Evaluating Narrating and Describing

¶ … Charlotte Perkins Gilman entitled "The Yellow Wallpaper." The best way to evaluate this essay is by identifying the various thematic elements prevalent in it. These include the waning sanity of the protagonist, the intransigence of her husband, and the subjection of women to the will of men that typified the lives of women at the time that this story was written. Such an evaluation will most likely end in a conclusion that Gilman was subtly protesting the noxious effect that men have on the lives of women, particularly husbands' own wives, as a salient social issue.

There are several passages in this work of literature in which it is clear that the author is suffering from some sort of mental illness -- or, perhaps more accurately, is recovering from one and is attempting to prevent a relapse. Part of her mental illness, the author alludes to, stems from her prowess as a writer. There are passages within this work when the protagonist alludes to the fact that she used to imagine things as a child -- which more than likely connects with her work as a writer. However, it is clear that due to their circumstances the protagonist finds herself in -- largely bedridden in a room in which she abhors the wallpaper -- that her sanity is adversely affected. She initially has a feeling of foreboding about the wallpaper, which eventually transforms into craziness. Whereas earlier in the story she believed that she could see a woman moving about in it, later on near the end of the story she posits that there are many women spawned from the paper, and reflects "I wonder if they all came out of the wall-paper as I did?" (Gilman, 2008). This passage denotes that the protagonist believes that like the other women she has imagined coming from the wallpaper, she did too. Considering such a notion in the context of writing a story is using one's imagination creatively. Considering such a notion seriously shows that one is going crazy, which is what happens to the protagonist.

The stubbornness of the husband, John, of the protagonist is amazing, and appears to be directly attributable to her slowly slipping sanity. For the protagonist, John is much more than a husband -- he is her physician, her dictator, her master, and the one who truly seals her fate (Caruso, 2007). Virtually the first thing the narrator explains about her husband is the fact that "he does not believe" (Gilman, 2008) that she is ill, which carries some degree of rectitude for the simple fact that he is a formally trained medical doctor. However, there are a number of instances in this tale in which the protagonist's husband directly ignores and overrides her own concerns about her health and the house that she and her husband are staying in. He will not let her pick what room will be hers (even though it is her room!), he will not let her write (forcing her to sneak and hide the fact that she is doing it), and will not let her leave the house even when she explicitly asks her too (Gilman, 2008). He patronizes her by calling her "little girl" (Gilman, 2008), and simply believes that he has every right to enforce his will upon her and usurp her very being in the process. As such, it appears that John is directly attributable to the craziness that infects the narrator, since he refuses to take any of the necessary measures that she asks for to prevent them.

It is fairly clear from reading this story and other salient works of literature written around the same time when The Yellow Wallpaper was initially published -- virtually anything by Kate Chopin -- that the narrator's subjection to the will of her husband was fairly common for women. Viewed from this perspective, one can see that the virtually all of the men in this short story are the dominant enforcers of the lives and livelihoods of the women. The protagonist asserts the fact that her "brother is a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing" (Gilman, 2008) that she is not sick and that her feelings on the matter are not important. The fate of the narrator, then does not rest on her own volition, and her own need to engage in what the author refers to as "work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite" (Gilman, 2008). Instead, it rests in the will power of men, who are directly to blame for her lapse into some form of insanity. Therefore, there are certain elements of this tale in which the oppression of women is not only salient but also one of the principle themes of this piece of literature. The story appears to be as much about insanity as it is the fact that men's imposition on women can drive them to insanity. From a sociological perspective, then, this aspect of "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is extremely important and deserving of a wide readership to hopefully change this social problem which, although certainly not as pervasive as in the declining years of the 19th century in which Gilman wrote, still exists.