Brandi Mahon

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman is sad story of the

repression that women face in the days of late 1800's as well as being

representative of the turmoils that women face today. Gilman writes "The

Yellow Wallpaper" from her own personal experiences of having to face the

overwhelming fact that this is a male dominated society and sometimes women

suffer because of it.

The narrator, being female, is suffering from a "temporary

depression". She states right from the beginning that "John is a

physician, and perhaps--(I would not say it to a living soul, of course,

but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)-- perhaps that is

the one reason I do not get well faster." The narrator sets up the story

to convey a certain opinion of the repercussions a woman faces in the care

of a man. She obviously loves her husband and trusts him but has some

underlying feeling that maybe his prescription of total bed rest is not

working for her. The story mentions that she has an older brother who is

also a physician and concurs with her husbands theory, thus leaving her no

choice but to subject herself to this torment of being totally alone in

this room with the yellow wallpaper.

She stares at this wallpaper for hours on end and thinks she sees a

woman behind the paper. "I didn't realize for a long time what the thing

was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is

a woman." She becomes obsessed with discovering what is behind that

pattern and what it is doing. "I don't want to leave now until I have

found it out". The narrator with absolutely nothing else to do is reduced

to staring endlessly at a pattern in a wallpaper, thus creating some image

that she feels is necessary to find out. Perhaps to save her own sanity?

Once the narrator determines that the image is in fact a woman

struggling to become free, she somehow aligns herself with the woman. In

the story she mentions that she often sees the woman creeping outside. "I

see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in

those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden.... I don't blame

her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!

I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night,

for I know John would suspect something at once." This shows the narrator

seeing herself in the woman and when she sees the woman creeping outside,

she sees herself. When she creeps outside she locks the door. She is

afraid her husband will take away the only comfort she had know since she

was subjected to this "rest cure".

She continues to pursue this obsessive project of getting the

woman out. The narrator wants the woman to be free of the paper but does

not want to let her go. The woman is her sanity; "I don't want to go

out, and I don't want to have anybody come in, till John comes. I want to

astonish him. I've got a rope up her that even Jennie did not find. If

that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!"

After peeling all the paper within her reach in hopes of getting

the woman out, she states, "I am getting angry enough to do something

desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the

bars are too strong even to try. Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not.

I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be

misconstrued." The narrator appears to have no knowledge that this very

obsession might be misconstrued as well. As if everything is fine in her

world as long as she gets this woman out. She goes on to say, "I don't like

to look out of the windows even--there are so many those creeping women,

and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper

as I did? I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it

comes night, and that is so hard!" It seems she has released the woman and

it is indeed herself. As if she enjoys being out and doing as she likes

but at night her husband will be around and she mustn't creep around her

husband. He might find her mad.

But at last she finds the courage to confront her oppressor and

stand up for herself. "'What is the matter?' he cried. 'For God's sake,

what are you doing!' I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him

over my shoulder. 'I've got out at last,' said I, 'in spite of you and

Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!'

Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path

by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time! Jane is

undoubtedly, (in my opinion) the narrator herself. She not only fought the

struggle of her male dominance of a society but also of herself. She had

been a product of a society that puts woman in the lowest segment, but she

triumphs over her husband as well as herself in freeing her soul. Now she

creeps openly.

In order to read and understand this story, we must consider many

things. First the time frame in which the story was written, and that

society's attitude of the story content at that time. Written in 1892, a

woman suffering from depression was not clearly understood and was treated

with isolation. This would clearly drive any person mad. The narrator

made attempts to bring to her husband's attention what she felt was a

better way of making her better but he refused to listen and ignored her

wishes to involve herself in more activity.

The movie does an incredible job illustrating the narrator as

completely insane from day one. It didn't allow the reader or in this case

the audience to decide for themselves. When we make clips of the movie we

do indeed imprison the woman because you have no way of knowing what has

happened before or what is to come. We imprison her more because we make

judgments of a thirty second clip that could possibly affect our bias for

the movie or the story itself before we have a chance as an individual to

read the story or watch the movie.

As a female in 1995 reading this story, I had this overwhelming

desire to free this narrator from her husband and the rest of the males in

her life. She wanted company, activity and stimulation. Which any woman

of that time or this time should be freely allowed to have. Gilman did an

outstanding job of illustrating the position that women of that time, and

to an extent, of this time as well, hold in their society. This story

should hold a place in every woman's heart who is struggling to find her

place.