Feminist Criticism of “The Yellow Wallpaper”
A woman goes insane after being stripped of her freedom.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows that a woman can turn insane if her freedom is limited. In the story, a woman suffered from postpartum depression, so her husband took her to a country house to rest for three months. He forbade her from doing any mental or physical work. With nothing she can do, the woman became obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in her room. This unhealthy obsession led to her hallucinations and insanity. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a feminist work that highlights the repression and powerlessness of women in the late 1800s.
The female narrator was essentially trapped under her husband’s control. John, her husband, was both a highly respected physician and the man of the house, so she must obey him. John believed that the narrator is not really sick, and resting would surely cure her “nervous depression” (Gilman 1). The narrator stated that she disagreed. She described “that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do [her] good. But what is one to do?” (Gilman 1). She must not rebel, since she had to follow the expectation that a good wife is docile. John went against the narrator’s wishes again when he put her in the room upstairs so that she could take in more air. Her lifestyle was at the mercy of her husband.
The room’s yellow wallpaper became a central part of the narrator’s life. At first, she detested its pattern and color. She asked John to repaper the room, but he refused. The narrator then started becoming more absorbed in figuring out the paper’s pattern. Before long, she was hallucinating. She “saw mirrored in the wallpaper her own existence. She realized that the wallpaper had two patterns; the front pattern was made of bars, and in the back pattern was a woman ‘stooping down and creeping about,’ and later shaking the bars” (Korb 286–287). Just like the woman behind the wallpaper, the narrator was also imprisoned- confined within her room and to the roles of an ideal wife. She wanted the freedom of seeking stimulation, but she must be an obedient wife and listen to her husband’s rule of resting all day.
On the narrator’s last night at the house, she decided to free the woman from behind the wallpaper. She ripped off yards of the wallpaper by herself in order to astonish John. At this point, she “acted as though she could only win a place for herself at [John’s] expense” (Haney-Peritz 120). She had always sacrificed her freedom to please John. Now, she does she wants, even though ripping the paper was against his wishes. She was challenging her husband’s power of repressing her.
After ripping off the paper, the narrator believed that she was freed. The wallpaper is a representation of male dominance in society. Its pattern is filled with twists and contradictions, just like how the narrator has many thoughts that contradicts her husband’s. Her disagreements are kept to herself. The wallpaper’s pattern is also only explored by the narrator. Removing this paper is removing the narrator’s oppression. When John came into the room, she said, “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 10). The narrator believes that she came out of the wallpaper. No one can put her back behind the paper, behind the bars of unjust treatment.
The narrator no longer regards John as a caring husband. He is the enemy that restricted her everyday activities and dismissed her needs. By removing the wallpaper, the narrator “removes the chains of oppression. She manages to remove enough of the wallpaper to free the woman behind the bars and never to be imprisoned again” (Stefanovici). The narrator’s defiance against her husband shows her independence. Her rebellious actions went against traditional gender roles, showing that she is no longer the powerless woman at the mercy of her husband. She can make her own decisions and freed herself from the stifling role of a wife and mother in the late nineteenth century.
In the end, the narrator feels alienated from John and male dominance in her life. Her husband fainted right in front of her, since the scene of the narrator creeping around with large shreds of wallpaper ripped off the wall is hard to take in. Instead of addressing him as “John” or “my husband,” the narrator writes, “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!” (Gilman 10). The man is no longer a central, controlling part of the narrator’s life. He became “an inanimate object, one that only gets in the way” (Korb 287) of her creeping. She did not care to check if John is all right or call for help. This disconnection from John shows that the narrator escaped his oppressive rule and paved the way to her freedom. She creeps as she pleases without worrying about what John will think. Since she is already free, she no longer needs to write in her secret journal to express herself. The story ends here.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” explores a woman’s struggle to escape the oppression under her husband. John constantly belittled the narrator’s needs and prevents her from doing activities that she enjoys. She then hallucinates women trapped behind the wallpaper, mirroring her own experiences of being trapped by her husband. She finally freed herself from the role of a submissive wife through ripping off the wallpaper and disregarding John as she creeps around. Gilman’s work reveals how a wife loses herself in serving her husband. She is imprisoned in her own household by male family members. This lack of freedom can lead to hallucinations and other mental illnesses. Instead of controlling his wife, a husband should listen to her needs and give her permission to do activities that she enjoys.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. New England Magazine Corporation, 1892.
Haney‐Peritz, Janice. “Monumental Feminism and Literature’s Ancestral House: Another Look at ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Women’s Studies, vol. 12, no. 2, 1 Jan. 1986, pp. 113–128., doi:10.1080/00497878.1986.9978632.
Korb, Rena. “Short Stories for Students,” in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Short Stories for Students, edited by Kathleen Wilson, vol. 1, Gale, 1997, pp. 277–293. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2694800028/GLS?u=mont93762&sid=bookmark-GLS&xid= b7fb9303.
Stefanovici, Smaranda. “The Imprisoned Double.” Romanian Journal of Artistic Creativity, vol. 3, no. 1, 2015. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A418846238/AONE?u=mont93762&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid =488af15f.
