Perkins Gilman\'s the Yellow Wallpaper

Yellow Wallpaper

The year is 1888, the place is America, the scenes include a country home in rural Massachusetts (where the woman of the house is Dorothy Pilman), a newsroom with typewriters clicking and clacking constantly, and a doctor's office in New York. The reporter is given access to the Pilman family and is invited to conduct interviews.

A Reporter's Narrative

Today, a typical day in the 19th century, American women are looked at as the weaker sex, and doctors are performing some controversial procedures in attempts to "cure" women of their maladies. The woman of today struggles with any illness because the "…male dominated medical establishment attempts to silence women" because males understand women's health problems better than women understand themselves (Cutter, 2001). After all, what do women know about their own bodies and their minds in the late 19th century? Experts like doctors see women as "silent, powerless, and passive," and after giving birth, which is their main purpose in life, many women fall into a state that doctors (including psychologists and psychiatrists like Sigmund Freud) called "hysteria" (Cutter).

There are few very few liberated women in 1888; in fact feminism is not in every dictionary, and women who espouse viewpoints based on feminism are rebuked in this society. A woman like Dorothy who has become depressed following the birth of her child is confined to bed as part of her treatment. In an interview with a female psychologist / author who has observed the treatment of women who are believed to be ill, the author rejected "the rest cure" as a treatment for women. "It is basically a prison for women," the psychologist -- who has been outlawed in Massachusetts from practice because her theories demean male doctors -- explains. There can be great harm to come to women who are forced to be bedridden as an attempt to cure their post-partum blues, the psychologist explains. "Dorothy has turned over complete control of her body to the doctor," and hence she is completely powerless to participate in her own treatment or "diagnosis," and is "forced to submit to her husband in this case, who happens to be the doctor," the psychologist explains.

The psychologist points out that doctors like Ernest Jones, a British physician, who was accused of forcing women to masturbate to cure their hysteria, must not be allowed to practice in the United States. Other doctors (including London's Dr. Isaac Baker-Brown) were conducting clitoridectomies (removing the clitoris) on women as a supposed cure for hysteria. After all, as Baker-Brown would say after a clitoridectomy, "…intractable women became happy wives; rebellious teenage girls settle back into the bosom of their families, and married women former averse to sexual duties became pregnant" (Maines, 2001).

"You have to understand," the psychologist explained to this reporter in her clean, well-lighted office in New York, "…the fact that a woman can easily stimulate her own clitoris, and that she doesn't need intercourse to achieve an orgasm, is terrifically threatening to the medical mainstream." "Why?" The reporter asked. Because, the psychologist said with a smile, "…that represents a woman's independence from the male's need for power over her." The psychologist mentioned that when the vibrator was invented it was designed to be used only in the doctor's office, so he had control over a woman's pleasure. "Men need to control women's sexuality," she continued, "and so part of the reason for the vibrator is also to make the orgasm more intense than the woman could do with her fingers; again, males devise strategies and technologies in order to be in control of women and their sexuality."

"Do you think misogyny was part of the story with these doctors?" The reporter asked. "No," the psychologist replied, "probably not. But the male needs to dominate and control women, and like the doctor you mentioned in Massachusetts, that is a very powerful social force."

Women were discouraged from writing in this era, and when a reporter inquired about this oddity, the psychologist explained that the male establishment (especially physicians) frowned on women's written narratives because by writing, a woman is establishing an identity, "and that could create an avenue of defiance for a woman. Women have very few rights in this era," the psychologist / author explained. "My office is not listed in the community directory because I don't want males interfering with my work," she explained with a series of heavy sighs.

Meanwhile, back in Massachusetts, Dr. Pilman lets the reporter into the house and brings him a glass of iced tea that the doctor has brewed while his wife Dorothy is locked into her bedroom upstairs. "Many doctors I know prescribe opium, cocaine, and chloroform for women suffering from a depressed state," he stated. "But I don't believe in using drugs. I just think Dorothy needs a long rest and I don't let her write anything because that might make her believe that she understands what is happening to her better than I do," Dr. Pilman declared to the reporter. "May I speak to your wife?" The reporter asked. "No, not at this time," the doctor answered. "She has been crawling around the room like a cat, and isn't herself," he said.