermines the importance of family, rather it denigrates, not the family, but the oppressive dominance of the male as well as the patriarchal structure of the family. Works Cited Bak, John S. "Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Foucaldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper." Studies in Short Fiction. 31.1 (1994): 39-46. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 25 Feb. 2010. Cage, Nicolas. Family Men. 02 December, 2010. available at Charon, Joel. The Meaning of Sociology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 2002. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Feminist Story Collection. New York: Bookshaw. Hayden, Robert. “Those Winter Days”, 02 December, 2010. available at Head, Tom, “Why Girls are "Dumb at Math", 23 October, 2006. 11 April, 2010. Available at Hochman, Barbara. "The Reading Habit and The Yellow Wallpaper." American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography. 74.1 (2002): 89-110. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 25 Feb. 2010. Jackson, Shirley. “Lottery”, 02 December, 2010. available at Kreppner, Tonya and Lerner, R. Martin, "Individual Development and the Family System: A Life-Span Perspective." In: K. Kreppner and R.M. Lerner, eds. Family Systems and Life-Span Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1989, pp. 15-27. O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, 02 December, 2010. available at Plaths, Sylvia. “Daddy”, 02 December, 2010. available at Suess, Barbara A. "The Writings on the Wall: Symbolic Orders in The Yellow Wallpaper." Womens Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 32.1 (2003): 79-97. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 25 Feb. 2010. Voth, Lori, “Analysis of "The Lottery”, 20 November, 2010. available at Read More