Male and Female Mysteries

MALE AND FEMALE MYSTERIES IN "THE YELLOW WALLPAPER"
Author(s): EUGENIA C. DELAMOTTE

Source: Legacy, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring 1988), pp. 3-14
Published by: University of Nebraska Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25679011
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MALE AND FEMALE MYSTERIES IN "THE YELLOW WALLPAPER"
EUGENIA C. DELAMOTTE
Carolina Friends School
of the fear and despair in real women's

lives. As a writer and a woman in the
1890s, Gilman inherited both the genre
those first women Gothicists created and
the sources of anger in which it had its sec
ret roots. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the
story of a Gothic heroine who becomes, as
it were, a Gothic writer, Gilman both ex
ploits and explores the conventions of the
genre from a feminist perspective. The re
sult is a bold revelation of the meanings
concealed beneath women Gothicists' pre
occupation with knowledge and with a set
of interrelated issues: self-defense; the en
counter with a Hidden Woman; speech
and silence; the misprizing of the heroine;
the horrors of repetition; and the problem
of freedom.
44. . . in a foreign land ?in a remote cas
tle?surrounded by vice and violence":
Ann Radcliffe's description of her heroine's
plight in The Mysteries of Udolpho (329) is
the classic setting of Gothic romance. Yet
Charlotte Perkins Gilman. the most sinister aspect of the Gothicism in
Profile courtesy "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the way the
Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. Gothic situation of the heroine is initially
disguised from her. She is not in a remote
castle, so the nature of her imprisonment is
not immediately apparent; she is not in a
foreign land, so her piercing sense of es
Almost lotte
exactly a century
Perkins Gilman published uThebefore Char trangement from her world does not mani
Yellow Wallpaper," the popularity of Ann fest itself to her directly. And the violence
Radcliffe's romances established the genre
of women's Gothic as a staple of mass
market fiction. The perils of the Gothic her / am grateful to the Faculty Research Fund
oine as she and her many imitators defined of Bowdoin College for support in the re
them in the 1790s were oblique reflections search and writing of this article.
4 LEGACY
that surrounds her takes the form of the lat prehended as merely ordinary. The narra
est advances in medical knowledge about tor, indeed, looks at an ordinary house
the psychological disorders of women. Theand wishes, romantically, that it were
masculine mysteries of this specializedhaunted: she longs, like every Gothic
"knowledge"?and the feminine mysteries reader, to be frightened. This desire for ro
they cannot accommodate?are at themantic escapism (a female desire, from
center of Gilman's brilliant re-visioning ofwhich the narrator's husband quickly disso
the genre of women's Gothic.1 "The Yel ciates himself) masks a desire for escape.
low Wallpaper" is a story about whyThe narrator's talk of the "romantic felicity"
women have to invent mysteries?botha Gothic house would provide leads quick
mystery stones and mysteries of domestic ly to talk of John's realistic skepticism?
science. It is about the ways those two"perhaps . . . one reason I do not get well
mysteries are related to each other in thefaster" (10). Already the narrator's condi
narrator's life, and the way both are related tion, which John does not believe in, has
to her sense that she herself is a mystery: to been associated with the mystery of the
her husband and herself. house, in which he does not believe either,
One of the major preoccupations of and the narrator's desire to escape by being
women's Gothic is the difficulty of self-de frightened has been linked to the hidden
fense, most often in the context of immure anger that makes her want to escape her
ment in a frightening place from which the husband's medical attention. The connec
heroine desires escape. "Oh that I was out tion is reinforced when the narrator, ac
of this house," one heroine exclaims; "... knowledging that thinking about her condi
danger and death surround me on every tion makes her "feel bad" (10), says, "So I
side" (Roche, Clermont 3: 42). Women'swill let it alone and talk about the house"
Gothic speaks for women's feelings of vul (11). In a similar way, women readers of
nerability in a world where their onlyGothic romance displaced their own secret
power was the power of "influence." For ithorrors, born of their domestic situation
is only half the story to say, as so many crit and hidden even from themselves, onto
ics have said in various ways, that the the image of a romantic dwelling place full
maiden lost in Gothic space is the mind beof hidden mysteries.
set with its own internal dangers, lost to the But this Gothic talk of houses was really
order and reason of the daylight world. a description of women's suffering. Woll
The other half of the story, for women writ stonecraft, a contemporary of the early
ers and readers, is that in symbolic formwomen Gothicists, attacked the civil and
Gothic interiors were the daylight world, political inequality that kept women "im
apprehended as nightmare. Their disordermured in their families groping in the dark"
and illogic was the logic of the social order (26)?a plight that assumes quite a literal
as women experienced it. Woman in theseform in most Gothic fiction by women. The
nocturnal spaces is really woman in herheroine of Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance,
everyday relations, immured in her do for example, must escape her tyrannical fa
mestic prison, "surrounded by [the] vice ther's castle by fleeing through its dark un
and violence" of the social and political in derground passageways. At the climax of
stitutions that dominate her life.2 the story, another flight leads her unwit
The opening of "The Yellow Wallpaper" tingly back into this hidden world, where
plays on this relationship between the ordi she discovers, alive, her long "dead"
nary domestic world of women and themother, for years imprisoned secretly by
Gothic horrors that represented it, but Gilher husband in her own house. The myste
man reverses the convention. Instead ofrious noises that frightened Julia's brother
presenting women's daylight world appre in the deserted wing at the beginning of her
hended as nightmare, she opens her storyadventure were the sounds of their mother's
with the picture of a nightmare world ap grief. Julia's elopement from her father's
Eugenia C. DeLamotte 5
house?her "escape" into marriage?has sexual Other Woman that conventional

only led back to this same domestic prison morality taught them to reject.
she was fleeing, and the door through Both the bad Other Woman's Sin and
which she entered it turns out now to be the good Other Woman's Suffering must
locked behind her. Thus the daughter's be discovered in order for the heroine to go
discovery of her mother's hidden suffering home and be happily married. It may be
?her initiation into the mysteries of wom that in some way the happy endings of
anhood?is identical to her own entrap Gothic romances that make use of the Evil
ment in the mother's situation.3 Other Woman depend on the punishment
"Ah, how easy it is to be unknown!?to and exorcism of the rebellious feelings the
be entombed alive!" Ellinor says in Sophia narrative itself expresses through its por
Lee's The Recess (3:103). "Unknown": trayal of women's silent suffering. The her
oine, in other words, can live happily ever
the story of burial alive is not just about do
mestic entrapment, but about women's after in a perfect marriage because (a) the
forced concealment of the suffering it occa sources of women's long grievance at do
sioned. And it is also about the unknown mestic confinement have been duly pun
woman inside the female writer or reader, ished, but (b) anger, rebellion, passion,
who perhaps concealed her suffering even and filial ingratitude?which one might
from herself. For Julia's confrontation with have thought the logical concomitants to
her lost mother, the unsuspected sufferer, such grievance?are shown emphatically
is only one version of the discovery of the not to belong to the wronged heroine and/
Hidden Woman,4 a staple of women's or her wronged female relative, but to
Gothic that takes two different but related Somebody Else, who was ultimately sorry
forms. One is the discovery (in person, for them, anyway, and furthermore is dy
through another character's narrative, or in ing or dead. The death of this vengeful and
a first-person manuscript), of a Good passionate Other Woman means that
Other Woman, longsuffering and angelic, "she" is no more able to trouble the hero
whose imprisonment and/or death was ine's prospects of domestic felicity.
Something of this self-directed anger,
unmerited. The other is the discovery of an
Evil Other Woman, who got no more than and its obvious connections to male-di
she deserved and is now either dead, or rected anger, comes out in the ambivalent
sorry for her sins and about to die. The rev relationship between Gilman's narrator
elation of these sins usually implicates her and the woman she "finds" in her own
as a bad (selfish) mother, a bad (undutiful) room. The narrator, after all, is in effect a
daughter, and/or a bad (sexual) woman. female Gothicist, who writes her agony
The heroine's discovery of such Other onto the walls of her own domestic prison
Women is in the one case an encounter and thus reveals what seems an ordinary
with women's oppression?their confine house to be a Gothic horror. Clearly, the
ment as wives, mothers, and daughters? woman she has found is a victim who
and in the other with a related repression: needs to be rescued (the long-imprisoned
the Hidden Woman confined inside those Good Other Woman), but she is also some
genteel writers and readers who, in the one who destroys the heroine's prospects
idealization of the heroine's virtues, dis of domestic tranquility by her angry and re
place their own rebellious feelings with filial bellious presence. The narrator tries to free
piety, their anger with patient fortitude,5 her, but she is also determined that she
and their sexuality with sensibility. Both shall not escape: "If that woman does get
discoveries reveal complementary aspects out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!"
of women's subordination: their immure (34). In one sense this is self-directed an
ment in domestic spaces as sisters, wives, ger; shortly thereafter we learn, to our hor
and daughters; and the immurement, in ror, that the narrator has in fact used the
side themselves, of an angry, rebellious, rope to bind herself. In another sense, her
6 LEGACY
self-bondage is a desperate impulse toheroine's excruciating sufferings, allowed

keep hold of?to possess fully?a newat the same time for a release of anger and
found, elusive other self who is angry, anda masochistic revelling in the cathartic ac
has a right to be. knowledgement of its existence and its
This overt representation of the way thesources. Masochism is a twisted version of
narrator's masochism is linked to her needself-defense: a form of pseudo-power,
for self-knowledge and self-possession iswhich gives the victim the illusion of willing
rare, perhaps unique, in the history ofcircumstances she cannot control. It allows
women's Gothic, and it shows to what ex for an honest attribution of the physical
tent Gilman herself saw beneath many ofsource of those sufferings to someone else,
the surface trappings of the genre. Wom but it mystifies their cause by deluding the
en's experience of the illegitimate exercisevictim into experiencing her passive victim
of male authority as Gothic romance por ization as active, self-generated desire. In
trays it is often read as an expression ofwomen's Gothic, this dynamic operates,
masochistic desire, especially sexual denot at the level of the plot, in which hero
sire. Such interpretations depend on aines are portrayed as victims rather than
reading of the villain as secretly the hero,masochists, but at the level of writing and
to whom the heroine (or, more accurately, reading, themselves acts of pseudo-power
the writer), is secretly attracted and forin which the writer or reader, by willing the
whose domination she longs. The glaring heroine's suffering as the source of a pleas
inadequacies of most such readings are oburable literary experience, gains the illusion
vious?not only that they blame the victims of being in control of it. The deepest maso
of sexual oppression, but that in their haste chism of women's Gothic is here, in the
to do so they ignore the most basic subject false sense of empowerment with which it
of Gothic plots: women who just can'tinfuses its readers' and writers' identifica
seem to get out of the house. The primarytion with women's suffering. In this light, it
function of the Gothic pursuit in women'sis even more significant that 'The Yellow
romances should be all too obvious. The Wallpaper" begins with the narrator's wish
threatening male portrays ua woman's pro that her house were haunted like those in
jected fears and sense of actual victimizawhich frightened heroines suffer Gothic
tion; the pursuit justifies adventure and es horrors. It is a wish, in essence, to em
cape, which contrast dramatically with herpower herself. Already she is afraid of her
. . . everyday domestic experience; andhusband, and already she is suffering.
the moral victory of the heroine over the What she wishes for is an escape, through
pursuer reflects a desired, but repressed fantasy, into a symbolic version of her own
emancipation from actual oppressors"plight: a version in which she would have a
(Roberts 47). Whatever masochistic desiremeasure of distance and control.
speaks through women's Gothic narratives Interpretations of the Gothic as an ex
must be put in the context of the desperate pression of women's masochistic desire for
unhappiness they express at the samemale domination depend on reading the
time. Indeed, the two are intimately re villain as the secret hero rather than a
lated; Russ's comment on modern "Goth threat against whom the heroine must de
ics" is true of their ancestors as well: "thefend herself. A further inadequacy of such
Heroine's suffering is the principal action of readings is that they omit the actual hero
the story because it is the only action shefrom consideration as a significant charac
can perform. The Modern Gothic as a ter.6 This is a serious omission, because
genre, is a means of enabling a convenwhatever suspicion there may be in wom
tionally feminine heroine to have adven en's Gothic that the villain is really the hero
tures at all" (50). is balanced by an important complemen
The delight women readers experiencedtary suspicion: the hero is really the villain.
identifying with these "adventures," theAt least twice this equation is made overtly
in the form of a heroine's "mistake";7 most riage places her in a situation of terrible
often, however, the suspicion that the hero sexual and economic domination. That is
is really the villain surfaces in the juxtaposi to say, the hero who rescues the young
tions of the narrative sequence, in which woman and takes her away to live happily
the temporal conjunction and then?"at ever after may really be the villain who
once the most unrevealing and the most captures her and takes her away to live im
suggestive of narrative links" (MacCaffrey mured in a domestic prison.
48) ?stands in for causal or logical connec Emily's harassment by Montoni and his
tions: "because," "and so," "therefore," men, in other words, is the nightmare ver
"that is to say." This is a common proce sion of the valiant court paid her by the
dure in allegorical romance especially, as hero. This is the same theme Russ finds in
modern Gothics: "Somebody's Trying to
critics of allegory have shown (e.g., Mac
Caffrey 47-48, Hough 135-36); more im Kill Me and I Think It's My Husband." "On
portantly in terms of the atmosphere of the day when it will be possible for woman
Gothic narrative, it is the procedure of to love not in her weakness but in her
dreams,8 which "reproduce logical connec strength . . . love will become for her, as
tion by simultaneity in time' and represent for man, a source of life and not of mortal
"causation ... by temporal sequence" danger," de Beauvoir said (743). In Gil
(Freud 349, 351). Thus in Gothic ro man's story as in traditional women's
mances two juxtaposed narratives may Gothic, love is a source of mortal danger.
well be two versions of the same event, or The husband John, self-cast in the role of
the first may be the true cause of the emo the hero who will rescue the narrator from
tions associated with the second. the Gothic horrors of her own silly imagi
The way Radcliffe's heroine Emily St. nation?who will save her by invalidating
Aubert comes to be in the power of Mon her experience of her own inner reality?is
toni at the Castle of Udolpho exemplifies clearly the villain; Gilman presents the
perfectly the narrative sequence where equation overtly. The narrator, on the
temporal contiguity, standing in for logical other hand, the real "writer" of this Gothic
connection, identifies the hero as the vil romance, begins, like so many other
lain. Emily is engaged to Valancourt, a women Gothicists, by not recognizing the
man of sensibility and benevolence with identity. Instead, she tries to find the
whom it is obvious she will live happily sources, in herself, for the fact that she gets
ever after. The preparations are laid for her so "unreasonably angry with John some
wedding; the plans are set, the decorations times" (11). And her true knowledge of the
procured. But at the last minute a surpris "vice and violence" he represents comes
ing substitution is made. Emily's deluded out initially only in the juxtapositions, the
aunt uses the decorations for her own mar and thens, whereby the story of the wallpa
riage to the sinister Montoni, and insists per re-tells the story of her relationship with
that Emily wear to the celebration the John. In these retellings, the way John's
clothes intended for her wedding to Valan misguided cure inhibits her recovery is
court. Emily, her sensibilities shocked by translated: "This paper looks to me as if it
this wedding so different from the one she knew what a vicious influence it had!" (16).
was anticipating, is whisked away to the And her reaction to John, against whom,
scene of a brutal, unhappy marriage in in the other story, she is sometimes "un
which the husband is a tyrant. This "scene" reasonably angry," finds its true expres
is revealed in its fullest horror at Udolpho, sion: "I get positively angry with the im
where, trapped in the new husband's pertinence of it and the everlastingness"
house, Emily is subject to the advances of (16). In the daylight story, John's constrict
his men and his own attempts to wrest her ing paternalism, which robs her of respon
inheritance away from her. Emily is plan sibility for herself, is camouflaged by
ning to marry the hero, and then a mar praise: "He is very careful and loving, and
8 LEGACY
hardly lets me stir without special directiontowards him who could harbour a doubt of
.... he takes all care from me . . ." (12).it, to leave to him all the trouble of seeking
In the nightmare story his violence is morean explanation . . . she took to herself all
evident: the pattern "is torturing. ... It
the shame of misconduct, or at least of its
slaps you in the face, knocks you down,appearance, and was only eager for an op
and tramples upon you. . ." (25). portunity of explaining its cause" (73). Al
In this Gothic story, the wallpaper standsthough Catherine sacrifices some coher
in for the nightmare version of the hero,ence as well as heroic dignity in her haste
showing that the "writer" of this tale isto get the explanation out all at once, the
forced, in more ways than one, to makeresult is most satisfactory. Henry Tilney be
her story a mystery. It is a mystery to her lieves her, and his good opinion is happily
because it expresses the self-knowledgerestored.
she is not aware of; she must also make it a One of the favorite subjects of women
mystery to her husband, concealing her Gothicists, despite their own rhetorical ex
writing from other members of the housecesses, was the restraint proper to female
hold, who may enter her room at any min discourse. When they choose to speak,
ute. A major aspect of women's vulnerabil Gothic heroines can soar to rhetorical
ity as Gothicists portray it involves preciselyheights far beyond their enemies' range;
this situation: a woman's difficulty knowingbut again and again they also choose to re
and being known in a position that isolates main silent even if it means remaining per
her by locking her into herself, but at the secuted and misunderstood. The perse
same time renders her susceptible to percuted woman's impulse to ensconce her
petual intrusion. Gothic romance is espe self resentfully in the mystery the man's
cially a woman's genre because, in all sorts misunderstanding has already made of her
of ways, it is about the nightmare of trying ?"to leave to him all the trouble of seeking
to "speak T " in a world where the "I" inan explanation"?is precisely the impulse
question is uncomprehending of and in behind the bizarre behavior the narrator
comprehensible to the dominant power
exhibits at the end of Gilman's story, when
structure. she locks herself in and throws the key out
That the theme of speech and silence is of the window, forcing her husband to
crucial to this Gothic story of a woman who come and seek out her reasons. With the
wants to write is obvious; it has not been true spirit of the female Gothicist, she con
remarked, however, that this theme was fides to the reader, "I want to astonish
an old staple of Gothic romance, conven him" (34). Her knowledge that he will in
tional enough to have been parodied by deed be astonished at the revelation of her
Jane Austen. At a crucial moment in real state of mind is related to another
Northanger Abbey it seems that Cather theme crucial to women's Gothic: the mis
ine's friendship with the Tilneys, and her prizing of the heroine, and the final trium
prospects of living happily ever after, are phant unveiling of her true nature.
about to be destroyed. Her friends mistak Rosetta Ballin's The Statue Room, the
enly think she has rebuffed them, and it is a story of a heroine deprived of the kingdom
heroine's duty at such times to remain to which her true status should entitle her,
proudly silent, secure in her "conscious in ends with a fantasy of such self-revelation,
nocence," willing to suffer the conse as the heroine Romelia removes her mask
quences of refusing to exonerate herself. and reproves the guards who have seized
Fortunately, such standards are inimical to her: "Off, off, ye base-born plebeians . . .
Catherine's personality, and she rushes im behold who I am!" (2: 135). In women's
pulsively to explain her behavior. "Feelings Gothic, the fairy-tale story of the noble
rather natural than heroic possessed her; woman whose true identity is unknown ac
. . . instead of proudly resolving, in con quires a special resonance, for the difficulty
scious innocence, to shew her resentment of being known is the real subject of Gothic
paranoia, and the heroine's impulse to cry noble fortitude, the temptation of speaking
out, "behold who I am!" is the strongest "I." As a consequence, she is consistently
and most stifled impulse women Gothicists taken to be something she is not, and is
portray. The atmosphere of persecution thereby forced into a tacit form of decep
that infuses women's Gothic is produced tion.
not only by an obsessive narrative focus on Amanda's experience of being taken for
attempts to lock the heroine up, separate other-than-herself is in one sense simply
her from the hero, take her money and the experience of being Other. Not only
property, violate her, kill her, but often by can she not voice her own identity; by the
a pervasive sense that the heroine is being terms in which she and the world define fe
falsely charged with feelings and intentions male virtue, her status as a good woman
she does not have. This is part of the larger depends upon her willingness to refrain
motif of the mis-knowing of the heroine: from disabusing the world of its false defini
the false categorizing and misnaming of her tion of her. Her dilemma is a ridiculous
essential nature. double bind, but it makes perfect sense in a
One of the most remarkable examples of society where woman plays the role of
such misprizing occurs in Regina Maria Other: feminine virtue in such a world con
Roche's popular romance The Children of sists precisely of submitting to definition by
the Abbey, in which the whole plot turns an alien patriarchy, even in the extreme
upon misinterpretations of the heroine. case, the reductio ad absurdam, when that
Many of these interpretations result from definition labels the woman as devoid of
prohibitions against her speaking up to ex feminine virtue.
plain or defend her strange, but innocent, The chief misknower of the heroine in
conduct. The source both of Amanda's "The Yellow Wallpaper," of course, is
suspicious behavior and of these prohibi John, the "physician of high standing"
tions is her kind and loving father, who, who uses his exclusively masculine knowl
out of "scrupulous delicacy" (2: 73) in fi edge as a source of power over his wife.
nancial matters, forces her to desert her Like Amanda's fathers, he prohibits self
lover without explanation, thus causing her expression, forbidding his wife to write
to appear unfaithful. As is so often the case down her thoughts. To her feeble attempts
in Gothic romance, this same story is then to speak her own reality, he responds that
retold, but in a way that allows for the ex she does not understand these matters: UI
pression of the feelings that the first version am a doctor, dear, and I know" (23). As
has served to repress?another instance of de Beauvoir says, "Lock the doors and
the "and then" which means "that is to close the shutters as she will . . . woman
say." The Good Father, whose prohibition fails to find complete security in her home.
against the heroine's making her true feel It is surrounded by that masculine universe
ings known is hard to accept but under which she respects from afar, without dar
standable and just, dies. And then the Evil ing to venture into it. And precisely be
Father of Amanda's lover steps in with cause she is incapable of grasping it through
what amounts to exactly the same prohibi technical skill, sound logic, and definite
tion, forcing her, for financial considera knowledge, she feels, like the child and the
tions of his own, to leave the hero without savage, that she is surrounded by danger
a word of explanation and thus causing her ous mysteries" (673). It is Gilman's special
to appear unfaithful. The result of this re insight to see that the mysteries of John's
markable patriarchal coercion is that masculine cult of science are dangerous
Amanda is almost constantly throughout precisely because they pretend to explain,
the book suspected by her beloved, and by among other things, the mystery of
his relatives, of sexual perfidy. These sus woman. This aggressive misprizing of the
picions sorely tempt Amanda to speak up narrator's inner reality at the same time
and defend herself, but she resists, with locks her into a female domestic sphere
10 LEGACY
and shuts her out from the special myste major role is to continue the species (480),
ries of that masculine province outside the
and because the "work" they do in their
home, medical science. In response, the enclosed "circle of self" is itself circular.
narrator attempts to affirm her own sense "Few tasks are more like the torture of
of herself by creating and celebrating herSisyphus than housework, with its endless
own mysteries. Experiencing her hus repetition ..." (504).
band's knowledge as power, she tries to Repetition in women's Gothic mimes the
develop a different kind of knowledge in
claustrophobic circularity of women's real
self-defense. She turns her attention to her lives in that it shows the heroine, who must
wallpaper, determining to discover the sec
confront the same terrors repeatedly, do
ret of her room in order to hoard it as aing the same thing over and over. In its
knowledge peculiarly her own: "There are presentation of multiple female victim
Gothic romance also shows the same thing
things in that paper that nobody knows but
me, or ever will" (22); "I am determined
being done to women over and over; it
that nobody shall find it out but myself!" suggests the inescapable victimization of
(27); "I have found out another funny Woman in general. Emily escapes but then
thing, but I shan't tell it. . ." (31). In the
Blanche is trapped (Mysteries of Udolpho);
process, she makes herself more and more Julia escapes but then she finds that her
of a mystery to the husband who doesn't mother is trapped (Sicilian Romance); and
want to know her, anyway, and indeed so on, from volume to volume. The repeti
prefers for her to be as little conscious of tion in Gilman's Gothic story is the narra
her own mind as possible: tor's growing obsession with her wallpaper,
I lie down ever so much now. John her nightmarish task of endless and extra
says it is good for me, and to sleep all I ordinarily difficult interior decorating, her
can. infantile creeping around and around the
so-called "nursery," and the boring regi
Indeed he started the habit by making
me lie down for an hour after each meal.
men prescribed by her doctor-husband. It
It is a very bad habit I am convinced,
is also the multiplication of women in th
for you see I don't sleep. wallpaper, who engage in the same Sisy
And that cultivates deceit, for I don't
phean task of trying to overcome, through
tell them I'm awake?O no! (26)
repetition, the repetitious life to which they
have been assigned. Gilman's subversive
John prefers that his wife sleep as much
as possible; she deceives him by onlymessage
pre is evident. In her story there is no
tending, meanwhile pursuing a project hero
sheto end the repetition with the tradi
has come to see as urgently important:tional closure: a marriage through which
concentrating all her intellectual energies
the heroine transcends her earlier perils,
and is
on her wallpaper. This absurd situation which cancels out the protest implicit
almost a parody of the way women have in the preceding images of women "im
mured
been assigned, in de Beauvoir's terms, to in their families groping in the
dark."
"immanence," and of the distorted forms
their frustrated impulse toward transcenEarlier women's Gothic, too, was a
dence may take as a result. "The maledeeplyis
subversive genre, but often only to
called upon ... to transcend himself the to
extent that it subverted itself. For, like
dreams,
ward the totality of the universe and the in women's Gothic offers its insights
together with protection from their mean
finity of the future; but traditional marriage
does not invite woman to transcend herself
ing. The heroine kills her father, but it
with him; it confines her in immanence,
wasn't her real father; the real father ar
shuts her up within the circle of herself"
rives to explain that the act was only justifi
(500). The life of immanence is a life
ableof
self-defense; anyway, the victim isn't
repetition, and women are confined todeadrep
after all, so she didn't kill him (Mus
etition in special ways?because theirgrave,
one Solemn Injunction). The heroine vi
olates decorum by eloping from a convent, male literary tradition of Gothic romance
but the woman who urged her to do so is that precedes it. In fact, "The Yellow Wall
really her mother, so even her act of rebel paper" could almost be an allegory of the
lion conformed to the decorum of filial pie way the female Gothicist uses mystery to
ty (Radcliffe, The Italian). The heroine re mediate between her anger at domestic
nounces her ties to her father and declares ideology and her need to believe in it. For
that she will "struggle for liberty and life" the narrator, a woman excluded from the
(Radcliffe, Romance of the Forest 1: 81); mysteries of masculine knowledge ("I am a
but that wasn't her father, after all; in fact, doctor dear, and I know"), compensates
her real father was murdered by the false by making her wallpaper, symbol of her
one against whom she rebelled. The hero domestic confinement, into a mystery that
ine's lover acts like the villain?but no, it she must devote every moment to deci
was all a lie (Radcliffe, Mysteries of Udol phering. Her concentration on the wallpa
pho). The heroine's father is trying to kill per is at once a desperate attempt to vali
her, but no?he is not her father; it was all date the ideology that limits women's prop
a mistake (Radcliffe, The Italian). er sphere of knowledge to the mysteries of
In Roche's The House of Osma and Al interior decorating, and a way for her to in
meria is an even more contorted example. scribe her own mystery?the angry and
When the heroine's father, "the most arro victimized Hidden Other Woman inside
gant of mankind" (1: 34), opposes her her?on the walls of her domestic prison.
marriage, her lover kills him. She is torn Ironically, what her husband thinks he
between love for and revulsion toward the "knows" is his wife; her increasing sense
murderer, but the conflict is resolved when that she is the guardian of a deep secret
it turns out that the man the lover killed that "nobody knows but me" (22)?a treas
was not her father, after all. Unfortunately, ure of self-knowledge she must hoard with
her real parents are even worse than he the greatest care?marks her increasing
was: the father "gaunt and ferocious," the awareness that her husband's so-called
mother "loaded with tawdry ornaments" knowledge of his patient wife has mystified
(3: 91). (This last may seem a minor fail her even in her own eyes. It is her final tri
ing, but it is presented in dire terms, pre umph to force this supposed expert on
sumably an adolescent fantasy of embar feminine psychology to confront directly,
assment at one's parents' bad taste). Their and literally, the fact that her life is really a
"mouldering" house, with its shattered locked room to him: a room to which only
windows, "withering grass and weeds" and the imprisoned woman herself can provide
"mutilated statues," is now revealed to be the key. At the end she assaults the male
both her true family dwelling and her pris rationalist with the revelation that this
on. But hidden away there, it turns out, is house is haunted by a mystery, and that
her real father?the first one, after all? this mystery is his own wife.
who is not only alive, but now completely This sense that the Gothic heroine is her
sympathetic to her plight. No wonder the self the real mystery whose solution she
subject of Gothic romance is fear. Women must discover and proclaim is central to
Gothicists were desperately afraid of their Gilman's re-visioning of the Gothic. In
real subject, which is anger. "The Yellow Wallpaper," she reveals her
Gilman saw through Gothic fear to the perceptions that Gothic fear is a mask for
emotion behind it; significantly, although anger, that woman's "separate sphere" is a
the narrator comes to acknowledge herself house of horrors, and that the "mysteries"
"a little afraid of John" (34), anger comes heroines try so desperately to decipher
increasingly to be her dominant emotion. while immured in Gothic space are only a
In this as in so many other ways, "The Yel disguise for the real mystery, woman her
low Wallpaper" is a commentary on the self. She portrays this mystery as invisible
hidden meanings of the century-long fe to men, and their self-satisfied "knowl
12 LEGACY
edge" of women as a form of violence

window; having rescued her alter-ego from
against which women need to defend
the imprisonment of the wallpaper, she
themselves by "speaking 'I.' " But this task
carefully ties her up so she will not escape.
is almost impossible, because that falsePerhaps most bizarre is the way in which
the protagonist's journey inward seems to
"knowledge" is itself the source of the mys
tery: a dangerous mystification in which have produced an unfolding self-knowl
woman, before she frees herself to know? edge ending in total self loss. Having at first
and to create?her own inner reality, un confused her barbarous confinement in a
madhouse with a genteel vacation in the
wittingly colludes. "The Yellow Wallpaper"
charts the breakdown of this collusion,country,
be the narrator gradually distin
guished, in her room with its barred win
ginning with the narrator's desperate effort
to preserve it by becoming a female Goth dows, "a woman" behind bars. At the end
icist. Choosing escapism rather thanshe
eshas come to see that woman as herself,
cape, she simultaneously invests her borasking in a moment of shocking clarity
ing domestic world with the "romanticwhether
fe all the creeping women she sees
"come out of that wall-paper, as I did"
licity" of Gothic terrors and creates her
own alternative "mystery," her own spe (35). The phrase "as I did" acknowledges
that all this time she herself has been the
cialized branch of knowledge that can exist
safely in a "separate sphere" from thatOther
of Woman, both longsuffering and re
her husband. What happens, however,bellious,
is hidden in her room. Yet the flash
of insight is also a moment of confusion:
that, in writing her Gothic story onto her
walls, she uncovers what women's Gothic the narrator has everything backwards,
had always tried to conceal: a Hidden identifying the woman in the wallpaper as
Woman in the heroine, who resents the herself
life rather than as a symbolic?and self
of domestic repetition to which the "hero"
created?projection of her own plight out
ward onto her surroundings.10 She began
would like to confine her. By forcing her
husband to acknowledge and confront the her stay at this house by longing for the
mystery she has been to him, she exposes symbolic escape of a Gothic fantasy, and
this domestic life for what it is. that is what she has found. But like most
The husband's response to the Gothic
female Gothic readers and writers, she fails
vision with which the woman writer has to translate the Gothic reality into its every
confronted him, however, is to become day meanings; thus her self-knowledge is
unconscious?as unconscious as male somehow hidden even from herself, and
her act of imagination, the symbolic dis
readers in Gilman's day seem to have been
of the real secret she was revealing.9 And
covery of her plight, can issue only in sym
the narrator, crawling triumphantly overbolic action. She tears off wallpaper, ties
his inert form, is still defeated by that unup an imaginary woman to keep her in
consciousness: still trapped in repetition, doors,
as "creeps" around and around her
she goes around and around the "circle "nursery"-prison.
of In her private universe
herself." all these are acts of freedom.
This image is part of a disturbing system Ironically, what they symbolize most ob
of ironies at the end of "The Yellow Wall viously is something quite different. To
paper." The narrator, forced to "read" her gether these actions are an extreme and lit
wallpaper passively as a substitute for writ eral version of the role for which the narra
ing actively, has transformed her reading tor's society has cast her as a woman: the
into an act of imagination and thus an act homemaker passionately interested in her
of freedom. Yet this "freedom" seems to wallpaper; the mother self-confined to the
consist in creeping around and around a nursery; the "little girl" (23) inferior, with
"nursery" in a circle. Having "got out at her childlike behavior, to her wiser hus
last," the narrator celebrates by locking band. The grim joke behind the final Gothic
herself in and throwing the key out the vision of a woman crawling around a nur
sery like a maniac is that this apparent "in Notes

sanity" is merely a literalized picture of the The term "re-visioning" is from Adrienne Rich,
social norm that passes, in her society, for "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision."
sanity?the conduct becoming in a respect
able woman. This is Giiman's final equa 2As Doody says, "It is in the Gothic novel that
women writers could first accuse the 'real world' of
tion of the Gothic nightmare with women's falsehood and deep disorder" (560).
everyday reality. At its most pessimistic
level, the story ends in a terrible vision of 3See Kahane on "the spectral presence," at the
what happens when women are forced to "secret center of the Gothic structure" (50), of a
"dead-undead mother, archaic and all-encompass
seek self-knowledge in nurseries and interi ing, a ghost signifying the problematics of female
or decorations; it is a bitter, parodic view of identity which the heroine must confront" (47-48).
what Gilman's society intended women,
including her, to be. 4Compare Russ's discussion of the convention of
the "Other Woman" in modern Gothics (33, 34, 47),
That Gilman resisted such stereotyping
and Radway on the "female foil" (149).
by writing a story like "The Yellow Wall
paper" casts the ending in a more hopeful 5The "favourite virtue" of the early Gothic heroines
light, as do a number of elements in the (J. M. S. Tompkins 270).
plot itself: the narrator's increasing sense of
6However, Wolff presents a much wiser reading of
self-mastery as the story goes on; her de both the villain and hero as projections of the hero
termination to "speak T " against her hus ine's attitude toward her sexuality.
band's prohibition;11 her final exultation in
her own powers after so long a period of 7See Smith, Emmeline 377-78, and Roche, Cler
mont 2: 6-8.
self-doubt; her ability to direct her anger, at
the end, toward its proper object?the 8As Hough points out in his discussion of allegory
hero whom she finally perceives as the vil (135).
lain. Her excited cry, "I've got out at last
.... so you can't put me back!" (36) repre 9See Hedges on contemporary, and subsequent,
readers' blindness to the "connection between the in
sents a delusion only on one level; the nar sanity and the sex, or sexual role, of the victim ..."
rator is lost in imagination, but in imagina (41).
tion she will continue to be free.
The final image in "The Yellow Wallpa 10Cf. Kolodny's view that "in decoding her own
projections onto the paper, the protagonist had man
per" is one of triumph and defeat, insight
aged merely to reencode them once more, and now
and insanity, self-knowledge and self-loss. more firmly than ever, within" (459), and Shumaker's
That the story should end in a maze of discussion of the way Gilman's pattern of images "re
ironic ambiguities as confusing as the wall veals the source of the narrator's malady yet allows
paper itself is appropriate. It is hardly sur the narrator herself to remain essentially unable to
verbalize her problem" (597).
prising that Gilman's text should generate
several patterns of meaning, each of which nOn self-expression as a theme central to the story
trails off at the end into "unheard of contra see Gilbert and Gubar (89-92) and Treichler, who
dictions" (13). For like the wallpaper, Gil reads the wallpaper itself as "a metaphor for women's
discourse" (62).
man's story mirrors a social system rife with
the multiple contradictions that result when
people struggle to fulfill their human poten Works Cited
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M

Male and Female Mysteries

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MALE AND FEMALE MYSTERIES IN "THE YELLOW WALLPAPER"

Author(s): EUGENIA C. DELAMOTTE

of the fear and despair in real women's

house?her "escape" into marriage?has sexual Other Woman that conventional

self-bondage is a desperate impulse toheroine's excruciating sufferings, allowed

edge" of women as a form of violence

sery like a maniac is that this apparent "in Notes

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