Literary Interpretation Scholars and critics have often noted the striking parallels between the experiences of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and those of the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” (including a cameo appearance by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, the physician who treated Gilman for nervous prostration in 1887).
The autobiographical roots of the story constitute only one dimension of its significance, however, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” continues to be the subject of extensive critical scrutiny and debate. At one level, the story is a horror story, a clinical account of the slow descent of the white middle-class female protagonist / narrator into madness. At the same time, the story directly confronts and dramatizes the sexual politics of male / female and husband / wife relationships in a specific sociocultural setting.
Anne’s husband, John, whom some critics see as a representative of a repressive, patriarchal society, is widely regarded as the antagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” At the very least, his well-meaning but misguided efforts to enforce Dr. Mitchell’s gospel of rest are directly related to Anne’s descent into madness. When he consigns Anne to the upstairs room, the former nursery, his act introduces the dominant symbolism of the story. Anne’s room powerfully dramatizes her status in her society: she is legally a child, under the care and control of an adult. The windows of the nursery are barred, making it not only a childhood retreat but also a prison.
The Essay on The Yellow Wallpaper 4
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” and John Clive’s film “The Yellow Wallpaper” are similar and different in many aspects. The main plot for example, is extremely similar in both versions. John, one of the main characters, is a doctor and tries to help his wife, the narrator, from depression he believes she suffers from. His treatment requires virtually no activity, and ...
The bedstead is nailed to the floor, underscoring Anne’s static position in the room. And she is forbidden to care for her own child. Thus cloistered, Anne increasingly focuses her attention on the yellow wallpaper, the primary symbol in the story. Anne’s relationship to the wallpaper is an ambivalent one. It both repels and fascinates. She eventually begins to see in it a motion, a purpose, a design.
As the story unfolds and pushes toward its inexorable conclusion, Anne shifts her attention from her desire to escape from the limitations imposed on her onto the figure of the woman trapped behind the patterns of the yellow wallpaper. She becomes obsessed with rescuing the woman, and the wallpaper becomes the symbol of both Anne’s confinement and her liberation. If critics tend to agree about the trajectory of the narrator / protagonist into madness, there is considerable disagreement about the significance of the concluding scene. Feminist critics tend to see Anne as the victim of an oppressive patriarchal society that sharply restricts women’s freedom of movement, denies their creativity, and prevents them from functioning as complete human beings. Deprived of the right to read, some critics argue, Anne begins to read the wallpaper, in the process creating meaning for herself, discovering images that relate to the truth of her own experience. For these critics, Anne’s descent into madness is, in fact, an act of affirmation, a form of freedom that rejects the injunctions of an irrational society.
Other critics have argued, equally passionately, that Anne’s position at the end of the story signals a fateful descent into infantilism, regression, even animalism. Like the image of the yellow wallpaper, the ending of the story continues to provoke and divide readers and critics. There are no easy answers to these issues, a fact that insures that Gilman’s classic story will continue to attract and haunt its readers in the future.
