TrishaWehrle

Seeing Yellow

After reading The Yellow Wallpaper, and a brief history on the life of the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the motives that she had for writing the story ran a lot deeper than one might suspect. Gilman lived from 1860-1935 and she disagreed with the constraints that society placed on women during her lifetime. Women were supposed to stay at home and do the cooking, cleaning, and raising of children. Because she found that this way of life was strangling the life out of her and because she was influenced by strong women like her Great Aunt, Harriet Beecher Stowe, she became a leading Theorist of the women's movement during the turn of the century.

I found that many of the events in Gilman's life found their way into this famous short story. Like the woman in the story, Gilman suffered from severe depression after giving birth to her only child. She hated the confines of marriage and ended up leaving her husband. She also consulted Dr. Weir Mitchell, a nerve specialist who imposed his "rest cure" upon her. In Short Story Criticism, Gilman is actually quoted saying, "the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways." The symbol of the story to Gilman's life, was not the only one I found in The Yellow Wallpaper.

In an article I found at the library, Loralee Macpike says, "The furnishings of the narrator's room become a microcosm of the world that squeezes her into the little cell of her own mind, and the wallpaper represents the state of that mind. " She is confined to an old prison-like nursery, which symbolizes her status in society. She is like a child, where socially and economically she must be led by an adult, her husband. Her husband suggests that writing is dangerous to her health, but it is really only dangerous for him because it may lead to her being economically independent, and he might lose his control over her.

The bars on the window represent her inability to change her place in society and the immovable bed represents her sexuality. She is not close with her husband and she is anable to care for her child, the product of her sexuality.

Obviously, the biggest symbol in the short story is the yellow wallpaper itself. The wallpaper becomes a symbol of the narrator and her unfullfilling life. The wallpaper surrounds and torments her like her physician husband.

"John is a physician. . . perhaps that is the one reason I do not get well faster"

Gilman is criticizing men and doctors with this statement, and does not agree with their controlling behaviors. John says in the story, "You really are better dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a Doctor, dear, and I know." I think that Gilman also is criticizing women by describing "a smouldering unclean yellow" wallpaper. The narrator is yellow for not standing up to her husband.

The narrator transforms and learns how to act perfectly in her world to please others like the wallpaper that "changes as the light changes." She eats when her husband is around and she does not cry in front of him. She becomes obsessed with saving the woman from the wallpaper, but just like the woman in the wallpaper, she cannot escape her life, "nobody could climb through that pattern-- it strangles so."

I found it interesting that although men are controlling women throughout most of the story, do you think it is significant that Gilman ended her story with John fainting and his wife crawling on top of him (maybe showing male weakness and the eventual triumph of women?)

Like we discussed last class about how every story has an origin, and whether or not it was important to know if John Henry was real or not, DO you think it is imperative to know about Gilman's real life experiences to understand this story and her motives for writing it?

Lastly, Do you think that she really was living in an old nursery, or were the items in the room contraints for the crazy woman?