Yellow Wallpaper Essay Research Paper Nicole Walker

Yellow Wallpaper Essay, Research Paper

Nicole Walker

English Paper #3

Dr. Murray

Oct. 28, 2000

“Descent into Insanity”

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a nervous wife, an overprotective husband, and a large, dank room covered in musty wallpaper all play important parts in driving the wife insane. The husband’s smothering attention, combined with the isolated environment, incites the nervous nature of the wife, causing her to plunge into insanity to the point she sees herself in the wallpaper. The author’s masterful use of not only the setting (of both time and place), but also of first person point of view, allows the reader to participate in the woman’s growing insanity.

In eighteen ninety – one, when the “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written, women were often treated as second – class citizens. They were, for the most part, dominated by a society controlled by men. The men were the leaders, ruling the home and the workplace; the women were under their authority. The wife, of whom this story is about, reflects this attitude society has towards her. Her husband even decides what furniture and things are to be in her room. She submits to those decisions, even to the point of agreeing with him. This is evidenced when she says, “But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things..I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim”(472). Wives like this were regarded as possessions of the husbands, and, in light of that, they had few rights. Just as was the wife, many women were believed to be good only for bearing children and running a household. Often times the husband retained a housekeeper or some such servant so the wives only bore children and did little else. In the case of the wife in our story, her husband, John, goes so far as to treat her like a child after the birth of their baby, as evidenced by his calling her “my darling” and “little girl” (475). He had even hired a housekeeper to take care of not only the house, but the baby as well. John also controlled almost everything in her life. In fact, the only thing he did not control was her journal writing, and even then she had to hide it from him since he did not approve of it. When he comes she says, “I must put this (the journal) away – he hates to have me write a word”(471). Part of John’s problem 1s that he is a doctor. As a doctor, he control’s his wife’s health care, prescribing her medicines and her overall cure. As her husband, he is too emotionally involved to look at the case objectively, or if he had, he might have seen her mind going before it was too late. Not only that, the accepted “cure” at that particular time was ineffective and would only serve to make his wife worse (473). This “cure” was the product of a certain Dr. Weir Mitchell; a nerve specialist whose theory of a “rest cure” for mentally unstable patients was later found to be unsuccessful. In the story, the husband’s ill-advised attempts to treat his wife’s symptoms drive her insane by taking all responsibility from her and forcing isolation upon her as a part of her “cure.”

Gilman emphasizes the wife’s isolation by describing to the reader where the story is set. The retreat John takes his wife to in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a large, dilapidated Victorian mansion “quite three miles from the village” (470). It is surrounded by extensive gardens replete with large hedges, locking gates and winding paths. This sets the mansion “well back from the road” and creates many secluded spots; intensifying the idea that the main house is well away from any outside activity (470). In fact, the wife’s first impression causes her to call it a “haunted house” and question why it’s available for lease (469). Part of the reason for her first impression that the house is falling apart is because no one has been caring for it for some time. This is apparently due to “legal trouble” involving the heirs (470). The mansion has defied time and weather to stand in all it’s dilapidated glory. The mansion’s strength signifies that it could be a place of rest for John’s wife, just as he intended. However, that same strength could also be viewed as giving the mansion prison – like qualities. Further evidence that this last interpretation is correct is found when his wife describes her new room, which is apparently an old nursery/playroom/gymnasium. While this room is large and “airy” with many windows to let in lots of sunshine, those very windows are covered with bars (471). With a closer glance, the reader finds that the room has a rather suspicious past. The wife describes the floor as being “scratched, gouged, and splintered,” the plaster of the walls as being “dug out in places,” the wallpaper as being “torn off in spots” and “stripped off” both at the top and the bottom; even the bed is portrayed as looking “as if it has been through wars”(473 & 471). Oddly enough the bed is bolted to the floor and it is the only piece of furniture in the room till other furniture is brought up for her. There are “rings and things in the walls” and a “gate at the top of the stairs”(473 & 472). All these details about the room are suggestive of a room in a sanitarium. This suggestion foreshadows the wife’s eventual descent into madness.

The wallpaper is the detail the wife becomes obsessed with; it serves to reflect to the reader her growing insanity. In th