Taking Risks to Self-fulfillment in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson

To seek a worthwhile life, one must seek self-fulfillment . The female character in The Yellow Wallpaper desires to become more of what she can be in life and breaking free from oppression so she is able to secure the satisfaction of self-fulfillment. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Stetson draws on the idea that self-fulfillment is a desired need, however the means to securing it may not itself be desired. In other words, the cost to secure self-fulfillment may be arduous and require risks that may be too great for an individual to endure. The author uses elements of character development, symbolism and theme to portray this perilous struggle for self-fulfillment that inspires readers on many levels.

Stetson’s character in The Yellow Wallpaper comes to want more of what her character potentially is. She did not feel self-fulfilled in her domestic role of wife and mother. This contrasted to her sister-in-law Jennie, who is described as a “perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession.” (p.650) While Stetson’s character happily gives up her domestic functions to Jennie, she is initially passive in her attempt to secure the satisfaction of self-fulfillment: “I did write for a while…. but it does exhaust me a good deal – having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.” (p. 648). Secretly writing in her journal proves to be arduous for the protagonist. Her character, mentally weak and fragile and with no desirable means to be self-fulfilled, succumbs to everything her physician/husband says because “what is one to do?” (p. 638) She is pressured to agree to a “rest cure” for her nervous disorder, although she intuitively knows that this treatment stands in the...

... middle of paper ...

...ons in the shadows, hoping that their need for self-fulfillment is stifled. Stetson uses the element of theme as she critiques the women who fail an attempt to realize self-fulfillment simply because the journey is too much to bear.

The beauty of Stetson’s The Yellow Wallpaper is that even the most doomed and oppressed character can succeed in securing self-fulfillment. In the face of seemingly pervasive and inescapable oppression, the story ends with the protagonist’s asserting more and more of her creative self. Through elements of character development, symbolism and theme, the author portrays that the means to self-fulfillment is not a desirable process in itself. Readers of Stetson’s text are inspired to think that it is up them to remove those last “bits of wallpaper that remain on the wall,” knowing full well that it may be a perilous process.