Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper is a commentary on the male

oppression of women in a patriarchal society. However, the story itself presents

an interesting look at one woman's struggle to deal with both physical and mental
confinement. This theme is particularly thought-provoking when read in today's
context where individual freedom is one of our most cherished rights. This
analysis will focus on two primary issues: 1) the many vivid images Gilman uses to
illustrate the physical and symbolic confinement the narrator endures during her
illness; and 2) the overall effect of, and her reaction to, this confinement.
The Yellow Wallpaper begins with the narrator's description of the physically
confining elements surrounding her. The story is cast in an isolated hereditary
estate, set back from the road and located three miles from town. The property
boasts protective hedges that surround the garden, walls that surround the estate,
and locked gates which guarantee seclusion. Even the connecting garden represents
confinement, with box-bordered paths and grape-covered arbors. This isolation motif
continues within the mansion itself. Although she preferred the downstairs room
with roses all over the windows that opened on the piazza, the narrator finds
herself relegated to an out of the way dungeon-like nursery on the second floor,
appropriately equipped with "rings and things" in the walls. Windows in each
direction provide glimpses of the garden, arbors, bushes, and trees. The bay is
visible, as is a private wharf that adjoins the estate. These views reinforce
isolationism; they can be seen from the room, but not touched or experienced. There
is a gate at the head of the stairs, presumably to keep the children contained in
their play area. Additionally, the bed is immovable as it has been nailed to the
floor. It is here that the narrator secretly describes her slow decent into
madness.

Although the physical confinement drains the narrator's strength and will, the
mental and emotional confinement symbolized in the story play an important role in
her ultimate fall into dementia. By being forced to be her own company, she is
confined within her mind. Likewise, part of the narrator's mental confinement
stems from her recognition of her physical confinement. The depression the
narrator has experienced associated with child bearing is mentally confining as
well. Specifically, she cannot control her emotions or manage her guilt over her
inability to care for her child. These structures of confinement contribute to the
rapid degeneration of her faculties.
As the wife of a prominent physician in the late nineteenth century, the
narrator's assumption of the typical female role illustrates one aspect of the
symbolic confinement present within both the story and the society. She is
subservient and deferential to her husband John who enjoys the power traditionally
associated with his sex and additional authority afforded him by his status as a
doctor. Jean Kennard notes, "By keeping her underemployed and isolated, John
effectively ensures his wife's dependence on him" (81). John's control over his
wife is typical of the control most men had over women in the late nineteenth
century. He decides everything on her behalf, including what room she will stay in
and who she will be allowed to see. He diagnoses her postpartum depression as a
"temporary nervous depression--a slight hysterical tendency" and in doing so,
diminishes her complaints and demeans her individuality. His prescribed treatment
is worse than the disease; every hour is scheduled, she is forbidden to write, told
what to think, and prohibited from acting as mother to her child.
John's behavior illustrates his covert efforts to control his wife as well.
He looks to the narrator's brother, who is also a physician, to validate his
diagnosis and prescribed cure, making it even more difficult for the narrator to
challenge the prescription herself. He repeatedly diminishes her by laughing at
her and not taking her grievances seriously. The narrator complains "John does not
know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that
satisfies him." John's contempt for his wife's ideas is blatant; he refers to her
as a "little girl," and when she requests that she be moved to a different room
downstairs, he "took [her] in his arms and called [her] a blessed little goose, and
said he would go down to the cellar, if [she] wished, and have it whitewashed into
the bargain." That he is only willing to move her into the basement, instead of
allowing her a room of her choice, epitomizes his domineering personality.
As the woman descends into madness, she notices that the pattern in the
wallpaper "becomes bars" in the moonlight and that "the woman behind it is as plain
as can be." Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar assert that the woman behind the
wallpaper is the narrator's doppelg nger (10). This woman is symbolic of the
narrator's own confinement by the patriarchal society she lives in. Moreover, we
see that the wallpaper is a metaphor of her fractured mental state. She describes
the chaotic pattern that will follow ". . . the lame uncertain curves for a little
distance. . . suddenly committing suicide--plunging off at outrageous angles,
destroying themselves in unheard of contradictions," alluding to her own, and
society's, eventual destruction in the absence of enlightened change. Furthermore,
the narrator acknowledges that she is representative of most women of her time with
the statement "I think there are a great many women [behind the paper]."
The effect of John's oppression on the narrator is severe. At the climax of
her insanity she writes that she can see the woman from behind the wallpaper
pattern "out of every one of my windows!" The narrator continues:
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women
do not creep by daylight.
I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage
comes she hides under the blackberry vines.
I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by
daylight!
That evening the narrator noticed the woman in the pattern begin to crawl and shake
the wallpaper in an effort to break free from it, just as she would like to break
free from the confines and restrictions imposed on her by society and her husband
John. In her diary she describes helping the woman tear down the paper: "I pulled
and she shook, I shook and she pulled . . . ."
Most of the paper was removed the next day while the narrator watched many women
creeping around in the street. At the end of the story the narrator has surprised
John, who has come home from work to find her creeping around the room. She
proclaims "I've got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off
most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"
Although the reader might pity the narrator's inability to challenge John's
authority, one must view the events of the story within the context of the 1860's.
At this time, socitey would not tolerate such assertiveness from women. Moreover,
the tragic story ends with a paradox. By definition, one who is mentally ill is
not healthy. However, the narrator finds freedom, and apparently health, by
rejecting an insane society and loosing her identity to the wallpaper. In
contrast, the reader concludes the narrator is now confined by her insanity, and
cannot be free.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." English 2307. Comp. Jane Bell.
n.p., c.1996. 3-7.
Kennard, Jean. "Convention Coverage or How to Read Your Own Life." Charlotte
Perkins Gilman: The Woman and Her Work. Ed. Sheryl Meyering. Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1989. 75-94.