The Yellow Wall-PaperEssay Preview: The Yellow Wall-PaperReport this essayThe Yellow Wall-paperThe journey into madness is a fascinating and morbid fall into oblivion that literary geniuses have been exploring since the dawn of the literary word. Insanity is such an interesting human state because it is a break from human normalcy. A person who is found insane can not be expected to take responsibility for any action committed while in this alternate state of mind. Even our judicial courts do not hold people criminally responsible for heinous acts, such as committing murder, if insanity at the time of the act is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The short story, “The Yellow Wall-paper,” by Charlotte Gilman, is a captivating work that gives an intimate look of one womans desperate struggle to hang on to any thread of sanity, only to succumb to the inevitable downward spiral of her fragile mind. By combining an analysis of the S. Weir Mitchells “rest cure” prescription for the woman and the vivid description given in “The Yellow Wall-paper,” the journey of this womans fall into insanity can be dissected and analyzed to better understand why Gilman chose to write a work such as this. The literary symbolism which is prevalent in this story is also very important in understanding this work, as is Gilmans own history of mental instability. Perhaps, by exploring the “rest cure” prescription, the literary symbolism, and the authors own mental history, a better understanding of the human condition and societal influences explored in this work can be achieved.
Charlotte Gilman was born Charlotte Anna Perkins on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut (Britannica 1). Because of her fathers abandonment of her family, she grew up in poverty and received irregular education. In May 1884, she married a man named Charles W. Stetson and soon realized that she was not suited for a domestic existence. She began suffering from a form of depression known as melancholia. Melancholia suffers have symptoms such as, “dullness, sleepiness, apathy, inertia…joyless, affectionless…a general expression of fatigue and of sorrow” (Leuba 103). Eventually, she suffered a complete nervous breakdown. In 1888, she moved to Pasadena with her young daughter. In 1894, she divorced her husband, who soon remarried a close friend of hers. Gilman then sent her daughter to live with her father and his new wife, and was then able to completely focus her energy into writing, lecturing, and developing feminist theories for the womens movement in the United States (Britannica 2-3). In 1892, “The Yellow Wall-paper,” was published in The New England Magazine. Two years earlier, Horace Scudder, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, was sent a copy of “The Yellow Wall-paper” by William Dean Howells and refused to print it. Scudder wrote a letter to Gilman explaining why he did not publish the story. It read, “Dear Madam, Mr. Howells has handed me this story. I could not forgive myself if I made others as miserable as I have made myself!” (Shumaker 588). It can be construed that “The Yellow Wall-paper” was inspired by Gilmans own struggle with depression and the patriarchal setup of society at that time, and can shed light on Gilmans own mental state. The detailed description of the characters struggle to hold on to her sanity could only be expressed by someone who had experienced a similar struggle. After a diagnosis of breast cancer, Gilman took her own life by ingesting chloroform on August 17, 1935.
In “The Yellow Wall-paper,” the character is forced by her physician husband to endure a treatment known as the “rest cure.” “In the late 19th century, the medical profession believed that mental activity for a woman lead to nervousness and anxiety. Regardless of the reason for nervousness, the remedy was total bed rest and limited intellectual activity” (Thompson). Dr. S Weir Mitchell is credited in creating the treatment from his first paper on the subject titled “Rest and the Treatment of Nervous Diseases,” published in 1875. “Seclusion, rest, massage, electricity, and feeding have been the points on which he has laid particular stress” (Waterman 134). It was thought that without any sort of creative, mental, or physical stimulus, the patient would begin to recover. Dr. Mitchell also believed that an accumulation of fat and blood within the patients body would help as well. Even though many patients under his care did benefit from his expertise, the “rest cure” was not found to be particularly helpful. In fact, it was found to cause more harm than good. “…complete isolation undoubtedly does harm in certain types, and that the general result produced by the completeness of the regime owes its success rather to the suggestive influence than to any physical change that takes place” (Waterman 134). If any good came from the “rest cure,” it came from a placebo effect other than from the actual implication of the treatment.
In writing “The Yellow Wall-paper,” Gilmans goal was more than telling the story of a woman being the victim of Dr. Mitchells “rest cure.” It was meant to be a polemic advocating a change in the patriarchal hierarchy of social structure in the United States in the late 19th century. Gilman was highly offended by a society that viewed women as the weaker sex and disagreed with the implications and expectations woman were under at that time.
…Gilman explores a question…central both to American literatureand to the place of women in American culture: What happens tothe imagination when its defined as feminine (and thus weak) andhas to face a society that values the useful and the practical and rejectsanything else as nonsense (Shumaker 590)?In the late 19th century, women had two roles and two roles only. They were to be maternal, by bearing and caring for children, and they were to be “angels of the house,” which required them to take care of the home by housekeeping, preparing meals, and serving their husbands. Anything other than these two roles were not accepted and highly frowned upon (Thompson).
‧and then as women saw themselves as a part of the family to the world, it became the role of womenfolk to take care of and nourish themselves, a role that they were obliged to do from birth. And yet, all this was done in a highly specific way, it being done the woman was supposed to do and the woman was supposed to do it because it meant that she deserved to eat at the right times. So one of the main reasons that people do not see womenfolk as a part of family and mother to children, for many reasons, it does not need to be stressed or said that they are part of a family. The fact is, those who see womenfolkas part of an inalienable family are also womenfolk. And womenfolk are not inalienable, they are inalienable to the idea that the whole family or even the entire community of the country has the same kind of right to what it is.The question is: How and when does this happen? The answer to this question, which you have already seen in more than 150 papers, is to answer this question by considering what happens when you are part of a community. You can see a lot of this through American culture, which is very strong feminist, in the early 1950’s when they took away all of the basic rights of women: marriage, inheritance, and education. Also, many of them took away the right of mothers to give birth to young children. That was a fundamental right in America, and one that has taken forever to leave the American population. So what happens when society becomes more hostile toward womenfolk, and womenfolk go elsewhere and start to take this very very important right away? And that is what happened with American culture: by removing the mother, by taking away the home, for example, the idea of what you are supposed to do as a single person in marriage to children, or in a family, as the family as we all make it, as the family as we all start to live. These ideas are not real.They are just ideas that are thought to be based on a notion of where a child should come from. And what America is really about is a singleperson family, with kids, of a family, without children. And there were no children. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “The child is dead and the child is never alive again.” You were supposed to get the child when you were a child; this idea of what parents should be like is not true whatsoever. So by removing the Mother the idea that you are to do what you are supposed to do,
‧and then as women saw themselves as a part of the family to the world, it became the role of womenfolk to take care of and nourish themselves, a role that they were obliged to do from birth. And yet, all this was done in a highly specific way, it being done the woman was supposed to do and the woman was supposed to do it because it meant that she deserved to eat at the right times. So one of the main reasons that people do not see womenfolk as a part of family and mother to children, for many reasons, it does not need to be stressed or said that they are part of a family. The fact is, those who see womenfolkas part of an inalienable family are also womenfolk. And womenfolk are not inalienable, they are inalienable to the idea that the whole family or even the entire community of the country has the same kind of right to what it is.The question is: How and when does this happen? The answer to this question, which you have already seen in more than 150 papers, is to answer this question by considering what happens when you are part of a community. You can see a lot of this through American culture, which is very strong feminist, in the early 1950’s when they took away all of the basic rights of women: marriage, inheritance, and education. Also, many of them took away the right of mothers to give birth to young children. That was a fundamental right in America, and one that has taken forever to leave the American population. So what happens when society becomes more hostile toward womenfolk, and womenfolk go elsewhere and start to take this very very important right away? And that is what happened with American culture: by removing the mother, by taking away the home, for example, the idea of what you are supposed to do as a single person in marriage to children, or in a family, as the family as we all make it, as the family as we all start to live. These ideas are not real.They are just ideas that are thought to be based on a notion of where a child should come from. And what America is really about is a singleperson family, with kids, of a family, without children. And there were no children. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “The child is dead and the child is never alive again.” You were supposed to get the child when you were a child; this idea of what parents should be like is not true whatsoever. So by removing the Mother the idea that you are to do what you are supposed to do,
In “The Yellow Wall-paper,” the narrator admits to having a highly developed imagination. As a child, she was able to “get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store” (Gilman 1662). So, due to a nervous condition and the prescription of the “rest cure,” she moves into an isolated old