Victoria Pope

July 22, 2017

Overcoming Isolation

Society in the late nineteenth century was a time that women were seeking freedom from

their domestic imprisonment where they were dominated by patriarchal figures, which is evident

in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Gilman presents a story where the

husband is controlling the narrator in an effort to cure her mental state and return her to the role

that society dominantly expects, which results in her madness as she seeks to become free.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is based on Gilman’s own personal experience with marriage,

and depression and treatment, which makes the story more real to the reader in understanding the

suffering that women faced during the late nineteenth century. Just as the narrator suffers from

Postpartum Depression, so did Gilman. And, the treatment the narrator faces in the story was

very similar to that of Gilman’s. When Gilman sought help for her depression from a “premiere

nerve specialist, Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell. He diagnosed exhaustion of the nerves and prescribed

the Rest Cure, a controversial treatment that Mitchell pioneered” (Charlotte). Just as the narrator

of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is treated, Gilman was ordered to bed rest and isolation from her

family. Although Gilman spent a month in a sanitarium for treatment and was deemed cured,

she did not agree with her “rest” treatment, which led her to write “The Yellow Wallpaper.” By

writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman is able to bring attention to the problems in society

regarding women’s place and treatment for depression.

The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, like Gilman, is sick, but her husband, who is a

physician, does not believe she is sick. In fact he “assures friends and relatives that there is

really nothing the matter with [her] but temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical
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tendency” (Gilman 302). In a society patriarchal dominated, how is she to disagree, especially

when her brother, “[who] is also a physician, and also of high standing [. . .] says the same

thing.” The narrator must fill that her own family imprisons her. She is to take “tonics, and air

and exercise, and journeys, and [is] absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until [she] [is] well again”

(Gilman 303). Although the narrator seeks “less opposition and more society and stimulus” she

is told that would be “the very worst thing [she] can do. Her husband, just in the case of

anything else, is making the decisions for her, which shows how little women had a say in

anything, even their own treatment.

The narrator’s husband, John, ends up placing her in the “atrocious nursery” upstairs

(Gilman 304). She foreshadows that things will not go well by placing in the nursery as she

says, “I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long” (Gilman 304). But John, being

her husband and physician, believes imprisoning her there is the best thing for her health.

However, her true spiral into madness begins in her imprisonment to the nursery with its

wallpaper that is a “sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 304).

Being confined to the room, just as women of the time are confined to their stations in life, she

becomes unsettled.

Quickly after the narrator is placed in the nursery, she begins to see in the wallpaper

“where the patterns lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down”

(Gilman 305). And, she claims that “up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd

unblinking eyes are everywhere” (Gilman 305). She has been isolated from friends and family,

which has led her to see things within the wallpaper, and even recognize the furniture as more

than what it is. Not having anyone to talk or confide in has left her with “one chair that always

seemed like a strong friend” (Gilman 305). A woman cannot be confined to one situation, not a
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nursery or as wife and mother; a women needs to be able to have independence or she may go

mad by trying to fill the voids within her life. The narrator has no one to turn to, so she must

create friends from the furniture and see people in a similar situation within the wallpaper where

both are trapped.

The narrator stops writing when she sees John’s sister arriving who is a housekeeper that

is very satisfied with her position in life. In regards to the sister the narrator says, “I verily

believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!” (Gilman 306). With the implications of

this woman being content with housekeeping and believing that writing could make a woman ill,

one must think that she represents the women opposite of the narrator, such as women who don’t

agree with the feminist movement of the time. There were women, as there is today, that do not

agree with the feminist movement, and Gilman acknowledges them through her introduction of

John’s sister. After all, not everyone is uncomfortable with following society’s close-minded

expectations.

The narrator is given a break from her isolation, as her husband thought having her

“Mother and Nellie and the children down for a week” would be good for her (Gilman 306). The

company visiting tired her out, as company can do to even a well person. But, John threated

sending her to Weir Mitchell, which a reference to the doctor that confined Gilman with his

“Rest” Cure. Of course the narrator does not want to go because “[she] had a friend who was in

his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!” (Gillman 306).

One can assume that the narrator is referring to Gilman herself. Once Gilman had received her

“Rest” Cure treatment, she was sent home with Dr. Mitchell’s instructions to “’Live as domestic

a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time….[…]Have but two hours’ intellectual

life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live’”, which she tried to do, but
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she fell into a deeper depression. But, when her depression did lift she wrote “The Yellow

Wallpaper,” which she said, “’was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from

being driven crazy, and it worked’. By having the husband threaten her with Mitchell, Gilman

was able to draw negative attention toward him through the story.

Nevertheless, the narrator continues to become hysterical as the wallpaper and its “yellow

smell” becomes an increasing problem for her (Gilman 310). The longer someone is confined,

whether it is in a room or a station in life the person can become mad. Just as the narrator seeks

to be free, she sees a woman within the wallpaper that also needs to be set free. Gilman and the

narrator both are trying to free the independent woman within each of them, which is represented

by the woman in the wallpaper. As the narrator tears away the paper, she herself is feeling as if

she is being set free. The narrator, in secret, as many women have to keep their desire for

independence, peels away the wallpaper to set the woman free. Of course, when John realizes

what has happened and receives the narrator comment of “I’ve got out at last […] in spite of you

and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” he faints, and she

“creep[s] over him,” which reflects how feminist had to carefully “creep” over men to set

themselves free.
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Works Cited

“Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” About Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935). N.p., 01 Jan. 1970.

Web 25 July 2017.

Gilman, Charlotte P. “The Yellow Wallpaper.”