English Literature

Viewing Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wall-Paper in literal terms is an impossible undertaking.  The primary reason for this is that it involves analyzing madness logically, when the nature of madness defies logic.  Rather, it makes more sense to view this work through the lens of authorial intent, in an attempt to decode what its larger message may be.  That message describes the evils of patriarchyhow even in the higher echelons of society, women are oppressed by male rule.

Lacking the means to physically escape such a situation, the only rational choice becomes madness.
It is not hard to see why the narrator of this story finds herself empathizing with a fictional prisoner trapped inside the yellow wallpaper.  In a world where no one else can see the horror of her situation (thrown into a room for her own good courtesy of her doctor husband, and given no more respect than would be accorded someone bound for the asylum), she must invent someone with whom she can empathize and be empathized with.  Of course, the liberation of this fictional prisoner can only occur when the narrators mind becomes fully unhinged.  Truly, this is her liberationshe has torn down the wallpaper which came to represent her prison, and with it came the last tatters of her sanity.  As part of the climax of the story, the wallpaper continues to play an important symbolic role in the oppressionliberation dynamic of womens lives.

Throughout the story, readers are forced to grapple with the higher meaning of the yellow wallpaper itself.  One could simply dismiss the significance of itchalk it up as a red herring being chased by the fleeting sanity of the narrator.  However, its presence in the title illustrates its importancethat it is more than a simple detail, just as the narrator represents more than one oppressed woman.  Rather, for most of the story, the yellow wallpaper represents the room into which women have been placed by men.  At first, it seems mostly acceptablethe wallpaper could be in better repair, but it is a quiet room of the kind that staunch feminists such as Virginia Woolf requested to be given.  It even has its own yellow smell of false agencythe notion that this space belongs to the narrator, a place not to be invaded casually by the presence of others.

In time, however, cracks appear, both literally and figuratively.  The seemingly positive aspect of having this so-called room with a view becomes negated by the realization that the demarcation of this limited space as uniquely belonging to a woman (representing, of course, all women) underscores the fact that everything else does not belong to her.  The small flaws (such as a tear here or there) take on a much more magnified scope, and the flat color begins showing patterns placed on it that went previously unnoticed.  This represents the systematic oppression of womenthat for every room, literally and metaphorically, that a woman is placed in by a man, she is never fully alone.  She carries a kind of generational sexism and oppression within her, and realizes that just as one being shackled means that all are shackled, the liberation of one is as profound as the liberation of all.

This adds profoundly to the bittersweet aspect of the works ending.  The narrators liberation, as written above, can only come through madness.  Even the physical actions of her liberationdestroying the wallpaperillustrates the unknowing complicity of women in the machinations of patriarchy, as destroying the wallpaper of a box is not nearly the same as destroying the walls of a box.  She will be in this prison, or one like it, her entire life.  The madness was inevitableshe is unable to be mentally whole, because that would require a gender equity that her husband is unable to admit even exists.  In the face of a lifetime of lucid pain or a lifetime of liberated madness, the narrator chooses the latterand forces audiences to ponder what the better of two awful fates actually is.

Gilmans The Yellow Wall-Paper is refreshingly complex in its analysis and criticism of gender dynamics within the world.  By examining the issues of one couple, she examines the issues of all couples, ingeniously deriving the macro element from the microcosm.  However, the nihilistic element of unavoidable madness is an aspect that may put off modern readers.  In a way, despite the feminist overtones, the work places itself outside of feminism, as it foresees no end to the pain and oppression, nor any solution that can be taken.  However, it could be argued that this is the strength of the work.  In making the madness of women an inevitable byproduct of patriarchy, Gilman is state unequivocally that the existing system is corrupt from the ground up.  It is not a wounded system that needs a band-aid, but a wounding system that needs to be surgically removed.  Only then can the women of the world escape the yellow wallpaper that they, too, are forced to stare at.