Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper - Essay Example

The Yellow Wallpaper While reading a well-written short story such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” can provide a great deal of information to think over, reading through the criticisms of others regarding the work can provide even more food for thought. Not only does this enable one to see the story from another person’s perspective, with their unique experience and understanding, but reading through critiques can expose aspects of the story that had not been considered previously. By comparing essays, one can begin to see a world of interpretation opening within the lines of the story itself. In addition, this can illuminate the many ways in which writers can come to vastly different conclusions regarding the relevance of a single particular story, even when confronted with exactly the same words on paper. An examination into how two different students interpreted the symbolism of “The Yellow Wallpaper” will demonstrate how even very similar ideas and viewpoints can lead to greatly different applications and conclusions. The two sample essays have many similarities in the way in which they interpreted some of the key symbols of the story, primarily the meanings of the wallpaper pattern, the creeping of the woman and the peeling of the paper, but the second essay takes these themes one step further, expanding the understanding of the story into a deeper context. In the first essay, the student interprets the yellow wallpaper as a thin veil meant to trap and hide the narrator’s true personality. This is extended to the polite society in which she lives, where her husband attempts to hide her encroaching madness in a quiet country house that is “quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village.” The pattern in the wallpaper becomes the confining pattern of the narrator’s life as she maintains the schedule her husband has set for her despite her own objections and thoughts concerning her welfare. The pattern itself serves as the bars to the prison she finds herself in, with a foreign pattern to them because they are not of her making. This writer sees the creeping of the woman behind the wallpaper to be the creeping of the narrator as she sneaks around the room, hiding her real thoughts and ambitions from the jailors that set this unnatural rhythm. Yet, the woman behind the wallpaper is seen also as becoming a different persona altogether, the persona of the woman’s sanity. The peeling of the wallpaper, then, becomes not only a freeing of the woman trapped inside it, but also a peeling away of the narrator’s sanity, allowing her to escape the pattern of her organized life into madness. For the second writer, the pattern in the wallpaper is just the opposite of the confining pattern of her life as defined by her husband and society, becoming instead a conflicting pattern of jumbles and curves, abrupt stops and sudden loss that defines her inner life, the life of a woman struggling to enforce her own pattern in a world that doesn’t recognize her existence. Like the first writer, the second writer states that the woman creeping behind the wallpaper symbolizes the narrator herself as she finds it necessary to creep around if she is to do anything she wants to do for herself. But the second writer extends the symbolism, quoting, “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern – it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.” This observation leads the second writer to a similar yet different conclusion regarding the interpretation of the peeling of the wallpaper. Rather than just being the woman, or just a part of the woman, this writer sees the symbolism of the peeling of the wallpaper as a shedding of the skin, a freeing of all the women trapped behind the wallpaper, into the world of their own creations. While the second writer agrees that this action is meant to free the woman trapped inside, it is also shown to symbolize the illogical method by which women have historically fabricated their own cages within the boundaries they are given as the only means by which they could retain a measure of control over their lives. This writer also sees the wallpaper as being a safety screen for women to hide away from the real world and a screen that is being torn away in the modern world as women attain greater freedom and ability to follow their own dreams. Despite these probing looks into the symbolism as has been discussed, neither of these two writers spends much time dwelling on the symbolism of the colors yellow and green used in the story. The first writer quotes the narrator describing the wallpaper as a “repellent, almost revolting … unclean yellow.” This follows immediately after a brief discussion into the green and growing things that surrounded the room she wanted to use, but the discussion into the symbolism of the colors involved goes no further than this. The second writer, however, brings these ideas out a little better toward the end of the essay when it is mentioned that the narrator prefers to stay in her little yellow world rather than venture out into the green. “She has no desire to live in the ‘green’ world, and she chooses the ‘yellow’ familiar world instead,” this author says. This indicates that the woman has turned to the unclean and revolting yellow world that seems safe and secure despite her early recognition of its perils rather than seeking to venture into the green and growing world that she had earlier preferred. Seeing her then as a creeping yellow woman, the idea of yellow symbolizing cowardice, meekness and quiet existence becomes more apparent even as the image of green becomes healthier, more robust and infinitely more inviting. Partially because of the differences in the way each writer interpreted the symbolism of the story and partially because of the experience they brought into the reading, each writer indicates a different importance of the story to the modern reader. The first writer feels that the story speaks to men and women equally on the dangers of becoming what is termed an ‘enabler’. This term is defined as being the quintessential John, constantly doing what they feel is right that enables the person they care about to continue behaving in an aberrant manner while pretending nothing is going wrong. “They too are trapped behind the facades of normalcy they create.” This writer concludes that the moral to the story is that one should struggle against enabling anyone, especially those we love, and should instead concentrate on facing problems face to face and working through them with open honesty. The second writer, however, feels that the story speaks most eloquently about the various ways in which women and men serve to limit the potential of women, whether they are doing it to themselves or to others. Recognizing that John, despite his good intentions, has contributed significantly to his wife’s developing insanity, this writer also places an equal share of the blame at the narrator’s feet. Rather than standing up for herself and doing what she knows she must do in order to return to normalcy, this woman gives in to her husband’s demands. In the end, she is faced with a choice to go to the green world, but decides to lock herself up in the yellow room, throwing away the key. Rather than struggling for their own freedom, this writer sees many women as doing what they can to limit their freedom, quickly boxing themselves into their own yellow rooms, a process that is slowly being exposed for what it is as the modern world strips away these defenses and forces more and more women to take responsibility for their own actions. Read More