Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper - Term Paper Example

?The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s late nineteenth century story en d The Yellow Wallpaper is recognized as ic American literature, but opinions differ regarding the meaning of the story and the approach that should be used in order to grasp its deep significance. On the surface the work tells the story of a young wife’s move to an old house with her husband, and the way she increasingly becomes drawn to the yellow wallpaper that is to be found in one of the rooms. Clearly there is more to the tale than this, however, and though the story begins in a light-hearted manner, with descriptions of the strange old house, it soon turns into a much darker description of the narrator’s decline into some kind of mental illness. The language of the text appears to reflect typical speech patterns of a relatively wealthy and educated woman of that time, as is evident in the opening lines, written in the first person, which refer to antiquated concepts such as “ancestral halls” which have “something queer” about them (Gilman 1). The descriptive adjectives that the narrator uses to describe the setting are sensuous and exuberant, such as for example the “delicious” garden (Gilman 1) and the yellow wallpaper which has “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 2). This sharp power of observation contrasts with the narrator’s vague and hesitant mention of things to do with her husband’s medical work, such as for example the phrase “So I take phosphates or phosphites – whichever it is”. The narrator describes without irony how her husband calls her “a blessed little goose,” and the combination of her diffidence and his patronizing tone reveals that there is a clear hierarchy within the marriage. John dominates his wife, and she accepts infantilizing epithets as if it they are entirely natural and normal. At times the narrator uses strongly moral or even biblical language, as for example when she describes the wall-paper’s patchy appearance which shows it has been picked off despite the fact that it “sticketh closer than a brother” (Gilman 3). As the story progresses, the wallpaper assumes an increasingly powerful control over the narrator, and this is revealed in the compulsion that she feels to “follow that pointless pattern” (Gilman 4) which is endlessly repeated on the wall. Strange female forms appear in the pattern, as if they are trapped behind bars, and the subject matter of the latter half of the story is taken over by musings on the meaning of the paper, and its shifting appearance as the light changes from day to night. The implications of this point of view are that the story represents the fate of women in general, imprisoned in marital obligation, and not allowed to escape into the fresh air of the world outside patriarchal dominance. As the wallpaper takes over the story, the narrator’s own personality retreats, so that in the end the subject matter is mainly the nocturnal musings of a woman who is losing her sense of self. The narratorial point of view does not change, since the whole story is told through the eyes of the main character, but as the story progresses the subject matter becomes more bizarre. The narrator is becoming one of the imprisoned women in the pattern, and the story shows the step by step descent into this pitiful condition. Clearly the narrator is unaware of the seriousness of this mental decline, since she makes light of the change in her daily routine, and imagines that she sees the woman in the paper creeping about outside the house. This is not a rational proposition, but it is presented as a factual observation by the narrator, and no doubt makes sense to her. The narrator persona shifts from being an apparently normal woman, who has a vivid imagination and likes writing stories, into an unreliable describer of events. The growing unreliability of the narrative voice makes the ending very difficult to interpret, because there appears to be an element of delusion or hallucination in the story. Some kind of final crisis, or perhaps catharsis, is indicated, but the reader is left wondering exactly what has happened. This is a powerful way of placing the onus on the reader to supply an imagined rationale for what has happened, and a suitable ending. A benign supposition would be that the narrator is too ill to carry on the story, and a more sinister ending would be the descent of the narrator into madness or suicide. From a feminist perspective, this story can be read as the sad consequences that are bound to follow when an intelligent woman suffers enforced idleness and the stultifying pressure of a highly restrictive marriage. It could be concluded that death by suicide is a better option than to live a life controlled by men and cooped up in a narrow gender role. From a psychological perspective, the story can be read a first person account of what it is like to suffer a breakdown caused perhaps by postpartum depression or by a hereditary mental illness. The story communicates exactly what this process would feel like, and the obsession with the wallpaper can be seen as the major symptom of this illness. It eventually displaces the narrator’s own thoughts and replaces them with frightening symbols that do not make any sense. At the end of the story the narrator and reader are not able to distinguish what is real and what is fantasy. The honesty of the description, however, suggests that it does not matter how “real” the horror of the situation is, in scientific terms, since the images do exert power, and the effects upon the narrator are very real and serious indeed. Yet another metaphoric value of the wallpaper might lie in its power to convey the difference between mental and physical reality, and the power of husbands, things, and social conventions to drive people mad. The increasing fascination with the wallpaper, and the growing mismatch between the narrator’s pleasure in it, and the abnormal behavior that she relates, such as sleeping during the day and staying awake all night, reveal that she is mad. It is quite clear what has happened, but what remains implicit is the question why this is so, whether this is a condition potentially faced by all married women, and why this needs to change. The external environment of the old house and the strange wallpaper disappear into the background, and the lasting message of the story is the demise of the tortured soul whose sanity is threatened in this idyllic setting. References Dobie, Ann B. Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. 3rd edn. Boston: MA: Cengage. Print. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. (1892). Accessed on 4th July, 2012. Web. Read More