Madness in Yellow Wallpaper

 

Dr Beata Williamson 14.04.2019

Michał Poruba  Poruba  II BA - A, group 1 Gdańsk   The Yellow Wallpaper   - Insanity and Liberation

Mental instability and insanity is a theme t heme that is as much widespread as it is old. In ancient Greek myths an example is Heracles, who massacres his wife and children because of Hera’s curse. curse. In “Hamlet” Ophelia loses her will to live and kills herself becau se of being rejected and mocked by Hamlet. Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 “T “The he Yellow Wallpaper” is a story centered around the theme of worsening of mental health of the unnamed female main character. In order to cure her postpartum depression she is confined in a room to rest and is visited by two characters - her husband John, a physician, and her sisterin-law Jennie. The woman starts seeing strange patterns pa tterns on the wallpaper in her room. In the end she concludes that there is a woman behind the pattern. She destroys the wallpaper and claims herself to be the mysterious imprisoned woman. In this essay I will anal analyze yze the characters of the narrator and John, J ohn, as well as explore four critical opinions on the sstory. tory. In my opinion, the story is a tale about John’s John’s conviction  conviction of self-infallibleness causing the insanity, with a central theme of narrator demanding personal freedom.

 

 

In his work Alan Brown carries out an analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper  from  from a purely

 psychological standpoint. At the very beginning, beginning, he cites the author herself saying that the story is based on her own experience of having her own mind deteriorated because of a rest cure, advised to her by Dr S. Weir Mitchell. “I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.”1 He also points out that the seeing of hidden, anomalous message in the t he pattern of a crudely finished wallpaper by the narrator might be caused by b y her belief in the paranormal 2. Brown points to a research according to which people who believe in supernatural were more likely to recognize faces and other familiar shapes in places where there are none - pareidolia. The narrator indeed likes the idea of the mansion she is confined to as a mysterious place: „…aa hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house … but that would be asking too much of „… fate! Still I will proudly declare that t hat there is something queer about it.” it.”   Brown also suggests that the narrator starts imagining the woman hidden because she is lonely, akin to creating an imaginary friend in one’s mind. I disagree with this opinion,  because I believe that the narrator considers herself to be an imprisoned woman, and that the wallpaper figure is in fact her, but mirrored in her psyche. Some critics have a feminist approach to the story. Azra Ghandeharion and Milad Mazari claim that the pattern of the wallpaper symbolizes a prison cell in which the narrator is locked. Already confined to a room that she cannot leave, the real wallpaper pattern is claimed to be  prison bars, whereas the imagined sub-pattern is a woman struggling struggling to escape, “which embodies all the women restricted by the rules and regulations of a patriarchy. ”3 What is more, the narrator is constantly under control of her well-mannered, but ultimately dictator 

   

Wallpaper’:: Another Diagnosis” Diagnosis” July 1st, 2014, page 2   Brown, Alan. „‘The „‘The Yellow Wallpaper’  Brown, Alan. „‘The „‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Wallpaper’:: Another Diagnosis” Diagnosis” July 1st, 2014, page 3 3   3  Ghandeherion, Azra, Mazari, Milad. „Women „ Women Entrapment and Flight in Gilman’ Gilman’ss ’The Yellow Wallpaper ’”, ’”, November 29th, 2016, page 2

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like husband, who uses his status of a physician as an ultimate argument for keeping his wife doing only what he, an omniscient authority, tells her to do. I agree with these t hese claims - a woman behind the bars might indeed be the right interpretation of the imaginary wallpaper wraith, as the narrator loathes her her confinement and wishes to be let out. Also John clearly is too much of an authority in that marriage - he keeps kee ps his wife locked, she is forced to rrest est with all sort of intellectual activity acti vity strictly forbidden, he looks down upon all protest and she can only live in one room out of an entire mansion, as if she was a decorative plant. One thing I do not agree with Ghandeharion and Mazari is the idea that the imaginary “eyes” on “eyes” on the wallpaper symbolize “male gaze”. I find this to be an overinterpretation of pareidolia. pareidolia.   An another essay with a feminist approach has been written writt en by Chalak Ghafoor Raouf and Helan Sherko Ali. According to them, John is not a well-intentioned ignoramus, but instead he is an abusive tyrant who uses psychological manipulation and appeals to his authority in order to make his wife more subservient, creating cre ating a meek puppet. They suggest that the narrator is not actually in postpartum depression, but is actually being gas lighted by John to make ground for an easier manipulation4, and that the narrator is relocated relocate d to a uninhabited area for the purpose of isolating her. Raouf and Ali see John as obsessed with controlling his wife, worried not because he is a physician ph ysician and a husband, but because he admittedly loses control. While this is an interesting take on the story, I do not think that the situation is that extreme. The part where the narrator becomes paranoid par anoid because of her degrading mental health “He “He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind. As if I couldn't see through him!” him!” Raouf and Ali present as „This way, the narrator became smarter, and gained the power of her mind to resist resis t John.” As I believe believe  that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story about insanity, I do not agree with such an interpretation.  interpretation.  

The Helpless Angel in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper ” Raouf, Chalak Ghafoor, Ali, Helan Sherko, July-September Jul y-September 2018, page 5  4

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In his essay Enough essay Enough to make a body riot  Jeremy  Jeremy MacFarlane argues that the struggle of the

narrator is a one-woman riot against oppression of an abusive husband5. MacFarlane claims that even though the story’s sickroom is supposed to cure neurasthenia, it is located in a place that resembles a prison, and is tainted with repressive gender roles of a husband that does not want to hear any criticism, and who trivializes trivializ es her protest by saying that all of iitt is just fancy. I agree with this interpretation. In the end of the nineteenth century many men indeed thought themselves to be intellectually superior to women, which, combined with having medical education, is a basis for John’s stubborn refusal to accept the his wife’s wife ’s point  point of view. In the end, John’s inability to listen and delusion of being all-knowing on the subject of mental health, despite himself aggravating the case, cas e, culminates in his wife’s insanit insanity. y. In a twisted way, however, despite losing sanity, she becomes free - the door to her cell are open, and the tyrant husband faints, relieving her of his presence. Moreover, she believes herself to  be freed from the wallpaper, both by destroying it and by escaping from its imaginary prison. In that way, the central themes of insanity insanit y and liberation are fused, just like the narrator and the woman from the wallpaper.

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 “’Enough

to make a body riot’: riot’ : Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Chester Himes, and the Process of Socio-spatial Negotiation”, Negotiation”, MacFarlane, Jeremy, 2014, page 4