Critics view Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” as either a work of supernatural horror or as a feminist treatise regarding the controversial role of women in society. A close analysis of Gilman’s use of symbols reveals “The Yellow Wallpaper” as her response to the male view of hysteria from ancient times through the nineteenth century. ” In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman questions the validity of Hippocrates’s theory of the wandering uterus and Weir Mitchell’s “rest cure”. As she wrote in her essay “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper?
“, “[the story] was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy…” (Gilman 107). By her own account, Gilman’s purpose in writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” was to educate and inform the public of the misinterpretation of hysterical symptoms. The origin of the word hysteria expresses the belief in the inferiority of women. As James Palis writes in The Hippocratic Concept of Hysteria: A Translation of the Original Texts: “Etymologically, the term usteria (hysteria) derives from ustera (hystera), the Greek word for uterus, which means an inferior position.
Thus, usteria denotes suffering of the uterus, the most inferior organ in the female” (226). The fact that the literal translation of hystera is “inferior position” reinforces the fact that from ancient times women were viewed as physically inferior to men. Since the one major physical difference between women and men is the presence of the uterus, psychological problems that were considered to be strictly female were attributed to some malfunction of the uterus. Hippocrates first proposed in his work “The Art of Healing” that hysteria was caused by a wandering uterus (Hothersall 16).
He believed that the uterus could dislodge itself in the body and wander around the female body attaching itself to other organs. Hippocrates explained that the various symptoms of hysteria, such as nervousness, depression, and hysterical fits, were caused by the uterus’s interactions with the other organs in the body. In his text “On the Nature of Women” he explains the cause and treatment of a hysterical fit: If the uterus comes towards the liver, the female suddenly becomes speechless, and clenches her teeth, and her color comes back. “…“…
In such situations, push beneath the liver with the hand and tighten a bandage beneath the hypochondria, and by opening the mouth administer a most fragrant wine, and anoint the nostrils and apply malodorous fumigations”(Palis 227). In light of Hippocratic tradition, Gilman similarly employs symbols of prison and entrapment to represent the process of anchoring the uterus. Gilman’s symbols represent stand for the literal anchor of inequality that suppresses women within a misogynist society.
The narrator’s bedroom is the most obvious symbol of woman’s entrapment in a misogynist society. She describes the history of the room in her journal: “It was a nursery first and then a playroom and gymnasium, I should judge for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls” (257). The description of the barred windows and the rings on the walls reveals the prison-like environment of the nursery. The emphasis on the functionality as “a nursery first and then a playroom and gymnasium” suggests that the room transforms to suit all terms of imprisonment.
The narrator’s inability to escape the entrapment of society’s view of women as children who need to be watched over is reinforced in her husband’s refusal to remove the wallpaper. John said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the “heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on” (258). John represents the male viewpoint that once certain rights and liberties are afforded to women, women will demand to be equal with men.
Gilman attributed attributes the lack of respect for women as one of the factors contributing to their depression. She stresses the importance of economic equality between the sexes. She challenges the notion that though women are physically strong enough to carry the burden of childbirth, yet they are viewed as incapable of the strength of character necessary to work outside of the home. Gilman challenges the prominent Dr. Weir Mitchell’s belief that hysteria, the nervous breakdown of women, was caused when women attempted to do the work of men. According to Dr.
Mitchell, the nervous breakdown ” occurred when women were unable to handle their own physical limitations” (Bassuk)citation?. Dr. Mitchell developed a “rest cure” which he believed cured hysterical women. Mitchell’s “rest cure” was based on the premise that women were physically inferior to men. He believed that hysteria was caused by a woman’s inferior constitution. His “rest cure” consisted of ceasing all of the woman’s mental and physical labors. Mitchell believed that women should not seek higher forms of education because their bodies couldn’t handle the stress .
(Bassuk). Gilman had first-hand knowledge of the aftereffects of the “rest cure. ” Mitchell then treated her for a severe depression. She notes how her experiences with Mitchell served as the inspiration behind the writing of “The Yellow Wallpaper” in her essay “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper? “: “For many years, I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia and beyond. During the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country.
This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to live a domestic a life as far as possible, to have but two hours intellectual life a day, and never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as I lived. 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. ” (106). Gilman’s personal experiences with Dr.
Mitchell revealed the fallacies in his belief that overtaxing a weak brain caused hysteria. Gilman’s own experiences revealed the true cause of her melancholia: refraining from her innate desire to write. She concluded after her abstinence of writing that “work is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite…”(106). Gilman concluded that the denial of intellectual activity led to the disintegration of self-worth. Gilman directly implicates Dr. Mitchell as a member of the medical community with erroneous beliefs regarding female hysteria in “The Yellow Wallpaper.
” The narrator complains of her husband’s threat of treatment in her journal: “John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. But I don’t want to got there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so! ” (260). This negative comparison between John and Dr. Mitchell alerts the reader that the suppression that the narrator is exposed to at the hands of her husband parallels the oppression of Gilman by Dr.
Mitchell. The narrator describes the rest cure as prescribed by her husband: “…[I] am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again” (255). The emphasis on work as the potential cause of hysteria mirrors Mitchell’s belief that the American woman was physically unfit for work. Although the narrator questions the validity of the rest cure, she submits to the treatment. Mitchell’s belief that the cause of hysteria is the taxation of weak minds is echoed in John’s warning to his wife.
She recalls, “He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency” (258). Although from a twentieth-century point of view suppressing independent thought is ludicrous, in the nineteenth-century it was “good sense”. Mitchell’s method of rest cure treated women as children by restricting them to bed rest and forbidding them to engage in any adult activities. John’s view of his wife as a child is seen in “The Yellow Wallpaper” in the manner in which husband and wife interact.
John and the narrator do not possess a normal adult relationship. This is apparent in the way in which John refers to his wife as “little girl” (262) and a “blessed little goose”(258). John acts more as a father figure than as a husband. In response to his wife’s complaints he responds, “Bless her little heart! …She shall be as sick as she pleases! ” insinuating that his wife is exaggerating her symptoms for comfort citation. He also puts her to bed like a child. His wife recalls, “And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head” (261).
The fate of the female protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is Gilman’s response to the misogynist view of hysteria from ancient times through the nineteenth century. The only option for women who are pigeonholed as mentally ill is to live up to society’s expectation. Yet, Gilman does not end “The Yellow Wallpaper” on a pessimistic note. She offers her protagonist hope in the form of the other women trapped behind the wallpaper. The narrator realizes the reason for the wallpaper’s ever-changing pattern: “The front pattern does move-and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!
Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over”. (265). The narrator finds solace in the fact that she is not the only woman being mistreated. The narrator discovers that the only way to over come the yellow wallpaper and society’s misconstrued views towards women is to unite with other oppressed women. She expresses her triumph over the wallpaper: “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper” (267).
It is only when she unites with the other women trapped behind the wallpaper that she can start to see progress in the removal of the wallpaper. Hope for the role of women in society is also displayed through Gilman’s use of imagery at the ending. The narrator questions her husband’s response to her success over the wallpaper: “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so I had to creep over him every time! ” (269). This image portrays the man as physically weaker than the woman since he is unconscious on the floor. The wife’s actions of creeping over him suggest physical dominance.
In this image, Gilman has reversed Dr. Weir Mitchell’s theory that females are the weaker sex. After a careful analysis of the textual evidence in “The Yellow Wallpaper” it is apparent that Gilman’s purpose was far greater than scribing a supernatural tale. Although some of her reading audience found the mental degeneration of the main character disturbing, her purpose was to reveal the horrific way in which members of the medical profession treated women. The true irony lies in the fact that Gilman avenged the misogynist stereotype of the nineteenth-century9 woman by engaging in an activity that was forbidden by Dr.
Mitchell. By choosing to disregard doctor’s orders in order to continue her own intellectual pursuits, Gilman forged the way for other women to question the validity of the medical community’s beliefs. Works Cited Bassuk, Ellen L. “The Rest Cure: Repetition or Resolution of Victorian Women’s Conflicts? ” The Female Body in Western Culture : Contemporary Perspectives. Ed. Susan Rubin Suleiman. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986. 139-151. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper. ” The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader: “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Other Fiction. Ed. Ann J. Lane.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. 3-20. —, “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper”. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Study of the Short Fiction. Ed. Denise D Knight. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997. 106-107. Hothersall, David. History of Psychology. 3rd Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Inc. , 1995. Palis, James. , et al. “The Hippocratic Concept of Hysteria: A Translation of the Original Texts. ” Integrative Psychiatry 3. 3 (1985): 226-228. “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper”. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Study of the Short Fiction. Ed. Denise D Knight. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1997. 106-107.