Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman

¶ … Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman and "To build a fire" by Jack London are two classic short stories dealing with man's struggle for survival against powerful antagonistic powers. In "Yellow," this power is the demonstrated in the form of medical community and the society while in London's story, it is nature itself. There is a difference between these forces for one story doesn't appear to hold nature responsible for whatever happens to the protagonist while the other cannot find any enemy other than nature itself. Both stories also speak against isolation and loneliness. Isolation is the worst possible way of curing a person because it only leads to further destruction and decay of the human mind, body and soul as evidenced in the Yellow Paper. And it is loneliness and the stubborn desire to survive without anyone's help that ended a "man's" life in "To build a fire."

The fact that "Yellow Wallpaper" is an attack directed at the medical community of late 19th century is supported by writer's own confession. She admits that after having suffered serious melancholia for years, she was ordered complete rest in isolation which only increased her illness to the extent that she was at the verge of nervous breakdown. She was also refused the pursuit of any intellectual activity which further aggravated her condition. This prompted her to speak against such medical intervention and thus appeared the Yellow Wallpaper. "For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia -- and beyond. [I went] to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived….I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over." (Gilman, "Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper").

Gilman's disillusionment with the medical community is also clear from the story itself where the husband John is a physician and doesn't think there is anything wrong with his wife. "John is a physician, and perhaps -- (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) -- perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster….If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression -- a slight hysterical tendency-- what is one to do?"

The woman in this story suffers on account of the wrong advice of medical practitioners of her day who couldn't connect mental illnesses to anything substantial and thus recommended isolation as the only cure. The society of the time didn't support women's intellectual activities and hence doctors denied their mentally ill patients the right to enjoy something other than domestic chores. This only compounded the problem and hence Gilman decided to speak against such medical approaches. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman placed the rest cure in the cultural context of late nineteenth century. The story was a metaphor for the lives of middle-class women trapped in other people's expectations;…" (Patarca-Montero, p. 4)

Gilman readily spoke against isolation and its decaying effect on human mind and in a way that is exactly what Jack London says in his story, "To build a fire." In this story, a man decides to travel alone in sub-zero temperature to meet his friends after ignoring the advice that it was not safe to travel alone. The word "alone" is important here because it somehow seems that the protagonist believed that he could have survived the weather if he had not been alone. The fact that the weather couldn't have worked for anyone is completely ignored by the man as he focuses on his utter loneliness. He knows there is no man to help him out and that survival on one's own is not possible especially when in the face of hostile natural forces. "The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below."