Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper

Conflict is an element that appears in literature and is a normal part of everyday life. It is defined as any struggle or fight between two opposing forces. Conflict is common and necessary when it comes to stories because without conflict the story would be dull. Conflict allows the author to add suspense to a piece of literature that can make the reader excited or nervous. In stories, conflict is any problem that involves the characters; the character could be opposing different forces such as themselves, another character, society as a whole, technology, and in certain cases of fictional works, the supernatural. The “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman perfectly depicts the various types of conflicts throughout the short story through the main character who remains anonymous. Gilman herself suffered from postpartum depression and was prescribed the ‘rest cure’; like the narrator. Her experience inspired her to write “The Yellow Wallpaper”, which is a gothic horror story about a narrator, who remains unnamed, struggling with what we can assume is a type of depression. Although I initially thought that the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was conflicting one with her mind, I now see that she not only struggling with her mind but also with another character and the patriarchal society as a hole during that time period.

The unnamed narrator is a woman who suffers from depression and is prescribed the “rest cure”. The “rest cure” is a period when the patient is supposed to remain inactive with the intention of improving the patient’s mental health. Her husband, John, who is also a physician, is a very practical and rationalistic man who disregarded the existence of anything being wrong with her mental state; he believed that she is fatigued and just needs to rest. With this thought in mind, John takes her to a summer vacation home to start her rest period. During this time, the narrator is forbidden to do any work that requires her to do any physical or mental work; this rule is especially expressed when it comes to writing. John believes that if her condition would worsen if she were to do any form of reading or writing. However, the narrator believes that her condition could benefit if she were allowed to do work: “I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good”. She submits to her husband and does not work, but she begins to write in a secret journal that she has trouble keeping from John and his sister, Jennie. In the secret journal, she writes to prevent her illness getting the best of her. Another conflict arises when the narrator voices her dislike for the room John has put her in stating how she would like the wallpaper to be replaced because it makes her nervous. John ignores her please stating, “after the wallpaper is changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows… and so on”. John is constantly paying no attention to the narrator’s needs and treats her as a child that cannot be left alone and needs special directions, this is noted when John calls the narrator “little goose” and “little girl”. John also imposes his ways on to the narrator and always expects her to follow along, an example of this treatment can be found in the following quote: “He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia… he said I wasn’t able to go…I did not make out a very good case for myself… just this nervous weakness I suppose”. As the story continues and the narrator believes that the wall is, in fact, helping with her illness, she becomes suspicious of John and his sister Jennie; the conflict turns into a two vs. one. The narrator now believes that John and Jennie are starting to figure out things about the wallpaper. This angers the narrator dearly, she begins to rip away the wallpaper believing that John and Jennie are plotting to put her back into the bar like patterns. While fighting a physical conflict, the narrator also suffered an internal conflict constantly in her mind on what was real and what was a hallucination caused by her illness.

We know early on that the narrator is suffering from an illness that no one believes is real. The illness has the narrator constantly nervous and paranoid about the environment; in this case, it is the wallpaper in the room she occupying. Then staying in the room, the narrator is staring at the wallpaper so much that she is able to notice every detail in the wallpaper, she describes it as, “the color is repellant, almost revolting: a smoldering unclean yellow strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly Sulphur tint in others.” It seems like the narrator is staring at the wallpaper her entire stay more than anything because, throughout the story, she points out the details. Her obsession with the wallpaper makes it seem as though the wallpaper is the most important thing to her; her obsession is fully noticed when she says, “there are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will”. The narrator stays up during the night and at this time she believes she is seeing a “faint figure” in the wall that is shaking the wallpaper at night; as if it is attempting to escape past the wallpaper.

The narrator at first believes that this figure is not real and was just a hallucination from her illness and disregards it; instead, she continues to try and follow the pattern of the wallpaper. However, the narrator once again sees the figure “shake the pattern” during the night, this time she lays awake and does not sleep during the night. This makes the narrator more nervous and unable to sleep at night because he watches to ensure that the woman does not escape from the wallpaper. Soon after, the woman begins to identify with the figure, calling it a woman and becomes possessive over the wallpaper. Her husband, John, believes that the narrator is improving and healing but in that moment of happiness, the narrator reveals that “it was because of the wallpaper” that she was beginning to feel better. At this point the narrator is beginning to mix up what is real and fake; the narrator now believes that she is seeing the woman from the wallpaper outside in the real-world crawling around during the day. There is even a point where the narrator says, “I see her [woman in the wallpaper] on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes, she hides under the blackberry vines… It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight… I always lock the door when I creep by daylight”. With the narrator admitting to imitating the woman’s creeping it shows that her illness has worsened. From this point on, the narrator believes that she is the woman from the paper and becomes fixated with trying to remove the wallpaper. While in an attempt to move the bed to reach the wallpaper she “got so angry, I bit off a little piece at one corner” of the bed. After removing most of the wallpaper, she waits for John to come home to surprise him. When John comes home and enters the room he is taken back and she says, “I’ve got out at last in spite of you and Jennie. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back”. The narrator’s illness has taken over and now the narrator and the woman in the wallpaper have become once in mind and body. Maybe the narrator would have had a chance at becoming healthier if society understood the illness that she was diagnosed with.

Being set in what we can assume is around the 1890s because this was when the author was inspired to write this piece, the understanding of mental illnesses was limited. Reading contextual clues such as the narrator’s nervousness and paranoia is that the narrator is suffering from depression; I believe it is a depression called Postpartum Depression. People with this type of depression often feel irritated, detached, and confused. However, during this time, depression was not an available diagnosis because then, an illness had to be physical and not mental. Because of the little information on depression, the narrator is prescribed the best option for the time which is rest and solitude. This prescription is called “the rest cure”. The narrator is restricted and is “forbidden to ‘work’” until she is well again. This “rest cure” for women belittled them which was normal for the patriarchal time period. Gilman experienced the same treatment as the narrator; Gilman was told: “never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again’ as long as I [Gilman] lived”. This prescription did the opposite of heal the narrator, in fact, it drove her into hysteria. Being confined to one room for hours with little social contact would drive anyone into lunacy and the narrator was not a special case. If society was more open to mental illnesses and the effects it has on a person perhaps the narrator would have been able to heal completely.

Overall, “The Yellow Wallpaper” expresses these various conflicts to introduce the readers to how women with mental illnesses were treated and oppressed in a patriarchal culture. When first reading this short story, it is known that the narrator is in conflict with herself. However, taking notice to the conflicts stated previously, when we read the short story once more, we pay more attention to the dialog between her and John we can see how John belittles the narrator with childish nicknames and controls who she sees and how she should feel. As for the narrator conflicting with society, it is not obvious until we understand the culture during the time period in which the story was written; men we in control and women were seen as the lesser than. Gilman’s execution of putting detail into the conflicts show how effective “The Yellow Wallpaper” was and the quality of work Gilman put in to show the mindset of how some women must have felt when forced to endure the “rest cure”.

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