Yellow Wallpaper and the Female

Yellow Wallpaper and the Female Gothic Tradition Feminist authorship has been an apt forum for protest throughout literary history. By its very principle, the notion of a female writer flies in the face of conventional gender expectations, with a prohibitive patriarchal perspective long depriving women of educational, social and occupational opportunities. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1899 narrative, "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator employs an almost absurdly servile sentiment and an emotional bluntness that, in concert, constitute an articulate critique of society's rampant sexism in a most dark fashion.

The narrator, a woman who suffers from boredom and depression, is quite clearly a well-adjusted and self-aware individual who is, therefore, prone to introspection, ambition and intellectual inquisitiveness which, consistent with the Gothic traditions of American turn-of-the-century writing, formulated in the dark and overlooked corner of society. To the point, these are all qualities which were regarded in her time as distinctly and positively male, with the socially proscribed roles of women providing no outlets for such inclinations.

Utilizing the bland and concealing nature of the yellow wallpaper as a symbol for the hidden volition of the self-liberating woman, Gilman submits a sharp and well-conceived criticism of gender inequality that helps to formulate a Gothic tradition which is distinctly female. It is useful first to refer to the text by Clemens (1999) which provides us with a constructive definition for the Gothic movement into which Gilman inserted her story.

The central argument of Clemens' text is that the Gothic tradition was essentially a form of protest which set its sights on the emotional core of its readers. The idea that certain social inequities existed and were perpetuated in a shadowy part of the American psyche and home would, according to her argument, promote a writing designed to provoke instinctual disgust.

Namely, Clemens makes the point in the introduction to her text that subsets of the American population -- women in the case of Gilman's writing -- would attempt through Gothic forms to engage readers and to cause them to reconsider assumptions about social relationships and demographic distinctions. To the point, the narrator's marriage serves as a perfect vessel for exploration of the imbalance between the sexes, with the extremity of her husband John's chauvinistic proclivities starkly highlighting the story's central thrust.

John is a caricature of the haughty, dismissive and unconsciously malicious 19th century male, demonstrating callously the ill-treatment to which female emotion was subjected. A physician, John recommends that his wife sleep all day in order to revive her 'nervous' health. The narrator, for at least the first half of the piece, characterizes frequently her depression, her misgivings about her life and her grievances with the 'big room' all as personality faults, encouraged in this belief by her husband.

She remarks, with no small degree of irony, that John "is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction." (1) Such special direction includes an insistence that she cease thoughts of a career, adventure, visits with stimulating acquaintances and especially writing. These prescriptions only drive the woman further into depression, invoking a sense of guilt over the inconvenience of her condition to her loving husband.

She laments at one point, "I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!" (1) It is the author's intent to draw a response of disgust from the reader here, effectively forcing a recognition of the institutionalized prejudices which barred women from even expressing themselves emotionally, let alone growing according to their wishes. The narrator's description of her sister-in-law provides a telling foil to her own crushing malaise.

Noting it in explicit contrast to herself, the woman observes that "she is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!"(1) This provides a useful point of inflection as to the limitations truly placed upon women and motivating a sense of despair which is fully dismissed by society.

As the text by Davison (2004) contributes, "given that the narrator in Gilman's tale is a femme couverte who has no legal power over her own person -- like her flesh-and-blood counterparts at the time the story was published -- and that her husband is a physician whose pronouncements about his wife's illness are condoned by a spectral yet powerful medical establishment, it is no wonder that his wife grows increasingly fearful of him and suspects him of conspiring with his sister against her." (Davison, 48) This helps to drive what the research discussed here will promote as a distinct literary tradition to be known as Female Gothic, so-named for the shared condition of American women during the time of Gilman's writing, who lived in obscurity in spite of the instincts and inspirations driving them to desire more.

In the narrator of this story, these instincts become a cross to bear, particularly in the way that they seem to threaten her empowered husband and a sister-in-law content in servility. This scenario carries with it the clear "implications of Gilman's choice of what later came to be classified as the Female Gothic mode, a form that is generally distinguished from the traditional Gothic mode as it centers its lens on a young woman's rite of passage into womanhood." (Davison, 48) This passage is driven home by the titular analogy.

When the symbol of the yellow wallpaper comes into play, shapeless and revolting but quite visibly falling away from the walls, its representation simultaneously of a sort of molting into womanhood and of an ugly female docility and domesticity is clear. The correlation between the rite of passage and the acceptance of a bland and uninspired context denotes something of the nation and culture into which this type of literature was maturing.

Its sharp critical stance denotes a categorical rejection of the idea that America's modernity and familial stability were to be seen as inherently progressive. Here is where the author not only cites a problem of typifying Gothic discontent, but also offers a solution. First, it is reflected in her obsession with a figure, theretofore unseen, now becoming gradually more apparent within the tasteless wallpaper pattern. The narrator notes that "the faint figure behind seemed to shake.