This short story from Charlotte Perkins
Gilman describes the oppression of women during the nineteenth century ,more
specifically , the lower position of women within the institution of marriage. The story reveals that this gender division had the effect of keeping
women in a childish state of ignorance and preventing their full development.
John’s assumption of his own superior wisdom and maturity leads him to
misjudge, patronize, and dominate his wife, all in the name of “helping” her.
The narrator is reduced to acting like a petulant child, unable to stand up for
herself without seeming unreasonable or disloyal. The narrator has no say in
even the smallest details of her life, and she retreats into her obsessive
fantasy, the only place she can retain some control and exercise the power of
her mind.
The mental limits placed upon the
narrator, even more so than the physical ones, are what ultimately drive her
insane. She is forced to hide her anxieties and fears in order to preserve the
facade of a happy marriage and to make it seem as though she is winning the
fight against her depression. From the beginning, the most intolerable aspect
of her treatment is the obliged silence of the “resting cure.” She is forced to
become completely passive, forbidden from exercising her mind in any way.
Writing is especially off limits, and John warns her several times that she
must use her self-control to keep under control her imagination, which he fears
will run away with her. Of course, the narrator’s eventual insanity is a
product of the repression of her
imaginative powee. She is constantly craving for an emotional and intellectual escape,
even going so far as to keep a secret journal, which she describes more than
once as a “relief” to her mind. I believe that a mind that is kept in a state
of forced inactivity is doomed to self-destruction.
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