Trapped Behind the Yellow Wallpaper of Society

"I don't like to look out the windows even-there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of the wall-paper as I did?"  -The Yellow Wallpaper

When I read the section in our humanities book about American feminist writers, I instantly thought of a short story I read in high school called “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  Although I realize the writer/poet and story was not mentioned in the text, I couldn’t help writing about this intriguing, yet creepy story.  It describes a woman, who has been declared depressed by her own husband, who is a doctor, and another physician, and her struggle with her illness.  Her husband demands her to rest and not do any writing all day.  He acts as if she is so fragile that she will break or go crazy.   The unnamed woman feels as if her inactive, boring life is making her sicker, and she begins to keep a secret journal.  In her journal, she begins to write of this yellow, stained, dingy wallpaper that is in her new beautiful, eerie house.  She becomes fascinated and fixated by the wallpaper.  She believes that there is a pattern underneath the yellow wallpaper consisting of a woman locked behind bars.  She describes the woman as trapped, and the depressed woman feels she must set this wallpaper lady free.  She eventually scratches and tears into the yellow wallpaper and goes completely insane.  In the end, she loses her grasp of reality and believes she “crept” out of the yellow wallpaper!

I loved the feminist symbolism shown throughout this short story.  Throughout the story the woman is bossed around by her husband, who thinks he knows what is best for her.  She is treated as if she cannot make any decisions for herself, especially any rational ones.  The woman is meant to focus her attention only on domestic issues, as if she can’t handle “man’s work”.  Even the sub-pattern of the lady trapped in the yellow wallpaper represents the life of a woman in the early 1900s.  Women were trapped inside the home, performing only domestic housework and childcare.  If I lived during this time period and was limited to housework, there is no doubt that I would go crazy as well!  The lady in the wallpaper may also represent the woman’s mental restraints.  She has to act like a “proper lady” and like she has a great marriage, not as if she is suffering from a mental illness.  She is even restrained from her own creativity and imagination.  What a terrible limited life she leads!

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

Below is a link describing why Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" from the author herself.  She discusses her own troubles with boughts of depression and insanity. 
http://wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/1321/1353521/essays/cpggilman.html

Overall, I think Charlotte Perkins Gilman should be at least mentioned in our book in the feminist section.  Although supposedly it wasn't until the latter half of the 1900s that "The Yellow Wallpaper" became recognized for its feminist qualities, the short story is still a phenomenal, intriguing piece of work that grabs a hold of the issue of mental illness and feminism during the early twentieth century.  The fact that Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is still being evaluated and discussed today proves that there is more to her story than just surface reading.