Analysis of "The Yellow Wall-Paper

Imagination and Practicality in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

The characters of John and Jane in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" can be seen to represent a clear dichotomy of practicality and imagination. As the story progresses we can see that, though the two states of mind can certainly co-exist in harmony, when one tries to repress or overwhelm the other, it can lead to dire consequences (Gilman). The events of the story turn "The Yellow Wallpaper" into an exaggerated example of how, when a problem is not fully understood, the solution can lead to precisely the opposite of what was intended.

Practicality serves an important purpose in life. It keeps our heads from floating off into an imaginary bliss while there is work to be done. It is the basic principle that allows a person to get up in the morning and go to work, or for a mother to care for her child even when she is utterly exhausted or sick. The practical side of human personality accepts that there is work to be done and any outside influence may lead to distraction. It enables us to follow this line of thought to its inevitable conclusion, which is that not "playing by the rules" and getting the work done will lead to far more pain and suffering down the road than the task at hand can possibly cause.

On the other hand, imagination is what sets our minds free from the daily grind of work and responsibility. Just as the old saying goes, all work and no play makes for a very dull life and very dull people. Imagination can even serve a practical purposes -- it can enable a person to be able to conjure up solutions to problems by developing new philosophies, gadgets, organizations, etc. However, if imagination is allowed to run wild on a constant basis with nothing to keep it in check then the world would fall apart. The children would not get fed, the work would not get done, the paychecks would not come in, the toilets wouldn't get fixed, etc. Imagination is not easily denied though. "The Yellow Wallpaper," shows us that imagination is a far more volatile trait than practicality (Gilbert). If repressed, imagination will come back with such a vengeance as to remove all capabilities of practicality even if the desire for practical things may have been present to begin with.

At first, Jane seems like any other 19th century physician's wife; she is submissive to her husband's will, and so ignorant of her own needs that they begin to manifest themselves in psychotic episodes ("A Tragic Triumph"). She is a writer, but this occupation is seen as an exacerbation to Jane's "affliction," so she refrains (for the most part) from writing. Not only is writing forbidden, but any activity or company of others that may stimulate Jane mentally, or inspire her, or basically engage her imagination in anyway, is strictly forbidden. Though she does find time to write this memoir, she must keep it a secret: "There comes John, and I must put this away, -- he hates to have me write a word" (13). Jane's imaginative nature slowly finds a way to express itself despite the efforts to keep it suppressed and controlled.

John, Jane's husband, is the picture of professional practicality. A diagnosis has been reached for his wife, "[h]e knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him" (14). He finds her "imaginative power and habit of story-making" as something to be avoided because he feels it aggravates Jane's condition. However, what he does not realize is that his forcing her to suppress this easily-excitable imagination is precisely what is generating her illness (Gilman;Nolaro;Snyder). It seems that, because John is a practical man by nature and by profession, he has no genuine understanding of creative impulses and the kind of personalities that generally harbor them. Since he himself does not experience the need to express himself creatively, then he cannot possibly know how much damage his prescribed treatment is causing his wife (Gilma; Nolaro; Snyder) .

The disturbance that Jane's suppression is causing is so great that she is wholly consumed by it, and she is unable to see how dysfunctional the more practical elements of her life have become (Gilbert; Snyder). In the three months that she spends in this house, she is only inspired to mention her son twice, and even when she mentions him it is in a context that is still really quite self-centered. The first time she mentions him she says, "Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous" (14). She's really only thinking of herself and how nervous the child makes her. She doesn't bother to dwell on her lack of maternal instinct, nor her absent sense of responsibility to her child (Nolaro). It seems as if the demand of practical thought and emotion, as opposed to her more natural creative tendencies, has undermined her ability to function in either state of mind (Snyder).

In the meantime, John has convinced himself that his remedies are helping, so he perpetuates Jane's rapid downward spiral into insanity ("A Tragic Triumph"). Though Jane has mentioned at least twice that the rooms on the bottom floor are much prettier than the "nursery," John continues to insist that Jane remain in the very room that is contributing to her insanity. it's possible that if Jane at least had some small thing to inspire her, like a pleasant room to stay in, she would spend her time while John is gone to town clandestinely writing fiction, and therefore saving herself (Gilbert; Snyder). Instead she occupies her hours sleeping and the only mode of expression she allows herself -- or can bring herself to -- is journaling her plummet into madness, which is hardly creative enough to be cathartic for her. John refuses to acknowledge that Jane is not improving, even in the face of Jane's constant mention of her trouble with the wallpaper in the beginning of the story. Waking to find her examining the wallpaper in the moonlight still isn't enough for him to consider another avenue of treatment, so Jane continues her descent into madness.

Jane's mental deterioration permeates her narration and is evident in every element of the story (Gilbert). Gilman ingeniously composes this short work in a manner that keeps the reader in a constant state of confusion and agitation (Snyder). There are many characteristics of the house that Jane reveals to the reader that seem to blatantly problematic, and yet Jane doesn't seem to be aware of any of these peculiarities, or the symbolic nature of it. it's all the more frustrating that Jane herself is the one delivering these important bits of information even without understanding what they mean in the context of what she has been writing. On top of all of that, the reader is even more disturbed by the situation because Jane is a narrator with such a limited voice that we're never sure whether the things we're being told about are, in fact, the reality of the situation, or just Jane's over-active imagination at work (Snyder).

For example, when they first come to the house, Jane describes the room she is staying in. She assumes it is a nursery, but her description of the bars in the windows and the rings in the walls rings ominous by sounding much more like the utilitarian decor of a sanitarium instead of any kind of nursery. Later, she informs us that the bed is nailed to the floor. This fact begs the question again of whether this was truly a nursery, for what kind of child would inspire a parent to nail down their bed?

There's also another fascinating quality to Gilman's story, and that is the reader is never really sure if these odd elements have been in place all along, or if they were the result of Jane's declining mental state. Since Jane's perception is unreliable at best, the reader is forced to wonder if she is actually incarcerated somewhere in a sanatorium, but has convinced herself otherwise (Snyder). Was that bed always nailed to the floor, or was it nailed down in the hopes of stopping her from "creeping" around the room in an unbroken circuit? Since Jane failed to report about the bed being nailed down in the beginning of the story, it is virtually impossible to know when or why the bed was nailed down. There's very little we can rely on in Jane's narration except that the wallpaper is quite the nuisance.

Even the practical nature of John and his sister have to be scrutinized closely since we are seeing them through Jane's eyes. Jane seems convinced that John feels she is improving. Her questioning herself in the beginning of the story seems to be an indication that her mental state was still at least somewhat intact since mental illness of this kind doesn't generally allow the afflicted individual the luxury of musing over whether or not they are sane. Jane's lessening of her introspection as the story progresses indicates how much further she has sunk. She doesn't question this fantasy of hers about the woman behind the wallpaper -- she obviously accepts it as fact. it's entirely possible that everything Jane has offered us in the way of details of her life in that house could be utterly fabricated (Gilbert; Snyder). Since she is our only witness, however, it is impossible to tell what is real and what is not.