the yellow wallpaper.

i recently read this short story called the yellow paper, written by charlotte perkins gilman and published in 1892. it’s an extremely thrilling psychological story and it is considered a work of art for many feminists. even though i don’t really like the whole feminist movement as much as i should because i am a female… i rather a humanist! but anyway, i love this story! gilman was a wife, mother, and a women’s right activist. gilman lived during a time where she felt women were prevented from venturing beyond their home units which dramatically hindered their necessary intellectual and creative growth. gilman spent a lot of time journaling her thoughts about never completely satisfying everyone in her family and something had to change. women need to have the opportunity to cultivate work and growth whilst making connections outside of their home. gilman wrote many essays with strong concerns of concepts of social reform and her observations of the progressive change occurring around her, along with other poems, short stories, and an autobiography. gilman married young in her twenties and one year later, gave birth to a daughter. it was after giving birth that she suffered from what we know now was postpartum depression. doctors were not very knowledgable during these times and cured gilman with absolutely nothing except what they called a ‘rest cure’. A rest cure as they called it back then is a length of time during which the patient will do minimal physical activity and can only engage in very limited mental stimulation because doctors believed postpartum depression was just a patient with a lot of nervousness, hysteria, and excessive thinking. gilman and her husband john move into a large house for the summer after the birth of their daughter. her husband decides this would be good for his wife since she is suffering from insane behaviors postpartum and this will lead to her rest cure treatment until she improves. john decides to let her stay in an upstairs room that use to be a former nursery, one with bars on the windows, scratches on the floors and busy yellow wallpaper. john is also a doctor and believes he knows best for his wife. he has told her that she should not write anything even though she loved to and improvement will come by sticking to a strict schedule of not doing absolutely anything. She disagrees and believes that distractions will suit her best, continues to write, and hides her journal. gilman mostly wrote entries of descriptions of the house, imaginings of things going on nearby, and epiphanies of her true feelings for her husband’s oppressive ideas. she finds her room ugly and the wallpaper often because of how much it frightened her. since gilman spends a majority of her time in this room she becomes fixated on objects and grows an obsessive attachment to them. she begins a strange habit of crawling around the room and convinces herself she is a trapped woman who was once living as the wallpaper as well. this story prevailed with a theme that women are kept in a kind of prison in marriage and in life when they are forced to live without personal growth and non domestic experience. eventually her husband passes out and dies, and she escapes. i’m glad she escaped and continued to publish more work.

during the 19th century, marriage was a very different situation compared to the modern love arrangements we are use to seeing now. women could not vote or involve themselves in any kind of politics and god forbid if you got pregnant and were not married.

some stereotypes that women had during these times: weak, passive, timid, domestic, illogical, emotional, susceptible to madness, hysteria, dramatic, dependent, pure, content, private

some stereotypes that men had during these times: powerful, active, brave, worldly, logical, rational, individual, independent, able to resist temptation, tainted, ambitious, sexual/sensual, public

it’s pretty clear that these stereotypes are the total opposites. doctors believed that women “true” women felt little or no sexual desire, and that only abnormal or “pathological” women felt strong sexual desire. a man’s sexual desire was acknowledged but it was thought that masturbation or frequent sex could damage a man’s health or even distract him from his goals and work. if he didn’t control himself, he could destroy his life. marriage was seen as the only proper arrangement for moderate sex. same sex sexual relationships or frequent sex were seen as being unnatural and evil.men would have pre-marital sex with servants or prostitutes.doctors believed that if a woman became too involved in her studies, her uterus would become dysfunctional and it will lead to madness.

the ignorance was real. . .i’m glad i don’t live during these times, but i do appreciate the history lesson that came along with this creepy story.