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Chinonye Uzowuru

Professor Hammoud

ENG 102 HRS

26 April 2020

The Yellow Wallpaper: Finding Empowerment Through Insanity

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, presents the story of an

unnamed woman who suffers post-partum depression and has been diagnosed and issued

treatment by her husband, John, who is a doctor. Through this story, Gilman narrates her

experience receiving the ‘rest cure’ after suffering a similar ailment. With the use of symbolism,

Gilman uses the narrator’s insanity to not only save people from harmful medical cures but also

save women from the suffocating society.

The story epitomizes the relationship between husband and wife in the nineteenth

century, and society’s view of women at that time. The story is told through a journal, giving the

point of view of an unnamed woman. The identity of the main character/narrator is purposely left

out forcing the readers to identify her by her role as wife and mother instead of an individual,

According to Linda Wagner-Martin in her text ‘Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: A

Centenary’, “...the prominent characters in the story are John--who is named repeatedly,

emphatically--and their child” are constantly mentioned emphasizing how the narrator’s role as

wife and mother has become her identity. The lack of independence and self assertion is likely

one of the major causes of the narrator’s illness and the remedy suggested helps in an

unpredicted way.
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The narrator begins by describing the house in which her family would spend their

summer, calling it an ‘ancestral hall’. She acknowledges its beauty but also believes there’s

“something queer about it” describing it as “a haunted house” (Gilman 1). She questions why it

should be so cheap and why it was unoccupied for so long. She points out that the house has

“hedges and walls and gates that lock”, separate houses for the house’s caretakers and broken

down greenhouses (Gilman 2). This directly relates to her state of mind and her marriage. Her

mental instability due to depression and her unsatisfying marriage.

Her lack of mental stability leaves her at the mercy of the decisions of male figures in her

life. Her husband John and her brother, both doctors, don’t believe she is sick, and like men of

that era, believe she is only overreacting and being hysterical. She was issued the rest cure which

was used in the mid to late nineteenth century to cure “...“female” ailments such as hysteria and

neurasthenia” (Wagner-Martin). This cure entailed “seclusion, massage, electricity, immobility,

and overfeeding” (Wagner-Martin). John and her brother concluded that this would help her

recover, it would bring her back to normal, “by which they mean “appear as a normal female in a

world created by and for men”,” according to Loralee MacPike in ‘Environment as

Psychopathological Symbolism in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.

The narrator’s need and desire to be heard and to express herself is completely

disregarded, forcing her to write a journal in secret. According to Rula Quawas in ‘A New

Woman’s Descent into Insanity’, the narrator is torn between her personal feelings and “the

patriarchal society's view of what is proper and decent behaviour for women” (44). She disagrees

with the decisions of her husband, but does as he wishes to please him. Instead of staying in the

attractive bedroom downstairs she liked, John isolates her in the nursery upstairs, a room with
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barred windows, nailed down bed and a hideous, damaged wallpaper which she greatly disliked.

Physically, she was trapped in the room by the barred windows and by her husband, and

mentally, trapped in her mind because she was deprived of self expression. Through her writing,

the narrator develops a “superior sanity” and a form of liberty, through self assertion, even if it is

only enjoyed in secret (Quawas 40).

She continually complains about the yellow wallpaper in the nursery, but her complaints

fall on deaf ears. John states that if he changed the wallpaper, “after the wallpaper….it would be

the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs”

(Gilman 4). Gradually, she becomes fond of the wallpaper and tries to understand it. Firstly, she

sees heads due to her desire for interaction, but they frighten her because of their “broken necks

and….bulbous eyes” (Gilman 5). Then she sees bars, once again referring to her imprisoned state

in the room, and then she sees a woman trapped behind the bars, with whom she identifies with.

Both she and the woman in the wallpaper are restricted and have no control over their situation.

This new goal of deciphering the wallpaper gives her the drive she had been yearning for,

allowing her to have an intellectual activity besides writing and she appears to be getting better

physically. Her desire for freedom from her husband’s control shifts onto the woman in the

wallpaper (MacPike). She believes that she must free the woman from the bars which she sees in

the pattern because “nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so” (Gilman 12). A

few weeks before she is due to leave the house, she decides that she must free the woman from

the bars and would not let her husband or his sister know because “[i]t does not do to trust people

too much” (Gilman 13). At night, the narrator busies herself tearing the wallpaper, until the last

day. As she progresses, she realizes how free she is, “It is so pleasant to be out in this great room
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and creep around as I please!” (Gilman 15), at this point it is obvious that the narrator and the

woman in the wallpaper are halves of one individual. The entire ordeal was aimed at reuniting

with a part of herself which had been suppressed.

Gilman’s story protests against a societal norm, the suppression of women. A direct call

for women empowerment, it urges women to take control of their lives and seek something

more, something beyond marriage and child bearing. It encourages women to claim their

individuality, to take charge of themselves. The experience of the narrator of “The Yellow

Wallpaper” shows that if women didn’t take claim over their individuality, they could eventually

lose everything including their mind.

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Works Cited

MacPike, Loralee. “Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in ‘The Yellow

Wallpaper’.” ​Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism,​ edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg,

vol. 201, Gale, 2008. ​Gale Literature Resource Center,​

https://link-gale-com.essex.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/H1420082948/LitRC?u=essexcc&sid

=LitRC&xid=c64f6089. Accessed 17 Apr. 2020. Originally published in ​American

Literary Realism 1870-1910​, vol. 8, no. 3, Summer 1975, pp. 286-288. Accessed 19

April 2020.

Quawas, Rula. “A New Woman's Journey into Insanity: Descent and Return in ​The Yellow

Wallpaper.​ ”​ AUMLA : Journal of the Australasian Universities Modern Language

Association,​ no. 105, 2006, pp. 35-53,147-148​. ProQuest​,

https://search-proquest-com.essex.idm.oclc.org/docview/194686452?accountid=10764.

Accessed 16 April 2020

Wagner-Martin, Linda. “Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper: A Centenary.” ​Short Story

Criticism​, edited by Janet Witalec, vol. 62, Gale, 2003. ​Gale Literature Resource

Center,​

https://link-gale-com.essex.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/H1420051944/LitRC?u=essexcc&sid

=LitRC&xid=7fbdd2ba. Accessed 16 Apr. 2020. Originally published in ​Charlotte

Perkins Gilman: The Woman and Her Work​, edited by Sheryl L. Meyering, UMI

Research Press, 1989, pp. 51-64. Accessed 17 April 2020.