Defense Mechanisms In The Yellow Wallpaper

The mind is a fascinating aspect of humankind. It allows people to problem solve in ways that other organisms cannot. Sometimes, however, the mind works against humans without their knowledge. People unconsciously use defense mechanisms to deal with stress and anxiety. The characters in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter all use defense mechanisms to protect themselves from stressors in their environments.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is told in stream of consciousness style by a woman who is writing diary entry style updates on her experience with the rest cure, a common prescription for the postpartum depression she experiences after the birth of her child. Throughout the story, it becomes obvious that she is using multiple defense mechanisms to deal with her forced isolation. The room with the awful yellow wallpaper once belonged to a boys’ school. In one of her later entries, she notices that the

bedstead was gnawed on, but blames it on the children. It’s made clear that she is in denial of doing it herself when she writes, “I got so angry that I bit off a little piece [of the bed] at one corner—but it hurt my teeth” (Gilman 427). She more than likely does not realize that she’s the one that made the bite marks on the bed.
Along with denial, the woman begins to use the defense mechanism of projection. At night, she starts to see shadows crawling along the walls. Little does she know, the shadow is actually herself. Shawn St. Jean suggests that “the woman behind the wallpaper is a projection of the narrator’s feelings of resentment and helplessness, a sort of psychological doppelgänger” (St. Jean 134). She also begins to see the woman outside in the daylight as a reflection on the window. The reflection seems to have it’s freedom, which is all the woman wants.
St. Jean also points out that the woman also exhibits regression by crawling around on the floor. She is regressing back to an infantile state so she doesn’t have to deal with the anxiety that the resting cure is causing her. Feldstein argues that “if we allow an ironic interpretation of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, the narrator’s ‘regression’ becomes purposeful—a cunning craziness, a militant, politicized madness by which the narrator resists the interiorization of authority imposed by John and her brother” (qtd in St. Jean 98). It’s hard to believe, however, that a woman who believes her shadow is a person, would have the ability to be that calculating.
Another character that uses defense mechanisms is the lead character in “Young Goodman Brown”, an allegorical tale about religious hypocrisy. Goodman Brown goes into the woods late at night where he sees all of the supposedly godly people in his village at a meeting with the devil. He is so appalled to see all the townsfolk there, but he never realizes how hypocritical he is for judging everyone when he is at the meeting as well. Although his experience could have only been a dream, it affects him for years to come. Like the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, he uses the defense mechanism of projection. Hawthorne wrote:
“On the Sabbath-day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen, because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear, and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit … then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers.” (Hawthorne 495)
He is projecting his sins onto everyone else in the congregation. The fact that his faith was hindered so badly after the experience brings to question if he really had any faith of his own. It seemed as if all of his religious beliefs were dependent on the faith of others, especially his wife.
After he sees his wife at the communion with the devil, any bit of faith he had left is gone.
Young Goodman Brown also experiences denial. He believes that he belongs to a family of godly people. When he first encounters the devil, he proclaims, “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians, since the days of the martyrs” (Hawthorne 488). Imagine his shock when the devil tells him that he’s been with his family for a long time. Both his father and his grandfather went on the same walk with the devil years before. Eventually, it is revealed that the devil even appeared to look like his grandfather, a man that he more than likely looked up to.
In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”, the old woman is having a hard time accepting her inevitable death.

She initially tells the young doctor: “Get along now, take your schoolbooks and go. There’s nothing wrong with me” (Porter 673). Denial is one of the first stages of the acceptance of death. It is described as “an ego fight/flight defense against the harness of realities of dying” (Stillion & Attig 7). By denying the fact that it’s her time to pass on, she doesn’t have to try to grasp the complex concept of mortality. It’s hard to accept the fact that one isn’t going to live forever. Although Granny is saying she’s fine, she clearly isn’t. Moments after she proclaims that there isn’t anything wrong with her, Porter writes that “her bones felt loose, and floated around in her skin, and Doctor Harry floated like a balloon around the foot of her bed” (Porter 673). Granny is hallucinating, and probably floating in and out of

consciousness.
As the story goes on, Granny begins to show more signs of anger than denial—the second stage of grief. This anger is a feeling that she inevitably displaces onto her daughter, Cornelia. She blames the fact that she’s in the hospital on her daughter, instead of her illness. It’s much easier for her to be irritated at her daughter than it is to be angry at her own mortality. Cornelia is, obviously, much more tangible. She also displaces her anger at death on the Doctor. As she shoos him away she says, “Leave a well woman alone. I’ll call for you when I want you… Where were you forty years ago when I pulled through milk-leg and double pneumonia? You weren’t even born. Don’t let Cornelia lead you on!” (Porter 673). She’s only belittling him because it’s one of the only ways she knows how to cope.
The Grandmother seems to finally come to the acceptance stage by experiencing her life through a series of flashbacks. She looks back on her life at all of the biggest moments. This could be looked at as her getting through one of the last of Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages—Ego Integrity vs Despair (Stillion & Attig 23). She’s trying to come to terms with everything that happened in her life, along with being jilted at the altar and the loss of her daughter, Hapsy. When it’s finally her time to go, she hasn’t accepted her death. She thinks, “So, my dear Lord, this is my death and I wasn’t even thinking about it. My children have come to see me die. But I can’t, it’s not time. Oh, I always hated surprises” (Porter 679). The grandmother ends up dying without resolving her problems or fully accepting her fate.
Projection, repression, denial, and displacement are defense mechanisms that can be used in a multitude of different scenarios to alleviate anxiety. They usually occur without the awareness of the person implementing them. As displayed by the unnamed woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Goodman Brown, and Granny Weatherall, they often do more harm than good.