The Yellow Wallpaper: Men, Control, and Women's Oppression

Introduction: Gilman's Life and the Origins of the Story

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 and descended from a proud line of rhetoricians (Silcox). Having a way with words was in her blood. Her parents separated when she was a child, and she became accustomed to a degree of independence — but when she was pressed into marriage, she found the arrangement to be oppressive, and it contributed to her having a mental breakdown. The response of her husband was to prescribe the "rest cure" recommended by prominent physicians of the time (Silcox). Gilman did not want such a treatment, and her story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a representation of her attitude about it: she believed that women in general suffered from a kind of neglect from men, who viewed them as inferior beings. If there was to be any cure for a woman's mental breakdown, it had to be traced back to how she was treated by the men in her life.

Gilman had some difficulty getting her story published, as editors found it to be too disturbing — but with the help of a literary agent, it was eventually published in the New England Magazine. Gilman published several other stories over the course of her writing career, but "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the story that has remained most visible in the public eye, thanks in particular to its rediscovery in the 1970s during the second wave of feminism in America (Silcox). Her work was seen as important because it touched upon themes central to women — their needs, their views, their plight, and why men seemed to be so ignorant of their inner lives.

This essay argues that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a case against unhelpful men attempting to direct and control women's lives. It is a story told from the first-person perspective of a narrator who serves as a stand-in for Gilman herself. The narrator is confined to her room because of her nervousness. Her husband, a physician, insists that he knows best and will not listen to her side of things when it comes to what might help her condition. Eventually, the narrator goes mad, leading to the collapse of her husband. The story may be read as an indictment of unhelpful men who think they know better than their wives — or than women in general — how a woman is best to be treated.

The Husband's Control and the Narrator's Inner Life

The inner life of the narrator in Gilman's story is threatened by the no-nonsense attitude of her husband. He is oblivious to her creative and spiritual needs and dismisses them as problematic. The narrator states, "John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not being felt and seen and put down in figures." The narrator thus conveys that whatever her inner spiritual life may be, it is not permitted to find expression in her daily life. It is something to be suppressed, according to her husband and according to the medical community.

The fact that Gilman underwent the same treatment as the narrator indicates that the story is her own way of criticizing both that treatment and society's inexcusable attitude toward women in general. As Silcox points out, Gilman's "rest cure" was popularly used as a treatment among upper-class women — yet in her experience it was nothing short of barbaric cruelty; a treatment in which she was confined like a prisoner in isolation. Silcox notes that Gilman explained clearly why she wrote the story: it "was intended to convince Mitchell [her physician] to change his treatment of nervous disorders." A better treatment might have been for the men in her life to pay more attention to her inner needs — rather than having "no patience with faith" or any other elements of life that could not be confirmed by empirical science.

The narrator herself knows what would help her: "I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus — but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad" (Gilman). The fact that she receives no support from her husband for this alternative she herself desires indicates that she is entirely marginalized. Moreover, she is made to feel guilty for her own feelings. Yet the ludicrousness of what is being forced on her exposes the sham treatment for what it is: she is given nothing to do whatsoever — and therefore all she can do is think about her condition, the very thing her husband forbids. It is as though his conception of her were little more than that of a machine — something that can simply be turned on and off. He has no real understanding of her inner being or of herself as a woman.

Unreliable Narration, Irony, and the Failure of Love

There is also the problem of the narrator not understanding herself fully. She is what might be called an unreliable narrator, since she is having a nervous breakdown and the story is told from her perspective in a stream-of-consciousness style. The reader gets to see and experience her mental deterioration as it unfolds in real time. Yet Gilman infuses the narration with irony. For example, the narrator states, "It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so" (Gilman). The irony is that if John truly loved her and were wise, he would listen more — and she would not find it so difficult to talk to him about her condition.

It is the fact that he is recalcitrant and unfeeling toward her that leads to her deterioration. He insists she see him as a physician. He does not understand what his most important role is: to be a husband who loves and cherishes his wife. Part of the problem is that he does not know how to do this. He thinks in scientific terms, using the head rather than the heart. What she needs is someone to understand her, to help her understand herself, and to give her the comfort, trust, warmth, encouragement, and support she needs to meet the challenges of everyday life. She does not receive this kind of love from a man who insists on being a physician first and a husband only second. As Esposito states, "In the world the narrator lives in, reason equals health and imagination equals illness" ("Illness in The Yellow Wallpaper"). She has an imagination, but it is not permitted to live. Her husband wants her to be rational as he is — yet he fails to be rational in the most important sense: he does not see her as something different from but equal to himself.

Conclusion: Equality, Independence, and the Creative Spirit

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story that emerged from Gilman's own personal trauma with the "rest cure" — a treatment that did nothing to address her inner needs. She herself found the appropriate solution through writing, a creative expression that restored to her a degree of the independence she had possessed prior to her marriage. Writing also gave her an outlet for the rhetorical impulse that was in her blood from birth. The story shows how important it is for a husband to see his wife not as an inferior or as a child, but rather as his equal partner — to be loved and regarded as such, which means accepting that she may know more about herself and her own needs than he does.

Works Cited

Esposito, Carmine. "Gender in The Yellow Wallpaper." Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature, Facts On File, 2020. Bloom's Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=17332&itemid=WE54&articleId=38795. Accessed 4 Nov. 2021.

Esposito, Carmine. "Illness in The Yellow Wallpaper." Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature, Facts On File, 2020. Bloom's Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=17332&itemid=WE54&articleId=38796. Accessed 4 Nov. 2021.

Rosenberg, Charles E. "Sexuality, Class and Role in 19th-Century America." American Quarterly 25.2 (1973): 131–153.

Silcox, Heidi M. "'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" Realism and Regionalism, 1865–1914, Facts On File, 2010. Bloom's Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=17332&itemid=WE54&articleId=477054. Accessed 4 Nov. 2021.

Wayne, Tiffany K. Women's Roles in Nineteenth-Century America. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007.