The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Oppression, Repression, and Madness in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Self-preservation can reveal itself in many different ways. For a woman trapped by her husband in a large home during the nineteenth century when women's mental issues were seen as hysterical, self-preservation can look like and result in madness. Before madness, however, the narrator takes us on a journey that explores the delicate psyche of man when forced to endure unhealthy and oppressive situations. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a look into that fragile state of the human psyche seen through the perspective of a woman denied to medical attention she needs. Oppression leads to regression and that leads to anger and madness as the narrator continues to fall deeper into despair. Her attempts to write reveal the innate act of self-preservation. "The Yellow Wallpaper" illustrates the connection between madness and anger when emotion and expression are repressed.

The narrative style to this story is important to understanding the narrator's mental state. As the story progresses, the narrator begins to lose her sense of the "real" world that exists outside the nursery and her inner world. Linda Wagner-Martin points out how repetition becomes important to the unfolding of the story. When the narrator mentions the house is "quite alone" (765) and "quite three miles from the village" (765), the "repetition of quite intensifies the distance between this location and that of other people, people who might help her" (Martin). Martin also maintains that the narrator's descriptions convey the "emotional tone" (Martin) of the story. This is most clear with the narrator's descriptions of the wallpaper reflecting sin, dullness, irritation and filth. Martin also notes points out that the narrator's hate of the room juxtaposed with John's appearance "confirms her designating him her jailor" (Martin). When the narrator realizes she is left to her own devises if she is to recover at all, she turns inward and her illness manifests itself through madness. She hides her true feelings and moves closer and closer to madness. She does admit to being angry enough to burn the house but does not attempt to do so because she remembers her manners and responsibilities as a wife and mother. As the nightmare lingers the narrator's writing becomes less frequent and she even begins to speak less to John. Her narrative represents the helplessness resulting from isolation and general mistreatment. Martin claims that this story shows "what a frustrated woman does with anger" (Martin). Repression proves to be evil in this case. The narrator becomes more quiet and more mad.

Repression is the result of a greater problem in the household. The narrator in this story suffers from something, we already know but how she is treated because of this condition is the direct result of her being a woman. Because she is a woman, she cannot possible know what is good for her and she is forced to bend to will of the men in her life -- her husband and her doctor. From the very beginning of the story, our narrator expresses doubt with her treatment but there is little she can do about it. She can only write, "Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good" (Gilman 762). There can be little doubt why she feels as though she is confined to a "haunted house" (760) and it is essential to understand her protestations of treatment. The narrator writes, "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?" (762). Here she is admitting her total lack of control over anything in her life. However, at this point, she is still clinging to some sort of sanity. This will change as she begins to see no way out from this oppressive situation.

The issue becomes one of survival for the narrator. She copes in the best way she can. She realizes hope through writing, even though the supposed experts advise her against it. She should be commended for taking matters into her own hands. The narrator is confined not only within her home but also within her own mind. She is encouraged not to do anything constructive; hers is a case that commands bed rest and little stimulation. Her first attempts at therapeutic writing serve her well. She communicates her feelings and she is letting her emotions out. Writing in this situation also represents freedom. In the beginning, it is important to her and she makes herself do it, even when she does not feel like it. She writes, "If I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me" (764). Writing gives the narrator a sense of self that she seems to have lost in recent months. When she resorts to writing less and less, we see how the wallpaper emerges as something more than wallpaper. It becomes the way in which our narrator seeks relief, according to Rena Korb. She creates a relationship with it as time slowly creeps by. Her disdain for the room is lessened in spite of the wallpaper and, Korb suggests, perhaps because of it. Her discomfort decreases as she sees "mirrored in the wallpaper her own existence" (Korb). The wallpaper has two patterns; the bars and the woman trapped behind them. The only way to escape is to help the woman from behind the bars escape. Since our narrator is living behind bars, we can come to suspect that she is the woman in the paper and she is doing her best to successfully break free from the bars.

Her oppression and repression result in anger. Greg Johnson believes the story reveals a type of rage that existed within the narrator. He writes the narrator in this story is "figured as a woman grasping the bars of her prison and struggling frantically to get free" (Johnson). The narrator sleeps by days and "comes to life at night, struggling past the stifling outer pattern of the wallpaper to free the sister, the twin, the mirror image, the lost self" (Johnson). Johnson maintains, "Despite the demonic forces marshaled against her, the narrator continues to rebel; it is important to stress to extent to which she chooses to suffer rather than accept the artistic sin of the wallpaper" (Johnson). This is an important aspect of the narrator's character. On the surface of things, she might appear to be weak but she is actually exhibiting an incredible amount of strength considering her condition and what she is expected to endure. The narrator is actually attempting to save herself, Johnson states and her "visionary penetration of the paper's menacing reality that locates her own long-suppressed rage and allows its redemptive expression" (Johnson). This assertion makes sense as the narrator in this story is doing anything but lying down and doing what the good doctor advises. In short, this woman is not going down without a fight -- even if there is little fighting she can do. She does what she can. Johnson notes, "As we witness the narrator in the final scene, creeping along the floor . . . As opposed to lying still and docile under her husband's 'rest cure' -- suggests not only temporary derangement but also a frantic, insistent growth into a new stage of being" (Johnson). She may be resorting to some child-like behavior but she is not giving up. Johnson writes, "Seizing rather than surrendering to power, the narrator is thus left alone, the mad heroine of her own appalling text" (Johnson). This is an accurate account of the story's final scene. It captures the only end available to the narrator at the time.

It is important to realize the narrator is dealing with an unbending husband, which adds to the narrator's stress, among other things. John never takes his wife or her requests seriously. Unfortunately, he treats her like a child. The nursery he places her in serves as a powerful symbol of this treatment. He is overprotective in that he will not allow her to "stir without special direction" (Gilman 763). He also believes writing is not helpful to her. In fact, he declares "nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies" (764). He refers to her as his "blessed little goose" (477). While John probably does not intend to hard his wife, he does so and becomes her enemy because of his limited view of women. He is, however, responsible for adding pressure to his wife's already stressed-out circumstance. Furthermore, he places unnecessary guilt on his wife. He insists that she can get better on her own; he believes her condition does not require his undivided attention. He tries to manipulate her by telling her she is his "darling and his comfort and all he had" (767). He wants her to get well for his "sake and for our child's sake" (768). John is completely blind to his wife's needs. In fact, he is being completely selfish in this situation because he is placing himself over his wife's needs. This fact, on top of everything else, allows us to see how easily oppression could transform into anger.