The Yellow Wallpaper

Shaakira Jordan

Professor Smith

English 112

28 November 2007

According to Wikipedia.org, “in the late 1800’s Neurasthenia became a popular diagnosis, expanding to include such symptoms as weakness, dizziness, and fainting, and a common treatment was the rest cure, especially for women, who were the gender primarily diagnosed with this condition at that time”. More specifically, Charlotte Perkins Gilman can be associated with this emotional disorder because she suffered from it for about three years. In the “Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator Jane suffers from this disorder mainly because of her husband’s oppressive ways. Perkins does an excellent job communicating the ideas of repression of women, insanity, and the recreation of life, through symbolism, irony, and didacticism.

In the beginning of the story the narrators name is not revealed, and instead the protagonist John is introduced, which exhibits how unimportant the narrator is. This seems to suggest that women back at that time remained behind closed doors which serve as an excellent representation of repression of women. As Janice Haney-Peritz explains it:

“The Yellow Wallpaper is used to remind contemporary readers of the enduring import of the feminist struggle against patriarchal domination; while as a boundary marker, it is used to demarcate the territory, appropriate to a feminist literary criticism (Peritz 114).”

This feminist struggle is clearly relevant when John decides to put Jane in a room where “the paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it and the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls (Gardner 84).” Jane is obviously repelled by the color describing it as “revolting, repellant; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight (84).” Being forced to stay in this ugly repulsive yellow room, Jane has no other choice but to secretly write in her journal about the room, in which she becomes obsessed with. Symbolically, the bars on the windows of the room seem to represent the imprisonment of Jane’s life and also of women in general at that time.

Through symbolism, Perkins shows how women are prisoners of their husbands and how they had to listen to all of their concerns. Another great example of symbolism in this story is the woman that Jane seems to find trapped in the wallpaper. The woman that she sees represents her being dominated by John unable to escape his domineering ways. As Elaine Hedges explains, “The Yellow Wall Paper is, of course, highly appropriate for a discussion of symbolism: how it emerges and operates within a text. Students enjoy discussing the symbolism of the wallpaper and of the room to which the narrator is confined (Hedges 2).” As Jane becomes more fixated on the wall paper she feels the hurt and pain of the woman trapped inside the paper. “The front pattern does moveвЂ"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. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard (Gardner 92).” Jane sees the woman behind bars and views herself as that woman. Although throughout the story John believes he is helping Jane, ironically he is not.

Through irony, Perkins conveys the idea of insanity and entrapment in the room with the yellow wallpaper. John strongly believes he knows what is best for Jane and intends to treat her like a child and keep her locked up in the hideous room. John says, “My darling, I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours (90).” Ironically by keeping Jane in that room with which she is obsessed with, it is in fact worsening her condition, allowing her to become insane. It seems as though since she has no control within her own life, she finds control though the wallpaper, while losing self-control overall. Jane believes she is “Johns darling and his comfort and all he has, and that she must take care of herself for his sake, and keep well.