The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman

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The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman

“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Gilman is a chilling portrayal of a woman’s downward spiral towards madness after undergoing treatment for postpartum depression in the 1800’s. The narrator, whose name remains nameless, represents the hundreds of middle to upper- class women who were diagnosed with “hysteria” and prescribed a “rest” treatment. Although Gilman’s story was a heroic attempt to “save people from being driven crazy” (Gilman p 1) by this type of “cure” it was much more. “The Yellow Wallpaper” opened the eyes of many to the apparent oppression of women in the 1800’s and “possibly the only way they could (unconsciously) resist or protest their traditional ‘feminine’ work—or over-work” (Chesler p 11) by going “mad”.

In order for the reader to understand the psychology of the story, they must understand this type of diagnosis of women in the 1800’s and the supposed cure. This treatment, created by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, was a prescription of almost total inactivity and isolation. “Passivity was the main prescription, along with warm baths, cool baths, abstinence from animal foods and spices, and indulgence in milk, and puddings, cereals, and ‘mild sub-acidfruits’” (Ehrenreich and English p 49). Gilman, herself, was treated by Dr. Mitchell and underwent the same treatment as the heroine of the story.

This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to ‘live as domestic a life as far as possible’, to ‘have but two hours’ intellectual life a day’ and ‘never to touch pen, brush or pencil again’ as long...

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...s “The Yellow Wallpaper”: a Poetics of the Inside p 12) John ends up fainting. He came to the realization that his wife had traded submission for insanity.

Bibliography:

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”: A Poetics of the Inside May 8, 2000 Http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/snyder.htm

Chesler, Phyllis “When They Call You Crazy” CHOICES, Women’s Medical Center, Inc Vol III, June 6th, 1994 p 9-14)

Ehrenreich, Barbara and English, Deirdre Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness, The Feminist Press

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins “The Yellow Wallpaper” The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Third Edition, ed Paul Lauter New York: Houghton Mifflin Company 1998

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins “Why I wrote the ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’?” April 27th 2000

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/amlit/wallpaper/whywrote.html

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