"The Yellow Wallpaper"
Looking into “The Yellow Wallpaper”
I was assigned to read “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She suffered from long and severe bouts of depression, which finally led to her visit to see a famous neurologist at the time, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. After six months, Weir instructed her to go home, rest and limit herself to no more than 2 hours a day of “intellectual work” a day, and he strictly instructed her to never pick up a pencil, pen or paintbrush for the rest of her life. Gilman obeyed his instruction for three months, until she feared that she would lose her sanity if she continued to obey. This birthed her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This short story shows great similarity to her life, however exaggerated.
Throughout the course of the story, the narrator describes her descent into insanity, as she is restricted to her room. In the story, she is a new mother (perhaps this is the cause of this particular bout of depression), but she never is with her newborn, she hired help that take care of the baby. She spends her days and nights in her room studying the yellow wallpaper. Her husband told her that her room used to be a nursery, however the description of the room makes one doubt that he was being honest with her. The bed was nailed to the floor and the legs were covered with scratch marks and bite marks. There were clasps on the walls (perhaps to restrain a person) and a thick line drawn around the walls of the room in a circle. She says that she did not mind that any of that-but what she did mind was the yellow wallpaper. She describes it as “lurid orange” in some places, and “sickly sulphur” in others. It also had a foul odor to it that seemed to linger throughout the house. The pattern on the wallpaper deeply vexed her. At the start of the story she describes pattern on the wallpaper in a strange way that makes one think that she is describing a baby. She describes a place where the pattern “lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down. I get positively angry at the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl., those absurd and unblinking eyes are everywhere” (p. 835). Throughout the course of the story, she watches the wallpaper constantly. She watches and continues to describe the wallpaper, and her delusions become more and more absurd and disturbing. Finally she decides that the image on the wallpaper is that of a woman behind bars. During the night, she thinks, the woman shakes the bars violently, hoping to escape. Also in the bars are multiple heads of women who have tried to escape but who have died in the useless effort. Outside her windows she begins to see ghosts of women “creeping” around. Throughout every window of the house she sees them. Finally as her madness reaches its fullest, she decides that she must tear off the paper on the walls. She locks her husband out of the house and she begins to tear the wallpaper down. As she franticly strips the paper off, she says that she is doing this because she wants her husband to see, she wants to “astonish him” (843). (To show him much she was suffering? Prove to him that she was not delusional?) At this point the story becomes hard to follow. She tries to move the bed to the wall so that she can catch the woman in the wall. The bed will not move, so she bites it in desperation. As she is doing this she says that she is “angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try. Besides I wouldn’t do it. Of course not I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued. I don’t like to look out the windows even- there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did” (843)? She finally catches and binds the woman (herself?) with a rope. She says, “[ . . . ] I am securely fastened by my well-hidden rope” (843). When her husband finally arrives, he discovers that he is locked out of the house and he shouts to her to let him in. She says that she will not leave the house to creep around in the daylight. When he asks her what on earth she is doing in the house, she shouts down to him “I have gotten out at last, in spite of you and Jane! I have pulled off most of the paper so you can’t put me back” (who is Jane? She has not yet been mentioned in the story).
When several of the students in my class (including me) asked my teacher who Jane is, he answered, “why do we put so much trust in what a crazy person says? Who cares who Jane is, the narrator has gone crazy, why are we still listening?” We are listening, he says because the author did her job in developing our faith in her as an intellectual and credible person in the beginning of the story. Because of this we continued to listen to what she had to say. As she began to speak of things that we normally would think of as crazy, we continue to read. Because we have related to her, she makes us aware of how close we ourselves are to insanity. She makes us aware of how close the two are: sanity and insanity.
Why do I put so much trust in what insane people may say?
Maybe it is because I feel that insane people are at the brink of death- they are standing at the edge of life and they can see all that is beneath- the deserts, the dark, the flames below and the faces that rise from them. It is so seductive and terrifying. It is consuming. I have seen those flames and I have felt their heat, and so I take their heed.
I was assigned to read “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She suffered from long and severe bouts of depression, which finally led to her visit to see a famous neurologist at the time, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. After six months, Weir instructed her to go home, rest and limit herself to no more than 2 hours a day of “intellectual work” a day, and he strictly instructed her to never pick up a pencil, pen or paintbrush for the rest of her life. Gilman obeyed his instruction for three months, until she feared that she would lose her sanity if she continued to obey. This birthed her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This short story shows great similarity to her life, however exaggerated.
Throughout the course of the story, the narrator describes her descent into insanity, as she is restricted to her room. In the story, she is a new mother (perhaps this is the cause of this particular bout of depression), but she never is with her newborn, she hired help that take care of the baby. She spends her days and nights in her room studying the yellow wallpaper. Her husband told her that her room used to be a nursery, however the description of the room makes one doubt that he was being honest with her. The bed was nailed to the floor and the legs were covered with scratch marks and bite marks. There were clasps on the walls (perhaps to restrain a person) and a thick line drawn around the walls of the room in a circle. She says that she did not mind that any of that-but what she did mind was the yellow wallpaper. She describes it as “lurid orange” in some places, and “sickly sulphur” in others. It also had a foul odor to it that seemed to linger throughout the house. The pattern on the wallpaper deeply vexed her. At the start of the story she describes pattern on the wallpaper in a strange way that makes one think that she is describing a baby. She describes a place where the pattern “lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down. I get positively angry at the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl., those absurd and unblinking eyes are everywhere” (p. 835). Throughout the course of the story, she watches the wallpaper constantly. She watches and continues to describe the wallpaper, and her delusions become more and more absurd and disturbing. Finally she decides that the image on the wallpaper is that of a woman behind bars. During the night, she thinks, the woman shakes the bars violently, hoping to escape. Also in the bars are multiple heads of women who have tried to escape but who have died in the useless effort. Outside her windows she begins to see ghosts of women “creeping” around. Throughout every window of the house she sees them. Finally as her madness reaches its fullest, she decides that she must tear off the paper on the walls. She locks her husband out of the house and she begins to tear the wallpaper down. As she franticly strips the paper off, she says that she is doing this because she wants her husband to see, she wants to “astonish him” (843). (To show him much she was suffering? Prove to him that she was not delusional?) At this point the story becomes hard to follow. She tries to move the bed to the wall so that she can catch the woman in the wall. The bed will not move, so she bites it in desperation. As she is doing this she says that she is “angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try. Besides I wouldn’t do it. Of course not I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued. I don’t like to look out the windows even- there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did” (843)? She finally catches and binds the woman (herself?) with a rope. She says, “[ . . . ] I am securely fastened by my well-hidden rope” (843). When her husband finally arrives, he discovers that he is locked out of the house and he shouts to her to let him in. She says that she will not leave the house to creep around in the daylight. When he asks her what on earth she is doing in the house, she shouts down to him “I have gotten out at last, in spite of you and Jane! I have pulled off most of the paper so you can’t put me back” (who is Jane? She has not yet been mentioned in the story).
When several of the students in my class (including me) asked my teacher who Jane is, he answered, “why do we put so much trust in what a crazy person says? Who cares who Jane is, the narrator has gone crazy, why are we still listening?” We are listening, he says because the author did her job in developing our faith in her as an intellectual and credible person in the beginning of the story. Because of this we continued to listen to what she had to say. As she began to speak of things that we normally would think of as crazy, we continue to read. Because we have related to her, she makes us aware of how close we ourselves are to insanity. She makes us aware of how close the two are: sanity and insanity.
Why do I put so much trust in what insane people may say?
Maybe it is because I feel that insane people are at the brink of death- they are standing at the edge of life and they can see all that is beneath- the deserts, the dark, the flames below and the faces that rise from them. It is so seductive and terrifying. It is consuming. I have seen those flames and I have felt their heat, and so I take their heed.