Back home my cousin called and told she had to cancel our weekend plans of celebrating my brother's birthday because her husband's aunt went into a coma. I hope she is going to be all right! I looked out from my window and felt a cold press in my heart. My husband is cruising somewhere out there with his friends. (I know, Finnish men are crazy but they do go cruising with their friends even if it is minus 9 degrees and there is a snowstorm going on.) I cannot reach him because he's on the sea. Oh, winter why did you come today?
The least I could do was to sign myself to Goodreads and start reading "The Yellow Wallpaper". I loved it! This is the kind of homework I love! So here I shall write some thoughts about the text:
What is first found out when The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) is opened is that the writer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was an exceptional woman, at her time. She was an "utopian feminist", a sociologist, novelist, writer and a lecturer for social reform. The book is told to be a semi-autographical story about depression, something the writer herself suffered from as well.
The story is about a woman and her husband who live in a strange house while their permanent home is renovated. There were four main themes in the story, and those were women's rights, madness, inequality in a relationship between husband and wife (on 19th century), and romantic style. In this text all themes mentioned will be treated and some close reading will be done.
The narrator
First of all, the narrator of the story is unreliable. She admits it herself. She sees herself as a suffering person and describes how her husband is not sure she is in full mental health. "He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try." The narrators tendency to unreliability creates a strange atmosphere to the story. The reader does not know who to believe. Obviously, the narrator thinks everyone is against her: "The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John. He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look." But what if these arguments are just mad's suspicions?
The narrator has another important dimension: she is a real romantic heroine. She enjoys solitude and she is a writer. (In secret! What could suit better for a romantic character?) In romantic literature main characters are ofter crazy. In this dimension she is similar to most of Edgar Allan Poe's characters.
Women's rights
"Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good" she says in the story. It seems that whatever she thinks "personally" does not matter. Her husband's attitudes and needs come first. The husband means to be good but he smothers his wife by treating her like a baby: "And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head" and "What is it, little girl?" he said. "Don't go walking about like that—you'll get cold." "I am a doctor, dear, and I know."
The husband tries to have control in everything concerning his wife (sleeping, eating and even speaking) and he does not value the only thing his wife really likes, which is writing! "He hates to have me write a word."Writing is something that must be done in secret if the writer is a woman. And she writes because that is the only thing that gratifies her: "I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me."
The narrator feels like a caged bird but what liberates her is her imagination. Even if she has nothing to do, she feels like "I am a comparative burden already!" and every step she takes is controlled but no-one can control her imagination. So she starts to look around and create a fantasy world around her. She pays attention to an old wallpaper in her room and creates a story of a woman (and women) that lives behind it.
The wallpaper
The wallpaper is interesting. It is described carefully, in many different lights as she observes it from her bed where she spends most of her days. This indirectly tells the reader about her condition: sick people or people with weak mental health stay in the bed for the whole day. She tells how she suffers but her husband does not understand: "John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him." When she describes the wallpaper, different senses are portrayed. Firts there is only the sight, then there is the smell: "Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it—there is that smell!" "A yellow smell." This could be a smell of a sick person and reflect and image of the narrator. Or the narrator could be right and the wallpaper could be haunting. The reader is left in a sense of insecurity.
The narrator finds out that there is a "real" woman in the wallpaper:"The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out." "Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over." This is the point where a reader starts to understand that the woman in the picture, in the wallpaper represents the narrator herself, and at the same time all the women in the world. She feels herself a prisoner and even starts to think about doing something insane to be free: "I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try." Just like the narrator would like to jump out of the window, the imaginary woman would like to be free: "that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her."
In the end of the story the narrator and the woman in the wallpaper are actually becoming one. "Here are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?" A greeping woman from the wallpaper is an allegory of subordinated women who try to liberate themselves. They are not walking but they are creeping. That is something that only a sick person or a resigned person would do.
Women coming out of wallpapers!
Wallpaper is made for decorating. It has no other function than that. It does not speak or show any kind of feelings. That was, not only wallpapers' but also women's duty in 19th century when the feminist movement was just about to begin. What a beautiful allegory! The writer says that women do not want to be pretty and quiet anymore: they want to come out from the wallpaper! Of course there are still other kind of women that are perfectly happy with their actual situation. John's sister is a good example: "She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!" But the narrator wants to write and she would like to have a "congenial work". So she gets angry: "I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner—but it hurt my teeth" and starts to free herself from the wallpaper.
"I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!"
The Yellow Wallpaper is a wonderful mixture of romantic literature and early feminism. The main character is a real romantic antiheroine, as mentioned. Precise and careful description of the milieu is also something that is typical for a romance. There are also typical characteristics of horror. The excitement continues throughout the story and the climax is in the end. The structure of the story is typical for thrillers and detective stories. The story itself speaks for women. I love romantic literature, horror and science fiction and I find feminism quite important even in the modern world. So what can I say? This was the best short story I have read in a while!
