Review: The Yellow Wallpaper
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Continuing on the trend of reading stories which follow a ‘Less is more’ philosophy, the contender for this week was ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I had entered the story intentionally blind, and mistaking it for a terror tale of sorts; I guess the title had given me Poe vibes for things within the wall, or wallpaper.
For such a short read, I went through several theories as to what it truly was as I read it. First I thought it was a typical horror tale set in a dilapidated gothic home. Then it seemed like the narrator’s fall to insanity, or a thriller where the doctor husband was fabricating the wife’s insanity for some nefarious means, and finally an allegory for the oppressive life of women at the time. Turns out it was part of all of the above.
Admittedly, after the first reading, my mind was too focused on the surface level narrative. Perhaps, I reasoned, the narrator was undergoing a mental health crisis, brought about by the death of her child, possibly due to her action, or lack of. The husband and the family were hiding things from her so as to not further fracture her psyche, and the whole narrative was one from an unreliable agent, The truth would be revealed at the end, the women in the wallpaper would turn out to be the narrator driven to insanity and transformed beyond recognition.
On the second reading I began to take notice on what was said, versus what was implied in subtext. The unnamed narrator, always was quick to reassure herself, that her husband was very loving and caring, and all that he did was for her own good. Even when he did things against her wishes. What she said ran counter to what his actions elicited in her, the suffering she felt.
John (Doe) under the surface is a patronizing, bigoted and controlling spouse, who dictates his partner’s daily regimen based on the half baked theories of some other shill Silas Weir Mitchell, a real life doctor, regarding whom the author’s mouthpiece has little good things to say. He proposed something called the ‘Rest cure’ for women suffering from depression which came to all the wrong conclusions.
The narrator being subjected to this regime despite her misgivings drowns further in depression and hysteria; even when John and his sister Jane (hah) insist she was getting better.
Confined to the large home, told to rest and remain bedridden, not even allowed to go out and socialize, the narrator begins to see things in the baroque yellow wallpaper of their bedroom. Figures of creeping, tired, sickly women who are trying to break out from within the frames. As the story progresses, the women in the wallpaper start to resemble the one outside it. Until, in the final moments, she devolves completely into the psychedelia brought on by the most terrifying of all human conditions; being alone with one’s own thoughts.
The ending is left ambiguous, the story for the most part is; but hints are given here and there. A baby who is mentioned maybe twice, unnamed, whose fate is unknown. The women itself, what ailed her can at best only be surmised to hysteria and (likely) postpartum depression.
At one point I was so fed up with her obsessing over the patterns and the wallpaper, and wondered why she was so worked up; only to slap my head and remember what the title of the story was.
Subtext and background
Being An avid reader of creepypastas, as I read through the story, I had a certain ending in mind, expecting. Like in Lovecraft’s ‘The Outsider’, the narrator was the monster all along, I imagined the women reaching the apex of insanity, and in the climax killing Jane & Joe. Or them looking on in horror at something she committed, while she wonders ‘why are they looking at me like I’m someone insane’; or even the classic ‘She was cradling the corpse of a dead baby thinking it was still breathing’.
When the story ended in either an ambiguity, I was inclined to go back and read it again. This time trying to read between the lines; which is when the real narrative emerged. What the narrator says, how she feels, and how things are in actual are all different. To wit, to understand you need to know events as they transpired in the author’s life and the real life people involved. Or in this case person
John (Doe); the ‘loving’ husband
John, the well educated, respected physician, comes across at first as a caring, loving husband who wants only to help the narrator regain her health. And she agrees, repeatedly asserting his virtues.
But her actions, and countenance tell a different tale. She writes in secret from John and his sister Jane who had expressly forbidden her from doing so. She loves John, but hates how controlling he is when it comes to her food, medicine, social activity and even sleep. She loves Jane for being a good housekeeper, but resents her for going alone with this ‘treatment’.
In many ways, contrary to his intentions John comes across as patriarchal, chauvinistic, patronizing and bigoted.
Dr. Mitchell; and the ‘Rest Cure’
Silas Weir Mitchell, who is mentioned unflatteringly in the story was a 19th century physician known for discovering certain medical conditions; but infamous for prescribing his ‘rest cure’ to treat women suffering from depression and Hysteria.
A regimen which involved keeping the women in isolation for 4-8 weeks, not allowing them to engage in ‘stimulating activities’ such as reading, writing, definitely nothing physical. Then there was the diet rich in fats, meats and other rich foods to ‘healthen up’ the women, like fattening of the livestock. The women had no say in the matter, in a time when men had full authority and say over the lives of their counterparts and prescribe them treatments unfounded in actual clinical evidence.
Concerns raised by the narrator as to her deteriorating mental state was often ignored or written off as ‘women being women’. So on one side she was subjected to all the above and othe other denied any activities which gave her joy and purpose, like writing.
The male equivalent of the same regiment, the so-called ‘west cure’, involved having men undertake vigorous physical activity and write about their experiences. Something tells me that old silas took the whole ‘men are from mars and women from venus’ phrase a little too literally.
The women in the yellow wallpaper
Throughout the story, our narrator sees visions of a pale, impoverished, creeping sort of woman in the wallpaper and the surrounding; who is trying to get out of the wall. She ‘creeps’ a lot. Creeping through the roads and lanes; the garden and grape arbours; through the windows and mostly from behind the yellow wallpaper. Played for the horror troupe, this is in ways a manifestation or representation of her inner psyche; her intellect. For while her body was being fed and made healthy, her mind was deprived of its fuel and forced to atrophy, which caused her to seek out other avenues for release of her unbridled imagination, to tragic results.
When confronted with inactivity, isolation and boredom, the human mind is forced to confront its innermost thoughts, which it does to great lengths to ignore. With only time at her hands, the narrator is forced to acknowledge the part of her that resents the patriarchal nature of her husband and society, which forbids her from living life as she sees fit.
The yellow of the wallpaper, yellow which is often associated with cheerfulness, sunny, bright times here is transformed into a color of jaundice, weakness, and perceived malaise.
The nameless/ generic characters
The yellow wallpaper has an unnamed narrator as protagonist, and two supporting characters with the generic names, John & Jane. This was an intentional decision by Gilman. By leaving her unnamed, the narrator became the vessel for many women at the time who were subjected to similar experiences. While John and Jane became the caricatures of caricature of those who implemented and supported such practices.
Which brought to my mind another work,a Malayalam movie from 2021, ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’. That too dealt with social commentary in regards to the role imposed upon women, her ‘place in the kitchen’. There too the characters remain unnamed, referring to each other by generic honorifics. She is the woman, he is the husband, the father in law, mother in law and such. Here too, the decision of prescribing ambiguous identity to characters serves to portray them as the representation of the collective whole.
Final thoughts
One doesn’t need hundreds of pages of plot and story to craft a powerful work which can move your emotions. Nor does one need Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness while crafting their prose (look it up). An idea, expressed using the right words can often do the trick.
View all my reviews
Continuing on the trend of reading stories which follow a ‘Less is more’ philosophy, the contender for this week was ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I had entered the story intentionally blind, and mistaking it for a terror tale of sorts; I guess the title had given me Poe vibes for things within the wall, or wallpaper.
For such a short read, I went through several theories as to what it truly was as I read it. First I thought it was a typical horror tale set in a dilapidated gothic home. Then it seemed like the narrator’s fall to insanity, or a thriller where the doctor husband was fabricating the wife’s insanity for some nefarious means, and finally an allegory for the oppressive life of women at the time. Turns out it was part of all of the above.
Admittedly, after the first reading, my mind was too focused on the surface level narrative. Perhaps, I reasoned, the narrator was undergoing a mental health crisis, brought about by the death of her child, possibly due to her action, or lack of. The husband and the family were hiding things from her so as to not further fracture her psyche, and the whole narrative was one from an unreliable agent, The truth would be revealed at the end, the women in the wallpaper would turn out to be the narrator driven to insanity and transformed beyond recognition.
On the second reading I began to take notice on what was said, versus what was implied in subtext. The unnamed narrator, always was quick to reassure herself, that her husband was very loving and caring, and all that he did was for her own good. Even when he did things against her wishes. What she said ran counter to what his actions elicited in her, the suffering she felt.
John (Doe) under the surface is a patronizing, bigoted and controlling spouse, who dictates his partner’s daily regimen based on the half baked theories of some other shill Silas Weir Mitchell, a real life doctor, regarding whom the author’s mouthpiece has little good things to say. He proposed something called the ‘Rest cure’ for women suffering from depression which came to all the wrong conclusions.
The narrator being subjected to this regime despite her misgivings drowns further in depression and hysteria; even when John and his sister Jane (hah) insist she was getting better.
Confined to the large home, told to rest and remain bedridden, not even allowed to go out and socialize, the narrator begins to see things in the baroque yellow wallpaper of their bedroom. Figures of creeping, tired, sickly women who are trying to break out from within the frames. As the story progresses, the women in the wallpaper start to resemble the one outside it. Until, in the final moments, she devolves completely into the psychedelia brought on by the most terrifying of all human conditions; being alone with one’s own thoughts.
The ending is left ambiguous, the story for the most part is; but hints are given here and there. A baby who is mentioned maybe twice, unnamed, whose fate is unknown. The women itself, what ailed her can at best only be surmised to hysteria and (likely) postpartum depression.
At one point I was so fed up with her obsessing over the patterns and the wallpaper, and wondered why she was so worked up; only to slap my head and remember what the title of the story was.
Subtext and background
Being An avid reader of creepypastas, as I read through the story, I had a certain ending in mind, expecting. Like in Lovecraft’s ‘The Outsider’, the narrator was the monster all along, I imagined the women reaching the apex of insanity, and in the climax killing Jane & Joe. Or them looking on in horror at something she committed, while she wonders ‘why are they looking at me like I’m someone insane’; or even the classic ‘She was cradling the corpse of a dead baby thinking it was still breathing’.
When the story ended in either an ambiguity, I was inclined to go back and read it again. This time trying to read between the lines; which is when the real narrative emerged. What the narrator says, how she feels, and how things are in actual are all different. To wit, to understand you need to know events as they transpired in the author’s life and the real life people involved. Or in this case person
John (Doe); the ‘loving’ husband
John, the well educated, respected physician, comes across at first as a caring, loving husband who wants only to help the narrator regain her health. And she agrees, repeatedly asserting his virtues.
But her actions, and countenance tell a different tale. She writes in secret from John and his sister Jane who had expressly forbidden her from doing so. She loves John, but hates how controlling he is when it comes to her food, medicine, social activity and even sleep. She loves Jane for being a good housekeeper, but resents her for going alone with this ‘treatment’.
In many ways, contrary to his intentions John comes across as patriarchal, chauvinistic, patronizing and bigoted.
Dr. Mitchell; and the ‘Rest Cure’
Silas Weir Mitchell, who is mentioned unflatteringly in the story was a 19th century physician known for discovering certain medical conditions; but infamous for prescribing his ‘rest cure’ to treat women suffering from depression and Hysteria.
A regimen which involved keeping the women in isolation for 4-8 weeks, not allowing them to engage in ‘stimulating activities’ such as reading, writing, definitely nothing physical. Then there was the diet rich in fats, meats and other rich foods to ‘healthen up’ the women, like fattening of the livestock. The women had no say in the matter, in a time when men had full authority and say over the lives of their counterparts and prescribe them treatments unfounded in actual clinical evidence.
Concerns raised by the narrator as to her deteriorating mental state was often ignored or written off as ‘women being women’. So on one side she was subjected to all the above and othe other denied any activities which gave her joy and purpose, like writing.
The male equivalent of the same regiment, the so-called ‘west cure’, involved having men undertake vigorous physical activity and write about their experiences. Something tells me that old silas took the whole ‘men are from mars and women from venus’ phrase a little too literally.
The women in the yellow wallpaper
Throughout the story, our narrator sees visions of a pale, impoverished, creeping sort of woman in the wallpaper and the surrounding; who is trying to get out of the wall. She ‘creeps’ a lot. Creeping through the roads and lanes; the garden and grape arbours; through the windows and mostly from behind the yellow wallpaper. Played for the horror troupe, this is in ways a manifestation or representation of her inner psyche; her intellect. For while her body was being fed and made healthy, her mind was deprived of its fuel and forced to atrophy, which caused her to seek out other avenues for release of her unbridled imagination, to tragic results.
When confronted with inactivity, isolation and boredom, the human mind is forced to confront its innermost thoughts, which it does to great lengths to ignore. With only time at her hands, the narrator is forced to acknowledge the part of her that resents the patriarchal nature of her husband and society, which forbids her from living life as she sees fit.
The yellow of the wallpaper, yellow which is often associated with cheerfulness, sunny, bright times here is transformed into a color of jaundice, weakness, and perceived malaise.
The nameless/ generic characters
The yellow wallpaper has an unnamed narrator as protagonist, and two supporting characters with the generic names, John & Jane. This was an intentional decision by Gilman. By leaving her unnamed, the narrator became the vessel for many women at the time who were subjected to similar experiences. While John and Jane became the caricatures of caricature of those who implemented and supported such practices.
Which brought to my mind another work,a Malayalam movie from 2021, ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’. That too dealt with social commentary in regards to the role imposed upon women, her ‘place in the kitchen’. There too the characters remain unnamed, referring to each other by generic honorifics. She is the woman, he is the husband, the father in law, mother in law and such. Here too, the decision of prescribing ambiguous identity to characters serves to portray them as the representation of the collective whole.
Final thoughts
One doesn’t need hundreds of pages of plot and story to craft a powerful work which can move your emotions. Nor does one need Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness while crafting their prose (look it up). An idea, expressed using the right words can often do the trick.
View all my reviews
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