When reading this story, we learn that the narrator is living a rather good life. We have an unnamed young woman who has recently become a mother, after being married to a well respected
doctor and how they have rented a mansion on the country side to spend a
vacation together.
But this story isn't all "sunshine and rainbows", soon after we learn that she is "sick", yet her husband who is a doctor cannot
find any sickness. He believes that she is suffering from “Temporary Depression
and Hysteria”. The prescription that he gives is: doing absolutely nothing in a
room with yellow wallpaper. During this “treatment” her health deteriorates and
she eventually descents into madness. This outcome came about because she was forbidden to do
any “mental tasks” such as writing, socializing with other people and to even
see her baby, because her husband thinks her mind is so “brittle” that it would
be unbearable for her mental state to handle.
John seems to have complete control over her entire body. Although “mad”, our
narrator knows that she is sick but she is belittled by everyone close to her
because they support her husband’s “professional” knowledge. So, she is left with
nothing to do but stare at the yellow wallpaper. During this time, she craves more human contact and states that she must say
what she feels and think in some way,so forbidden from communicating her thoughts
with other people, she states her thoughts on her journal. In this journal she “outlines” or "mirrors" her mental state based on the patterns of the wallpaper as she describes them as "dull enough to confuse the eye..." or "lame uncertain curves suddenly commit suicide..." Eventually she starts
to see the image of a woman on the wallpaper. She gets fixated on what’s on the
wallpaper, meanwhile she loses trust on her husband and more and more she tries
to discover what is in the wallpaper. Somehow, she is convinced that the
wallpaper is moving, and that it has a certain smell that follows her
everywhere. She says that the woman behind the wallpaper is responsible for this
phenomenon. She wants to free this woman from the wallpaper and on her last day on
the house she locks herself up inside of the room and starts ripping the
wallpaper off, when she is done, the woman on the wallpaper is released. When
her husband John, comes home and gets inside of the room, the woman inside is no
longer his wife but the woman from the wallpaper. She states that she is
finally out, in spite of you and of Jane and will never get back in.
Her getting out of the wallpaper, represents rejecting societal norms, standing
up to her abusive husband and relatives, and breaking free of “Jane”, which Jane I
believe it to be our unnamed character which is finally free from her own
thoughts and emotions.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote this story to contribute new thoughts and
commentary on the social and political situation of the time. It was a form of
critique to the way things were constructed among genders and how women’s lives were
controlled and had limited agency, this is why our author supported the opinion that a domestic
life isn’t enough and that women need meaningful work suited to their natural abilities
and inclinations. Back then, women did not have the rights and freedoms that they
do now, their roles in society were very limited, but our main character is
much more limited than others, this story dramatically intensifies and
illustrates how limitations put on women result in a mental declination.
No comments:
Post a Comment