Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper from a Feminist Perspective

The Yellow Wallpaper is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story that was originally published in January 1892. It's a story about a woman who suffers from temporary nervous depression with a slight hysterical tendency after her labor. She also experiences physical and psychological imprisonment from her husband, John, a high-standing physician who assures her that a 'rest cure' is what she needs to recover.

The rest cure is developed by Weir Mitchell in the late 1800s for the treatment of hysteria, neurasthenia, and other nervous illnesses. The rest cure usually lasted six to eight weeks depending on how severe the case. It involved isolation from friends and family. The patient is also enforced to have bed rest, and nearly constantly getting fed on a fatty, milk-based diet.

This is why John has the narrator take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, and she also can say nothing of ale, wine, and rare meat. The narrator also states that the reason they move to a secluded colonial mansion which standing well back from the road and far from the village during the summer was solely on her account, so she can get perfect rest and all the air she could get for her recovery.

This is also the reason why they took the nursery at the top of the house as their main room because it’s a big, airy room, that took up nearly the whole floor with windows that look all the ways, and not the room downstairs that the narrator prefers which opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window with pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings, but only got one window, and no room for two beds. The windows of the nursery room are barred for little children to keep them safe despite it being a big and airy room. The barred windows can also interpret as a symbol of her imprisonment since it makes the narrator feels trapped inside.

The narrator has a scheduled prescription of phosphates or phosphite for each hour of the day. A phosphate serum is known to treat anxiety in major depression though it has a negative correlation. Perhaps this and her husband’s treatment is what makes her condition cease to be better and only worsen. According to her husband, instead of wasting time on reading, it would be best for women to focus their attention and energy on healing from depression by doing total rest. This is contrary to the narrator’s thoughts because she fancies if she had less opposition and more social activity and stimulus.

During the Victorian period, gender or the socially constructed characteristics of women and men–such as norms, roles, and relationships of and between groups of women and men became more sharply defined. Women were controlled by a male-dominated society which started sexism, an unequal and unfair treatment that someone receives because of someone's gender.

In this story, gender roles are dominant. John, the narrator’s husband is in charge of everything. The narrator is not allowed to decide for herself, even though she’s a grown woman that capable of taking care of herself. Her husband also treats her like a child and name-calls her with phrases such as ‘blessed little goose’, ‘little girl’, etc. This name-calling shows his affection towards her but also belittles her at the same time since it makes her like a helpless woman that needs babying.

Women in the nineteenth century were stereotyped as weak, passive, timid, domestic, illogical, emotional, and susceptible to madness and hysteria. Stereotypes are a widely accepted judgment or a bias about something even though it's overly simplified and not always accurate. In the story, John shows traits of hyper-masculinity, which is an exaggeration of male masculinity. He’s emotionally abusive to his partner since he belittles the narrator by laughing at her, makes funny remarks towards her beliefs and actions, and not allows her to express herself through writing. He also uses his position as a high-standing physician to force his opinion towards her by saying things such as ‘I am a doctor, dear, and I know.’ and ‘Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?’ This way, he’s able to control the narrator because it leaves the narrator no option but to obey what her husband suggests to her since she’s in no position to defy him. The abuse of a position held by someone is also used by the brother of the narrator, who is in the same role as the husband that also shares the same view which also plays his part in making the narrator feel trapped.

Another factor that causes the narrator’s depression is the sharp differences in character between her husband and her. John is a doctor who is ‘practical in the extreme’, while the narrator is very imaginative. The narrator states that she ‘used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store.’ With her imaginative thinking it’s no surprise that when she’s forbidden to do anything that pleases her, she took interest in the yellow wallpaper and began to imagining things out of nothing. Because of those differences, the psychological imprisonment occurs when John explicitly prohibits the narrator’s to explore her imagination by giving medical reasons such as ‘with her imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like her is sure lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that she ought to use her will and good sense to check the tendency.’

It's not easy to break free or escape the form of confinement created by the narrator’s husband, so she chose to create an escape into an imaginary world through writing. The rest cure which her husband applies as a way of overcoming postnatal depression experienced by the narrator has a significant physical and psychological impact. Despite not doing any heavy physical work, the main character quickly becomes exhausted even when doing something that she fancies such as writing. ‘I did write for a while in spite of them, but it does exhaust me a good deal—having to be so sly about it. Or else meet with heavy opposition’.

Confinement is real, and it can affect the victim both physically and psychologically. The non-physical impact of confinement in this oppressive atmosphere is that the emotions of women are volatile. She grew irritable and wept without cause easily, but she did it privately even then: ‘I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous. I cry at nothing and cry most of the time. Of course, I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone’. 

In a patriarchal environment, women’s fight against patriarchy in the form of physical and psychological confinement will get the stigma of hysterical and suffering from mental illness. The effects of emotional abuse can be painful and destructive, both in the short and long term. In this case, the narrator is desperately trying to escape from the confines of her husband and reality on the yellow wallpaper.

It is within the yellow wallpaper that the narrator discovers her hidden self as well as her liberation and eventual damnation. Her preoccupation with the yellow wallpaper begins subtly at the beginning of the story and eventually consumes the narrator and became the focal point of the story.