The Yellow Wallpaper Argument

Their Eyes Were Watching God: Critical School (Feminism)

1) “Such a story ought not to be written” was one criticism that the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, received after her story “The Yellow Wallpaper” first came out in New England Magazine in 1891. The protest continued: “It was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.” Discuss this critical review based on your reading of Gilman’s explanation for her purpose of writing the short story (as found in the article “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”).

This review of “The Yellow Wallpaper” sounds like it was from the perspective of someone who would want the narrator stay inside all day to cure her mental illness. The critic who wrote this review comes off as condescending, as

if they’re assuming that they know better than Gilman. It’s almost as the reviewer is acting similar to John, trying to keep patriarchal status quo alive, by trying to contain outspoken women. Saying something “ought not to be made” is a very middlebrow approach to analyzing art, and isn’t a value argument against the short story.
2) Gilman states in paragraph 8 as follows: “The little book is valued by alienists and is a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate—so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered.” Explain this statement of the author’s purpose using the story and the article to support your analysis. What is an “alienist”?
An alienist is someone who is isolated and feels estranged from the outside world. The reason our narrator goes crazy is because she is alienated. Women during the time period this was written were expected to domestic, taking care of the house and their babies. The moral of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is that this domestic lifestyle is alienating and can cause women to lose their minds. When Gilman gives an example of the short story saving one woman from a similar fate, she’s saying that the story was meant for those in isolation, especially women, so that they end up like the narrator. Those who read it must ditch the idea of misogynistic medical practices that John presents, and let women break free from their domestic lifestyles.
3) Comment on this quote from the final sentence of the article: “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.” This should include a clear reference to feminist theory.
When Gilman says that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is meant to save those from going crazy, “those” really means women who feel isolated in result of their exclusively domestic lifestyles.

One who might think otherwise are the men forcing their wives into the housemaker role, trying to keep women entrapped. Gilman isn’t exploiting mentally ill women to make a taut psychological thriller, she’s telling them to break free from the patriarchal grasp that is the domestic lifestyle.

4) Tie Gilman’s explanation for her purpose in writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” (as stated in the article) to early feminism. Be sure to include references to the story as well as to the other works that you read in this unit.

Gilman’s explanation for writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” is to liberate women from their domineering husbands. Joe and Logan Killicks from Their Eyes Were Watching God are examples of these men. They want Janie to fit a traditional role of what a patriarchal society thinks what a woman should be. Louise Mallard from “The Story of an Hour” is a woman contained by the domestic lifestyle so much that she fears her husband and rejoices when he is reported dead. Mrs. Mallard and her husband are obviously not in a mutual relationship, Mr Mallard obviously acts as the dominant, while Mrs Mallard is forced into being the

submissive.