The Yellow Wallpaper

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"The Yellow Wall-Paper" is a short story by author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It was first published in 1892 in The New England Magazine.

1 Plot Synopsis
2 Interpretation
3 Background
4 Trivia
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links

[edit] Plot Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story details in first-person (in the form of a series of journal entries) the descent into madness of a woman suffering from what her physician husband describes as a "temporary nervous depression — a slight hysterical tendency." The story hints that part of the woman's problem is that she recently gave birth to a child, insinuating she may be suffering from what would, in modern times, be called postpartum depression. The narrator is confined in an upstairs room to recuperate by her well-meaning but dictatorial and oblivious husband, but this treatment only exacerbates her depression.

The room is decorated with yellow wallpaper that becomes the focal point of her insanity. She devotes many journal entries to obsessively describing the wallpaper — its "yellow" smell, its "breakneck", scrawling pattern, and the fact that it leaves yellow smears on the skin and clothing of anyone who touches it. She also obsesses over the hatred she believes radiates from the room, supposing that it must have once been a nursery, and that the children who lived in it hated the wallpaper as much as she did. She describes how the longer they stay in the bedroom, the more the wallpaper appears to mutate and change, especially in the moonlight. Though at first, this mutation takes no particular form, she eventually reaches the conclusion that the figure is trying to escape the bars from the shadows, and that there is a woman creeping on all fours behind them. It then goes on to say that there are numerous women behind the wallpaper, all creeping about.

Eventually the woman descends into complete insanity, thinking she is a woman who has escaped from inside the wallpaper. She becomes so disassociated from reality that, at the end of the story, when she frightens her husband so badly he faints, she no longer seems to recognize him as her husband. He is only "that man" whose prone body is merely an obstacle in her endlessly-looping trip around the room.

[edit] Interpretation

As with many works of fiction, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" can be and has been subject to several interpretations and interpretive methods.

The story has been interpretated by feminist critics as a condemnation of the androcentric hegemony of 19th century medical profession. The narrator's suggestions about her recuperation (that she should work instead of rest, that she should engage with society instead of remaining isolated, that she should attempt to be a mother instead of being separated entirely from her child, etc.) are dismissed out of hand using language that stereotypes her as an irrational being and, therefore, not qualified to offer ideas about her own condition. Gilman indicated that the idea for the story originated in her own experience as a patient. Other feminist readings have pointed out the inequality of the marriage described in the story and have discussed this aspect of the story in relation to Victorian ideals and traditions of marriage. (In possible rebuttal to "feminist" interpretations, it can be pointed out that almost any physician of the period would have been equally dismissive of a male patient's nervous breakdown symptoms, and might have prescribed a similar regimen of "rest.")

"The Yellow Wall-Paper" is sometimes referred to as an example of Gothic literature for its treatment of madness and powerlessness. It has also been published in collections of horror fiction, which has led some to speculate that the women in the wallpaper were actually ghosts bent on driving the narrator insane, and not hallucinations. The strong feminist statements claimed for the work and the author's own explanations do not lend support to this interpretation.

In terms of feminism, it should also be noted that this short story was written during the Victorian era, a particularly stifling time for women and thus the woman's behavior can be seen as a reaction against social forces.

Another interpretation is to doubt the veracity of many of the narrator's early statements. There may never have been a husband, sister, baby, or any other characters as described in the story, meaning the entire story (or a large part of it) is the product of a deluded mind, so the reader cannot know what is true and what is not. Finally, she makes herself the woman inside the prison of yellow wallpaper, completely overtaken by her irrational reality.

[edit] Background

"The Yellow Wall-Paper" is a castigation of Gilman's own doctor, Silas Weir Mitchell, who tried to cure her from depression through a rest cure. The idea was to do nothing, certainly not anything intellectually demanding or challenging. This had a debilitating effect on Gilman as she regarded it as punitive rest more than anything else.

Though this story is not an exact record of what Gilman went through (the central theme of the wallpaper is fictional, as the author said she never had "objections to [her] mural decoration" [1]), it is extremely similar. The events of the story are not as important to the message which Gilman is trying to communicate, which is a call to action. Gilman was desperately trying to legitimatize her condition and discover an effective treatment.

[edit] Trivia

A version of it was performed on the radio program Suspense by Agnes Moorehead.
A stage adaptation was performed at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

[edit] References

Gilbert, Sandra; Gubar, Susan (1980). The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-02596-3.

[edit] Further reading

Bak, John S. “Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Foucauldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Studies in Short Fiction 31.1 (Winter 1994): 39-46.
Crewe, Jonathan. “Queering ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’? Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Politics of Form.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 14 (Fall 1995): 273-293.
Golden, Catherine. “The Writing of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ A Double Palimpsest.” Studies in American Fiction 17 (Autumn 1989): 193-201.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. “Monumental Feminism and Literature’s Ancestral House: Another Look at ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Women’s Studies 12 (1986): 113-128.
Hume, Beverly A. “Gilman’s ‘Interminable Grotesque’: The Narrator of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Studies in Short Fiction 28 (Fall 1991): 477-484.
Johnson, Greg. “Gilman’s Gothic Allegory: Rage and Redemption in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Studies in Short Fiction 26 (Fall 1989): 521-530.
King, Jeannette, and Pam Morris. “On Not Reading Between the Lines: Models of Reading in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Studies in Short Fiction 26.1 (Winter 1989): 23-32.
Klotz, Michael. "Two Dickens Rooms in 'The Yellow Wall-Paper'" Notes and Queries (December 2005): 490-1.
Knight, Denise D. “The Reincarnation of Jane: ‘Through This’ - Gilman’s Companion to ‘The Yellow Wall-paper.’” Women’s Studies 20 (1992): 287-302.
Lanser, Susan S. “Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the Politics of Color in America.” Feminist Studies 15 (Fall 1989): 415-437.