Dr Beata Williamson

14.04.2019

Michał Poruba

II BA - A, group 1

Gdańsk

The Yellow Wallpaper - Insanity and Liberation

Mental instability and insanity is a theme that is as much widespread as it is old. In

ancient Greek myths an example is Heracles, who massacres his wife and children because of

Hera’s curse. In “Hamlet” Ophelia loses her will to live and kills herself because of being

rejected and mocked by Hamlet. Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 “The Yellow

Wallpaper” is a story centered around the theme of worsening of mental health of the

unnamed female main character. In order to cure her postpartum depression she is confined in

a room to rest and is visited by two characters - her husband John, a physician, and her sister-

in-law Jennie. The woman starts seeing strange patterns on the wallpaper in her room. In the

end she concludes that there is a woman behind the pattern. She destroys the wallpaper and

claims herself to be the mysterious imprisoned woman. In this essay I will analyze the

characters of the narrator and John, as well as explore four critical opinions on the story. In

my opinion, the story is a tale about John’s conviction of self-infallibleness causing the

insanity, with a central theme of narrator demanding personal freedom.

 In his work Alan Brown carries out an analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper from a purely

psychological standpoint. At the very beginning, he cites the author herself saying that the

story is based on her own experience of having her own mind deteriorated because of a rest

cure, advised to her by Dr S. Weir Mitchell. “I went home and obeyed those directions for

some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see

over.”1 He also points out that the seeing of hidden, anomalous message in the pattern of a

crudely finished wallpaper by the narrator might be caused by her belief in the paranormal2.

Brown points to a research according to which people who believe in supernatural were more

likely to recognize faces and other familiar shapes in places where there are none - pareidolia.

The narrator indeed likes the idea of the mansion she is confined to as a mysterious place:

„…a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house … but that would be asking too much of

fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.”

Brown also suggests that the narrator starts imagining the woman hidden because she is

lonely, akin to creating an imaginary friend in one’s mind. I disagree with this opinion,

because I believe that the narrator considers herself to be an imprisoned woman, and that the

wallpaper figure is in fact her, but mirrored in her psyche.

Some critics have a feminist approach to the story. Azra Ghandeharion and Milad Mazari

claim that the pattern of the wallpaper symbolizes a prison cell in which the narrator is locked.

Already confined to a room that she cannot leave, the real wallpaper pattern is claimed to be

prison bars, whereas the imagined sub-pattern is a woman struggling to escape, “which

embodies all the women restricted by the rules and regulations of a patriarchy.”3 What is

more, the narrator is constantly under control of her well-mannered, but ultimately dictator-

1
Brown, Alan. „‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: Another Diagnosis” July 1st, 2014, page 2
2
Brown, Alan. „‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: Another Diagnosis” July 1st, 2014, page 3
3
Ghandeherion, Azra, Mazari, Milad. „Women Entrapment and Flight in Gilman’s ’The
Yellow Wallpaper’”, November 29th, 2016, page 2
like husband, who uses his status of a physician as an ultimate argument for keeping his wife

doing only what he, an omniscient authority, tells her to do. I agree with these claims - a

woman behind the bars might indeed be the right interpretation of the imaginary wallpaper

wraith, as the narrator loathes her confinement and wishes to be let out. Also John clearly is

too much of an authority in that marriage - he keeps his wife locked, she is forced to rest with

all sort of intellectual activity strictly forbidden, he looks down upon all protest and she can

only live in one room out of an entire mansion, as if she was a decorative plant. One thing I

do not agree with Ghandeharion and Mazari is the idea that the imaginary “eyes” on the

wallpaper symbolize “male gaze”. I find this to be an overinterpretation of pareidolia.

An another essay with a feminist approach has been written by Chalak Ghafoor Raouf and

Helan Sherko Ali. According to them, John is not a well-intentioned ignoramus, but instead

he is an abusive tyrant who uses psychological manipulation and appeals to his authority in

order to make his wife more subservient, creating a meek puppet. They suggest that the

narrator is not actually in postpartum depression, but is actually being gas lighted by John to

make ground for an easier manipulation4, and that the narrator is relocated to a uninhabited

area for the purpose of isolating her. Raouf and Ali see John as obsessed with controlling his

wife, worried not because he is a physician and a husband, but because he admittedly loses

control. While this is an interesting take on the story, I do not think that the situation is that

extreme. The part where the narrator becomes paranoid because of her degrading mental

health “He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind. As

if I couldn't see through him!” Raouf and Ali present as „This way, the narrator became

smarter, and gained the power of her mind to resist John.” As I believe that “The Yellow

Wallpaper” is a story about insanity, I do not agree with such an interpretation.

4
„The Helpless
Angel in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper” Raouf, Chalak
Ghafoor, Ali, Helan Sherko, July-September 2018, page 5
 In his essay Enough to make a body riot Jeremy MacFarlane argues that the struggle of the

narrator is a one-woman riot against oppression of an abusive husband5. MacFarlane claims

that even though the story’s sickroom is supposed to cure neurasthenia, it is located in a place

that resembles a prison, and is tainted with repressive gender roles of a husband that does not

want to hear any criticism, and who trivializes her protest by saying that all of it is just fancy.

I agree with this interpretation. In the end of the nineteenth century many men indeed thought

themselves to be intellectually superior to women, which, combined with having medical

education, is a basis for John’s stubborn refusal to accept the his wife’s point of view.

In the end, John’s inability to listen and delusion of being all-knowing on the subject of

mental health, despite himself aggravating the case, culminates in his wife’s insanity. In a

twisted way, however, despite losing sanity, she becomes free - the door to her cell are open,

and the tyrant husband faints, relieving her of his presence. Moreover, she believes herself to

be freed from the wallpaper, both by destroying it and by escaping from its imaginary prison.

In that way, the central themes of insanity and liberation are fused, just like the narrator and

the woman from the wallpaper.

5
“’Enough to make a body riot’: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Chester Himes, and the Process of
Socio-spatial Negotiation”, MacFarlane, Jeremy, 2014, page 4