Feminism in The Yellow Wallpaper

A man can dismantle a woman piece by piece until she completely loses herself and real life. When a woman’s art, humanity, and ability to create is constantly diverted by men who abuse their power to try to make themselves feel superior. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the horror film Mother!, directed by Darren Aronofsky, by the use of symbolism, reflects similar struggles of being in a male- dominant/ gender fixed society and how sometimes one’s narcissistic tendencies can lead to madness.

The first symbol I want to start with is the nursery. After the narrator gives birth to their first child, her physician and husband, diagnoses her with “female hysteria.” He then moves them to an old deteriorating home where she is to only get plenty of “rest” and “fresh air.” After arriving, the narrator mentions taking one of the beautiful rooms downstairs, but her husband insists that they stay in in the larger room upstairs, the nursery. I feel that the nursery portrays how the narrator is treated by her husband and others, and how she experiences mental and emotional imprisonment. She is also treated like a child by her husband, he calls her names like, “silly goose” and “little girl” in the story as if she were to be too immature or irresponsible to take care of herself. I do not believe the husband infantilizes his wife to be mean, he just did not know how to be any other way. “The common law in the nineteenth century allowed a married woman’s legal identity to be subsumed in her husband’s.” She in a sense became her husband’s property. The only roles women were expected to have were to be mothers and nurturers. The nursery is filled with objects you would see in a mental hospital or prison. The windows are covered, a gate atop the stairs, and the bed nailed to the floor. The symbolism of the nursery shows that the narrator is imprisoned physically, and mentally under male control.

The second major symbol Gilman uses is the decaying yellow wallpaper. The narrator describes the wallpaper as the worst kind of wallpaper she has ever seen. (Gilman) She describes by stating, “The color is repellent, almost revolting, a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight. No wonder the children hated it!” (Gilman) The narrator anthropomorphizes the pattern of the wallpaper when she describes it, “it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads… the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!” (Gilman) She also says, “when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide,” (Gilman) The word choice she chooses to uses to describe the pattern is a way the narrator represents her need to escape patriarchal society.

The next symbol is the woman trapped in the wallpaper. With the narrator’s declining mental state and growing paranoia she begins to see a woman trapped in the wallpaper. She at first, vaguely describes the woman as a “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that… front design.” (Gilman) After some time the narrator starts to imagine the woman is trying to escape from behind the bar like pattern. She says that when “she pushes, I pull,” (Gilman) representing that the woman behind the pattern is actually her. When the narrator becomes hopeful for her own escape she mentions “I think that woman gets out in the daytime… I’ve seen her!” (Gilman) This shows how the narrator uses the woman trapped as a symbol to free her of her imprisonment to her husband’s control and the society she lives in.

The film Mother! And “The Yellow Wallpaper” show significant similarity when it comes to symbolism. They both show the issue of gender roles, women being inferior to men, and the effects it has on them.

The first symbol I notice is the house itself. The character known as, Mother, a young wife, spends her days pouring her heart and soul renovating the beautiful home she shares with her husband who is called, him, after the home was burned down. When Mother was trying to decide what color to paint the walls, deciding on gray or mustard yellow, is when she starts to put her hand against the wall, she feels it pulsate, she starts to sense that the house itself is alive. Mother is confined, if not imprisoned, in the home. She never steps foot outside the property, and her purpose revolves around it too. Mother says, “We spend all our time here, I want to make it a paradise,” (Aronofsky) And she tries her best to make it that way. The “invaders” that comes into the house becomes animals and destroys everything in their path, and with each moment of destruction, the heart of the house decays. The house and how Mother feels for it shows symbolism of what Mother is going through, and the suffering she feels seeing the house be destroyed. Mother is not trapped in a wall, but her entire existence is in the house.

The next source of symbolism is how the husband known as, Him, displaying himself as God. Mother sacrifices herself daily to fulfill her domestic duty. She constantly cooks, cleans, and decorates the home. She is constantly withstanding blow after blow of Him undermining her work, but takes full credit for it to strangers. Mother asks Him to send the “invaders” away, but he insists that “all I am trying to do is bring like into this house!” (Aronofsky) Forgoing any care that she is the one who has really brought life to the house, but the house is only seen as His house. The self sacrifice of “domesticated” woman is not only taken for granted, but also robs her of her humanity.

The third and final symbol is when, Him, takes Mother’s heart. Towards the end of the film, Mother gives birth to a baby boy. She refuses to let Him take to baby to show the onlookers downstairs. Unfortunately, sleep deprivation got the best of her, and he was able to take the baby from her arms and gives it to the mass quantity of people downstairs, who then kill it. Mother screams in terror and starts running to the basement where she lets her wrath loose in fury. She chooses an oil drum and sets the entire place on fire, killing everybody inside. At the end of the film we see the only survivor is Him. You can see him carry Mother out of the ashes of their demolished home, burned beyond recognition. She says to him, “I gave you everything, I have nothing left to give.”(Aronofsky) When Him points out that she still has a heart, she lets him take that from her, too. This shows the concept of female creation is an ultimate sacrifice. By binding herself to the home, Mother joins the tradition of women trapped by domestic norms. She becomes a shadow of herself, a pile of ash. Her sacrifice rebirths the cycle, creating a new women in the House, until she is eventually used up, deteriorating into nothing more than a reflective glass- her love acting as a mirror for His ego.

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