Comment on the ending of the story ‘ The Yellow Wallpaper ’.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story ‘ The Yellow Wallpaper

’ when first published in 1892 in ‘The New England Magazine
’,underwent a mixed reception ; appreciated because of its
near to life portrayal of insanity and criticized heavily
because of the same. It has more often been read as a
harrowing case study dealing with neurasthenia until the
1970s when it started being estimated as a piece of feminist
literature.

The text as understood from its title is about a

wallpaper , a very conventionally feminine subject to deal
with. But how this apparently benign topic functions as an
outrageous counter – attack to the patriarchal institution
together with a host of other conventional notions becomes
our point of focus.

The story engaging in a first person narrative begins

when the unnamed narrator comes to reside with her
husband in an isolated “ colonial mansion ”for the
summer .Despite of being a commodious estate it has
remained untenanted for years and has been deserted with
nothing growing in the greenhouse. The narrator here
fuelling her romantic felicity perceives it a haunted place that
has “ something queer about it ”. Almost after this we come
to know that she is sick though its aetiology goes
unmentioned we are given hints of the kind of sickness
troubling her. The narrator confides that John ,her husband
happens to be a physician of high standing and being a
person crediting only what is observable, scientific or
demonstrable through facts and figures, has scientifically
diagnosed her of suffering from a “ temporary nervous
depression ” with “ slight hysterical tendency ”. But being a
man of facts that he is , he is skeptical of her sickness but has
brought her to this place for her treatment and recovery.
Thus at once we realize it is not just a couple visiting this
palatial estate but also a physician with his patient.

Their room is at the top of the house which

most likely would have previously been a children’s nursery
as understood from the barred windows and “ rings and
things on the wall ” . The room contains nothing more than a
mammoth metal bed. But amidst all these the most
interesting and disgusting has to be the yellow wallpaper.
The narrator exclaims that never in her life did she see a
paper more worse than this. The very sight of that non –
artistic , vicious paper irritates her and she urges an
immediate replacement of it or a change of the room. But
none of these are allowed as her physician husband thinks it
is absolutely perilous for a nervous patient to give into her
wayward fancies as that might lead to increasing irritation
and demands. Thus ,left to stay in that “ atrocious nursery ”
with the wallpaper she tries to study it. Meanwhile we come
to know more about the ways prescribed for her recovery –
any work including physical and mental strain is strictly
prohibited for her even her very act of keeping a journal is
done quite secretively. She also admits that she is unable to
speak truthfully “ to a living soul ” and thus she has decided
to confide her thoughts to a journal , “ a dead paper” instead,
with us being her sole confidantes .

The yellow wallpaper, flamboyant yet dull, irritating

yet provoking study, uncertain and outrageous slowly takes
over our narrator's existence until she gets really fond of it.
Over the time she notices amidst its patterns a strangled
head and two bulbous eyes and then a woman stooping
down and creeping behind the patterns . This adds to the
gothic nature of the story proving our narrator's estimation
of this house as haunted , valid. Following the gothic
structure the woman trapped inside the wallpaper could be
that quintessential ‘ other ’ woman shunned by the
patriarchal authorities. Slowly as the wallpaper enters into
her unconscious we find our narrator reluctant of writing the
journal , she stays up all night to study the patterns
discovering new things about the wallpaper and discloses it is
not just a woman but a host of women stuck behind the
wallpaper but a particular one crawls around and shakes it.
At every opportunity she starts peeling the wallpaper off in
order to free the trapped woman. Now that she is obsessed
with it she grows secretive about her inclinations towards it.
On the last day of their stay in the house she locks herself in
the room and peels off yards of it until the bare wall shows
through. As John reaches home and somehow unlocks the
door he is shocked to see his wife crawling on all fours along
the walls of the room. She triumphantly blurts out “ I’ve got
out at last … .. and I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you
can’t put me back! ” Perceiving all these he faints and the
narrator as she is crawling in circles by the wall creeps over
him every time.

This particular ending of ‘ The Yellow Wallpaper ’ renders us

baffled due to its ambiguity . The narrator’s concluding
proclamation is both of triumph and defeat, both
emancipating and horrifying. The ambiguity arises because of
the wallpaper , apparently throughout the story the
wallpaper stood for everything that is “ old, foul and bad ” be
it the obnoxiously censoring patriarchal institution, John's
restrictive and almost crippling treatment of rest- cure or the
pre set values, notions and roles a woman is expected to fit
in. But at the same time the very “ flamboyant ”, “living ” ,
“uncertain ” wallpaper has a brighter yellow side to suggest .
Apart from writing the journal which eventually she felt
reluctant to continue, studying the wallpaper is the only
active mental exercise she manages to perform. Left to live in
a nursery where she is allowed to change nothing except
herself, the wallpaper is the only repulsive as well as
engaging object that kept our narrator busy . It is almost a
text that she has ventured to decipher . But this act of
perceiving passively is substituted for writing actively and
soon is transformed into an act of imagination through which
she aims at attaining emancipation. That she is the ‘ other ’
woman whom society warns other women against is hinted
from the very beginning when she confesses her baby makes
her nervous and it is Jennie, the housekeeper who looks after
it. Thus she is not the conventional mother who is the
epitome of unconditional caregiving and nurturing.
Identification with the trapped woman is just eventual ; that
she is not the quintessential ‘ Angel in the house ’ is somehow
always persistent in her unconscious . The gradual inclination
towards the woman could be interpreted as a gradual self –
discovery , a slow process of killing the angel altogether who
is suffering hard to fit in and thereby ushering the not so
angelic, non- conforming entity .
 But in her attempt of emancipating the captivated
woman she herself gets trapped into her own vicious
circle .The fact that she is trapped in a nursery and crawling
on all fours strikes us as we realize she is no longer a woman
who is allegedly infantilised but that very little girl whom
John claims her of being . The act of circling again and again
along the walls is indicative of the futility of the
emancipation. The image is disturbing and full of ironies as it
seems she is still trapped in the world she seeks liberation
from. John is only unconscious not dead altogether and thus
will undoubtedly commit her to more intense restrictions or
possibly to the very dreaded Weir Mitchell whom the
narrator wants to avoid by every means. The cost of
emancipation cannot be a complete loss of the self, that her
attempt of liberating the' other ' woman or her newly found
alter ego has left her more crippling, dependent and
susceptible to more damage is evident. Again on the other
hand the peeling of the wallpaper has left the wall bare with
all its cracks and flaws which again might indicate towards
our narrator’s realisation of the tensions in her marriage and
relationship with John, just as she claims she can “ see
through ” him almost as she does through the wallpaper.
Thus, the wallpaper is off the wall both for good and worse
and it is hardly surprising that Gilman's text ends with such
ambiguity as the very subject it deals with, the society and
norms it upholds is rife with multiple contradictions.

Why is the wallpaper yellow in the ‘‘ Yellow Wallpaper ” ?

What is the central message of “ The Yellow Wallpaper ” ?

What does the baby symbolize in “ The Yellow Wallpaper ” ?

How does the narrator's description of the wallpaper change

over time?

Discuss the circumstances that keep the speaker awake at

night in ‘ The Yellow Wallpaper ’ .

Use of metaphors in ‘ The Yellow Wallpaper ’.

Justification of the title ‘ The Yellow Wallpaper ’ .