The Yellow Wallpaper: Subjugation of Women - Research Paper Example

“The Yellow Wallpaper Subjugation of Women. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, can beviewed through several prisms: as a Gothic tale, as a tragic narrative, as a horror story, as a psychological thriller. However, whatever be the view adopted, there can be little doubt that the story is, first and foremost, “one that offers the detailed and chilling account of a woman's entrapment, defeat, and movement toward madness--one caused by patriarchy,” (Hume,ebscohost.com). In the simplest terms of reference, it is the story of a woman’s subjugation. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is set in a rigidly patriarchal world in which every aspect of a woman’s life - family, marriage, class, and legal, educational, and economic system, is strictly under the control of male authority (Davison, 53). It is a telling indictment of the confinement that a nineteenth-century woman writer was subjected to in a male-dominated society. The atmosphere of the house, in which the story unfolds, is one of rigid control and autocratic routine. In this setting, Gilman’s narrator emerges as a woman whose individuality and creative abilities are stifled by the patriarchal system, which ultimately drives her to insanity. The leitmotif of the narrative is the subjugation of the narrator by patriarchal authority. This subjugation takes several forms. The narrator’s marriage itself is a form of imprisonment. She is also subjugated by societal expectations, which demand her conformity to the sexist stereotypes of the age. The medical establishment arbitrarily enforces its will on her. Finally, her efforts at rebellion are crushed under the weight of male authority. The narrator’s marriage is the foremost form of subjugation. Gilman delineates the marriage as a form of imprisonment, in which the husband, John, is the benevolent gaoler: “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction” (Gilman, ebscohost.com). The marriage has unequivocally made the narrator a prisoner within the domestic sphere. This is a criticism of the convention of the period, under which the married woman “was frequently commodified and became a femme couverte under established law—a woman whose autonomy and identity were denied as she was regarded as her husband’s property” (Davison, 55). John dictates his wife’s every move. “I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day” (Gilman, ebscohost.com). She feels that she is kept under constant surveillance. Jennie functions as a stand-in for John during his absences. The narrator becomes a prisoner whose every action is subject to scrutiny and analysis all the time. She is under the surveillance of patriarchal society, which is represented by John and his sister. The house itself is symbolic of a prison, with its isolated location, and the garden with “hedges and walls and gates that lock” (Gilman ebscohost.com). Again, the description of the room in which the narrator lives evokes an image of a prison, or a mental asylum: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls” (Gilman ebscohost.com). This impression is further strengthened by the image of the bed which is nailed down to the floor, and the restraining gate at the head of the stairs. As her sanity progressively declines, the narrator imagines the yellow wallpaper also to be a part of the surveillance machinery. She declares that “two bulbous eyes stare at you” and “those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere” (Gilman ebscohost.com). She transfers her feeling of imprisonment to the yellow wallpaper, and begins to visualize the bars of a prison in the pattern. She imagines a woman imprisoned behind these bars, struggling to get out: “And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern -- it strangles so” (Gilman ebscohost.com). The narrator begins to identify herself with this imagined woman imprisoned in the wallpaper. The yellow wallpaper comes to symbolize the “oppressive structures of the society in which [the protagonist/narrator] finds herself” (Seuss ebscohost.com). The narrator’s subjugation at the hands of her husband, and her imprisonment in the house and in her room, is compounded further by the dictates of the gender stereotypes of the age. Gender stereotyping constitutes a major tool in the subjugation of women in the story. The feminine ideal is that of a caring mother and dutiful, docile, submissive wife, who is content to confine herself to the domestic sphere. This ideal is embodied by Jennie, who is “a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession” (Gilman, ebscohost.com).  Unquestioning obedience to the husband is called for. John is the deciding authority in every sphere of the narrator’s life. She is completely deprived of choice. Her opinion about her medical treatment is disregarded. Her preference for the room downstairs is arbitrarily over-ruled by John, in favor of the room with the yellow wallpaper, which she detests from the beginning. Her desire for the stimulating company of Henry and Julia is denied by John, who substitutes the very staid “Mother and Nellie and the children” (Gilman ebscohost.com). The narrator’s relationship with her husband is characterized on every level by condescension on his part, coupled with the arrogant assumption of authority, based on the “patronizing belief that “Father” knows best” (Seuss ebscohost.com). The narrator is treated like a child who is incapable of mature decision-making: she is confined in a nursery and John uses child-like terms of endearment, calling her “a blessed little goose” and “little girl”. He carries her upstairs and reads to her, as one would to a child. Her opinions and aspirations are not taken seriously. She says, rather cynically, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (Gilman ebscohost.com). The narrator’s writing ability, imagination, and creativity, are suppressed by her husband, as these are opposed to the female stereotype prescribed by patriarchal Victorian society. John perceives her story telling to be a weakness, which is detrimental to her health, and has no qualms in forbidding her to write. Here the imagination is defined as weak and feminine, while the practical is attributed to masculinity and strength: “John is practical in the extreme” (Gilman ebscohost.com). This stifling of her inherent creative abilities is one of the cruelest forms of subjugation. She is enslaved by “the constraining ideology of femininity” (Davison, 60). It is no wonder that the narrator comes to identify completely with the imagined woman is the yellow wallpaper, who is imprisoned behind bars and feels strangled. This feeling is further compounded by John’s refusal to consider her suggestions regarding her medical treatment. The narrator’s helplessness in the face of her husband’s assumption of total control over her health is strong evidence of the subjugation of women in the story. Gilman's story “chronicles how women have been socially, historically, and medically constructed as not only weak, but sick beings,” (Seuss ebscohost.com). “The Yellow Wallpaper” is based on Gilman’s own negative medical experiences, and is an indictment of the male-centric medical profession of the period. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell prescribed a “rest cure” as the treatment for the author’s post-partum depression (Gilman, ebscohost.com). He dictated that she should "never touch pen, brush, or pencil," and “devote herself to her domestic duties and her child” for the rest of her life (Gilman, ebscohost.com). This treatment led to a worsening of Gilman’s condition. In the story, Gilman’s narrator is subjugated by John, who combines "the professional authority of the physician with the legal and emotional authority of the husband," (Hume ebscohost.com). Her opinions as to her treatment are completely disregarded by John. She yearns for stimulating company, and the open freedom to write. “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good,” (Gilman ebscohost.com). John condescends to her as an all-knowing, paternalistic male: “I am a doctor, dear, and I know” (Gilman ebscohost.com). He is confident that he knows what is best for her, and expects her to blindly submit to his will. He says, “Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?" (Gilman ebscohost.com). The narrator feels that writing would be cathartic for her and “relieve the press of ideas and rest me” (Gilman ebscohost.com). It can be argued that it is John’s suppression of her imaginative tendencies which compounds her slide into madness. Instead of giving vent to her imagination through her writing, the narrator invests the yellow wallpaper with imaginary qualities. The narrator’s authority over her very self is usurped by the patriarchal medical profession. Again, it is in the guise of superior medical knowledge that her attempts at rebellion are arbitrarily crushed. The narrator’s rebellion against male subjugation runs throughout the story. Gilman characterizes her as a revolutionary with a deceptively submissive exterior. She has an extremely cynical attitude to the institution of marriage, which women are supposed to hold in veneration: she says, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage,” (Gilman, ebscohost.com). Her tongue-in-cheek observations provide comic relief in the midst of the dark chronicling of her descent into madness. For all her overt acquiescence to John’s superior qualities as a physician, she says “John is a physician, and perhaps-- that is one reason I do not get well faster,” (Gilman ebscohost.com). She appeases John only to lull his suspicions, and make him believe that she carries out his instructions explicitly. She admits that she does not value his stifling concern for her. “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes,” (Gilman ebscohost.com). For all her exterior posture of appeasement and submission, she rebels against “that identity that her husband (and his patriarchal society) had inscribed on her,” (Seuss ebscohost.com). Her passionate desire to help the woman imprisoned in the wallpaper in her attempts “to shake the pattern” (Gilman ebscohost.com) is symbolic of her rebellion against the patriarchal society’s prescription of a pattern for her to follow. Her writing is her greatest act of rebellion. She resorts to stealth and deceit to continue her writing – “There comes John, and I must put this away,” (Gilman ebscohost.com). In fact, the narrator’s surrender to insanity can be construed as her final act of rebellion. In her madness, she is no longer subject to her husband’s authority. She is finally beyond the reach of his strictures.  Her cry, "I've got out at last --- in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" (Gilman ebscohost.com) has a triumphant ring. Even as the reader is horrified by her final madness, one cannot miss the irony in the narrator’s assumption of the commanding role at long last. It is she who maintains her calm and instructs her husband, as one would a child, speaking to him “several times, very gently and slowly,” (Gilman ebscohost.com). It is John who gives vent to his emotions, finally indulging in the very feminine act of fainting. The narrator’s irritable “Now why should that man have fainted?” (Gilman ebscohost.com) is an ironic role reversal. Although her rebellion is crushed by social forces too strong for her to oppose, the narrator carves some kind of a pyrrhic victory out of her rebellion. The subjugation of women is the dominant theme in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The narrator may be considered as the epitome of Victorian womanhood. She is subjugated by the institution of marriage, in which she loses her autonomy and identity. She is imprisoned in the domestic sphere. She is expected to conform to the attributes of gender stereotyping imposed on her by an autocratic, patriarchal society. Her creative and intellectual powers are summarily dismissed as feminine fancies. The all-male medical profession usurps her control over her own physical and mental health, ignoring her personal experience. Finally, the narrator’s attempts to rebel and challenge the constraints of patriarchy are crushed by the prevalent social forces, and she surrenders to madness as the only escape from the subjugation of her life. Works Cited. Davison, Carol Margaret. Haunted House/Haunted Heroine: Female Gothic Closets in“The Yellow Wallpaper.” Women's Studies; Jan/Feb2004, Vol. 33 Issue 1, p47-75, 29p. 11 July, 2011. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=11794606&site=lrc-live Hume, Beverly A. Gilman's Interminable Grotesque: The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Studies in Short Fiction; Fall91, Vol. 28 Issue 4, p477, 8p. 11 July, 2011. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=9705041537&site=lrc-live Perkins Gilman, Charlotte. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literary Cavalcade; May2001, Vol. 53 Issue 8, p14, 7p. 11 July, 2011. file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/USER%20i/Desktop/The%20Yellow%20Wallpaper.htm#db=a9h&AN=4388217 Suess, Barbara A. The Writing's on the Wall Symbolic Orders In “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Women's Studies; Jan/Feb2003, Vol. 32 Issue 1, p79, 19p. 11 July, 2011. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=9063692&site=lrc-live Read More