Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” offers a critical analysis of gender norms and how they affect identity and personal agency. The story, which is set in an era when inflexible social conventions severely restricted women’s liberty and self-expression, revolves around an anonymous female heroine who is kept in her bedroom for her nervous depression by her physician husband (Gilman 14). Gilman skillfully uses the yellow wallpaper’s symbolism to show how patriarchal society’s repressive forces are encroaching on the narrator’s mind and soul. The way the narrator interacts with the masculine characters in her life illustrates the cultural expectations, gender prejudices, and power dynamics regulating her sense of selfhood and ability to control her destiny as she gradually slips farther into obsessive lunacy.
The oppressive gender conventions of the late 19th century that force the heroine to conform to the role of a devoted wife and mother are a significant cause of her mental anguish. She bemoans the fact that her spouse, John, a doctor as well, “hardly lets [her] stir without special direction,” which includes forbidding her from working, which served as her former emotional release (Gilman 1). Additionally, John often disregards her emotions and ideas because he believes that with [his] special knowledge of the subject, he can make the best decisions for her care (Gilman 3). This is consistent with more prominent cultural beliefs that give males control over women’s healthcare and discount women’s opinions as being too sentimental or illogical. The space that the narrator refers to as a “nursery first and then children’s playroom,” which represents the home realm to which women were restricted, seems imprisoning to her (Gilman 3). Even if she would like to go and do something interesting, she accepts that she must comply completely since “a physician of high standing” like John undoubtedly ought to know better (Gilman 1). Thus, the protagonist is forced into a juvenile position by the combined forces of societal norms and masculine authority, which takes away her autonomy.
The narrator’s mental health condition makes the gendered societal constraints on her identity and agency even more challenging to understand. Her writings on her frequent episodes of sadness and suicide ideas indicate long-standing inner anguish. She bemoans the fact that, despite being a catch-all diagnosis for women at the time, suggesting emotional instability and irrationality, people kept brushing off her troubles as the result of a “slight hysterical tendency.” John, her spouse, personifies this gender prejudice by condescendingly treating her mental health issues. To put her disease in such terms as “temporary nervous depression, a slight hysterical tendency” is to minimize the significance of her encounters with psychology as a woman (Gilman 1). The lack of empathy from male characters such as John and the societal stigma associated with mental health for women worsen the narrator’s sense of loneliness.
The protagonist’s connection with the yellow wallpaper becomes a way for her to exercise autonomy and take responsibility for the ideas she has been holding within. This is how her sanity keeps falling apart. She explains how the wallpaper’s initially disorganized design begins to resemble imprisoned women attempting to escape, mirroring her feelings of entrapment and longing for freedom (Gilman 13). When she is alone at night, she carefully removes the wallpaper, almost as if she is scrubbing her way out of a cell. The narrator’s gradual decline into a deluded obsession with the wallpaper illustrates how her mentality is breaking under the intense pressure from society to adhere to traditional feminine norms. Her only escape from the everyday routines and conventions dictating her words, behaviors, and identity is crazy as she lacks healthy channels for self-expression. Even while it comes at the terrible expense of her sanity, the story’s unexpected conclusion, in which she climbs over her husband’s body, suggests a dramatic ultimate rejection of his dominion over her.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” presents a menacing depiction of the ways in which men’s control over women’s autonomy, strict gender norms from the Victorian period, and the stigma associated with mental illness combine to limit women’s identity and agency. Gilman skillfully uses the wallpaper as a representation of the narrator’s struggles to restore her broken identity as well as society’s suffocating control over her. Even though the protagonist’s conclusion is sad, it highlights the harmful effects of depriving women the freedom to express themselves and their psychological well-being, restraints that many still experience today. The narrative vividly conveys the tangible pain resulting from structural gender inequality, leaving a profound effect on readers.
Gilman, C. P. The yellow wallpaper. The Floating Press, 2009. Retrieved from: https://d1lexza0zk46za.cloudfront.net/history/american-documents/documents/cpgilman-yellow-wallpaper-1892.pdf