THE YELLOW WALLPAPER - analysis of mental health treatment for women of 19th Century

Analyzing Oppressive Treatment of Women in late 19th Century Psychiatric Medicine

in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”

I have heard psychiatry be referenced to as the “baby” of medicine. New treatments and medications are being presented for evaluation every day, and often the efficacy of these treatments are up for subjective opinion, both on the part of the patient and the physician. The power dynamic is often shifted in favor of the physician, or other care giver, to decide if the treatment or therapy prescribed is benefiting the patient. The possible dangers of such an approach to treating psychiatric maladies, particularly towards women in the late 19th century, are explored in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and examples can be found for how the primary character longs for liberation from an oppressive psychiatric therapy.

The main character has been diagnosed as having a “temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency” by a physician of high standing (310). It should be noted that this condition was primarily designated for females around the time this story was written. The fact that this physician is her “own husband” is the first troubling example, which is even pointed out when she mentions that “perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” (310). His diagnosis is backed up by her brother, who is also a physician. While seemingly loving and attentive enough, we get the sense that her husband is a domineering and controlling man, as shown by the statement that she is “absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again” (310). There are several questions that arise from this statement. The first one that comes to mind is what exactly constitutes “work”? The fact that the writer has put this word in quotes within her statement suggests that she does not agree with the idea that, in her case, writing or painting or anything else artistic or intellectual to freely pass her time, should be considered work. The second question that arises is who decides when she has gotten “well again”? She herself? Or her husband/physician? To expand on that, how and who was it that decided she needed treatment in the first place?

The main character/patient is secured in the “nursery at the top of the house” (311). The room is described as a “big, airy room” with lots of windows facing all directions, letting plenty of fresh air and sunshine in, but which also have bars on them. This gives the feeling that although she is allowed a sense of freedom, it is measured and controlled. The object of focus for her, to the point of obsession, is the yellow wallpaper in the room. At first she finds it “repellant”, then she slowly begins to tolerate it, and then finally towards the end, she is fascinated by it and spends most of her time studying its “sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (311). She tries to get her husband to take her away from the place, but he persuades her to stick it out. Then he has her believe that he will “repaper the room” only to change his mind with the reasoning that she was letting it get the better of her, “and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (312). She “tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him” to tell him how she wished to visit cousins, whom she felt would be a positive influence on her. He refused, causing her to break down in tears, which she felt weakened her own case, not his (315).

It is possible that the wallpaper is a reflection of the patient’s own mind, which eventually gives way to delusion. She describes it as being “dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide” - plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions” (311). I find this statement curious, because I wonder if she considers herself “dull” (low self-esteem, perhaps) but knows that she has a mentality that can at times be “irritating” and provokes her husband to “study” her. One might wonder if her husband diagnosed and instituted this treatment on her so that he could control the degrees of interaction he would have with her, thereby keeping the power dynamic pendulum swinging in his favor. The patterns destroying themselves in unheard-of contradictions is foreshadowing of her own imminent transformation at the end of the story, to the horror of her husband.

Nearing the end of the narrative, we begin to see evidence of her liberation from, and even defiance of, her husband by means of the wallpaper. One example of this is when she notes that John is pleased to see her improve, and that he “laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wallpaper”. She then reveals to us, almost smugly, that she “had no intention of telling him it was because of the wallpaper--” (317). She begins to imagine a woman “trying to climb through” (318.) I feel she is transferring her own emotions into the wallpaper and imagining herself as the woman, because she feels “nobody could climb through that pattern--it strangles so” (318). Perhaps she feels that her situation is impossible to escape from, even though she longs for liberation.

She eventually does get some form of liberation when she imagines herself getting up to “help” the woman escape from the strangling pattern of the wallpaper, which she tears from the wall (319). Finally, her liberation is complete when she becomes the woman and can “creep around” as she pleases, and the visible result is such that it causes her husband to cry out and faint, which could be considered a feminine act, thereby reversing the roles of gender and the power dynamic, since he is now helpless on the floor and she is able to creep over him.

Work Cited

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature: Reading to Write.
Ed. Elizabeth Howells. New York: Pearson, 2010. 6873. Print.