The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman was it insanity or a cry for freedom
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman was it insanity or a cry for freedom“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tells the story of a women trapped in her own life. The woman in the story reveals her desire to break free from the confines of her marriage and her life. The story then goes on to reveal her relationship with the wallpaper in her room and the feelings she has that causes her to go insane. Although this is the story of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s life was very much like the woman in this story. As we look at this story, Gilman was able to portray a woman’s descent into madness, due to her own fit with a similar disorder.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on July 3, 1860 in Hartford Connecticut. Although her parents separated when she was young, her father remained constant in her life. He emphasized on her education, especially reading in the sciences and history. Gilman’s only formal education was Rhode Island School of Design. As a teenager, she was a commercial artist, art teacher, and governess. By the age of twenty-one, she was writing poetry that described the limitations of being female in late 19th century New England (Pringle, 131).
Stated by Doneskey, in the year of 1884, Gilman married Charles Stetson and had a daughter together. With the marriage not doing so well and the birth of her child, Gilman suffered from severe depression. Her husband, Stetson, placed her under the care of a neurologist, who prescribed the kind of complete rest that Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” showed. Unfortunately, this made her worse instead of better and she began writing, finding her sanity again in productive intellectual work. Shortly afterwards, Gilman left her husband and moved to California to be with her family and daughter. She continued to write on women’s issues, producing more books (1). Throughout
Gilman’s life, she would suffer from breakdowns and depressions. Her life did turn around when she would later be married to her cousin, George Gilman, and would live happily with him until his death in 1934. In 1935, though, suffering from breast cancer, Gilman took her own life by inhaling chloroform (Doneskey, 1).
Although, Gilman was not diagnosed with postpartum depression, she did develop a severe depression after the birth of her child. In order to relate this condition with the condition in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and explanation of the cause of depression and its symptoms is helpful. Gilman was thought to have this depression because of the causes stated by the medbroadcast home page. Two causes of this depression are hormonal levels that occur immediately after childbirth and being a new mother may be overwhelming with all the responsibilities (2).
Postpartum depression has a few symptoms that the woman in this story experienced. The first symptom is hallucinations. These are “sensory perceptual distortions”, such as seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling that other people would not sense and do not exist outside of ones perception. An example of this is when the woman unwillingly accepts the upstairs nursery instead of the downstairs room that opened into a piazza and had roses all over the window. Once in this room, she develops a fixation
with the yellow wallpaper and the woman behind it. Another symptom is severe insomnia. The woman shows this symptom every night when she stays up to watch the wallpaper. A third symptom is agitation. The woman becomes angry with her husband very often. There is no apparent reason for this except for her nervous condition. A fourth symptom is bizarre feelings and behavior. She illustrates this behavior by constant
crying for no apparent reason. She also dwells on the wallpaper, which is bizarre in itself, because no one should be obsessed over nonsense things like wallpaper. A final symptom is being very weak. She spends most of her time being lazy and lying in bed.
Gilman was given a doctor to look after her, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who ineffectively treated her and therefore the story of “The Yellow Wallpaper” surfaced. “The Yellow Wallpaper” showed Gilman’s views of women’s rights and the relationships between a husband and a wife but also showed the story of her struggle with a mental illness.
At the beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper” we see the comparison of her life and the life of the main character. The woman, a protagonist, who is never given a name, is married to a physician name John, who seems to be more of a father than a companion. They also have a daughter together. We learn that the woman suffers from a problem with depression. This problem is very similar to the one Gilman had in real life. During the time when this story was written, when someone had this disorder, they were to be isolated from activities. This isolation seemed like the best antidote but turned out to be the worst disorder. John only makes his wife’s disorder worse by taking her away for the summer and placing her in an old house that is “quite alone, standing well back from the road” (Gilman, 631). They go to this house because the doctor told them that she should get rest. John then confines her to a room, with yellow wallpaper, and tells her what to do. Which includes not writing, her favorite past time. Although she was told not to write, “[she] did write for a while in spite of them” (Gilman, 631). But she did not let John or his sister catch her doing so. In Gilman’s real life, after realizing she had this
problem; her husband forced her to rest. While resting she began to write. She wrote many of stories, just like the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper”.
The protagonist in this story thinks the wallpaper in the bedroom evokes a sense of anger and passion. The feelings that this woman shows correlates between the words describing the wallpaper and the feelings she seems to imply about herself earlier in her story. With the awareness of her mental state, you are told what is behind the paper: “And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” (Gilman, 636). The woman sees another woman trapped behind the ridiculous, infuriating and horrid wallpaper just as she is trapped in her horribly repressive marriage and life. Although this was the case in the story, Gilman was also referring to her actual life. She felt the same way when she was in her first marriage and had results of a depression. She also reveals that the woman in the wallpaper “seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman, 636). She sees herself in the wallpaper, desperately shaking the pattern that is trapping her, trying to get out. This relates to Gilman’s life, once again with her husband, she seemed so trapped and confined that she was going crazy. She describes the woman in the wallpaper one last time and starts to hallucinate by seeing the woman walking in the garden. This causes the reader to see how worse the condition is becoming and the imminent loss of herself.
The protagonist then decides that she is going to help the woman behind the wallpaper escape. In order to help this woman, she tears down the wallpaper from the walls. She then throws away the key to the room and rips off the remaining wallpaper. She finally freed the woman behind the wallpaper and in doing that she freed herself.
When her husband came home, she stood up with a rope around her waist, and shouted, “I’ve got out at last….in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (Gilman, 642). Although the woman is “out” of her trap, she only lost it to insanity. She breaks through the repression and stored passions, but loses her mind because of it. This is an example of how Gilman’s life ended when she divorced her first husband. Unfortunately he drove her to insanity and she never really recuperated.
Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman makes it evident that the woman is suffering from some type of postpartum reaction that has been left untreated by her husband. She is able to vividly portray a woman’s descent into madness, due to her own fit with a similar disorder. Gilman wrote the story to effect change in the treatment of depressive women and to prove to her doctor, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, that she needed more than rest to get through her depression. Although she eventually would commit suicide Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s life and her struggle to battle her depression was very well portrayed in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. She managed to break free from her husband but at the same time took a spiraling fall towards insanity. Gilman reveals the ironic tragedy that repressing one’s true self results in the loss of self.
Works Cited
Doneskey, Renard Dr. American Literature. 1860-Present. 25 April 2000. http://www.digitex.net/renard/gilman.htm.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Peter Simmon 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1998. 630-642.
Http://www.medbroadcast.com/health_tropics/womens_health/postpartum/index.shtml
Pringle, Mary Beth. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide From Colonial Time To Present. Ed. Lina Mainiero. Vol. 2: F to Le. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co, 1980. 131-133.