Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall Paper” as a Symbol of Domestic Tyranny

In S. Weir Mitchell’s theory of the rest cure, he describes the female body as inherently weak and subjugated by frailty. His explanation of the condition known as “hysteria” relies on the woman’s relation to her family as a domestic figure and caretaker (Mitchell 136). Mitchell links feminine life and duty with the wellbeing of her household, seeming to place the health of the family over the mothers in his very explanation of her illness. He exalts the docile, domestic female archetype while blaming those who don’t fit into that archetype as partially or fully responsible for the condition that ails her. Charlotte Perkins Gilman critiques this view of womanhood in her story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” where she details the gradual decline of a woman’s mental health due to the oppressive forces within her household. The rest cure, rather than re-enliven her spirit and relieve her ailments, drives the protagonist further into illness. Through the juxtaposition of her husband’s restrictive authority and the woman’s own thoughts, Gilman effectively asserts the effects of the rest cure as maddening rather than restorative.

Gilman’s descriptions of John and his wife’s relationship serve as an allegory of the patient-doctor relationship where John infantilizes his wife, justifying the infantilization with his authority as a physician. John’s behavior also mirrors S. Weir Mitchell, who took over Perkin’s care during her depression and worsened her condition through his treatment. Gilman directly alludes to Mitchell when “John says if [his wife] do[esn’t] pick up faster he shall send [her] to Weir Mitchell” (Gilman 46). Gilman does this deliberately to criticize Weir and warn others of his misaligned tactics that emphasize compliance over collaboration. John’s reference to Weir also depicts him as a proponent of Weir’s restrictive, domestic-centric treatment and explains some of his coddling behavior. Whenever John’s wife attempts to discuss her condition with him, John responds by denying her any autonomy over her condition or how she feels, responding with “bless her little heart,” and “what is it, little girl?” (Gilman 50, 49). By repeatedly using words like “little” when describing and addressing his wife, John equates her to a child and subordinate. Weir, in his book Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked, describes his female patients who suffer from “hysteria” as “self-made invalids” (Mitchell 136); similarly, John continuously tells his wife “she shall be as sick as she pleases” and “no one but [her]self can help [her] out of it, that [she] must use [her] will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with [her]” (Gilman 50, 48). John agrees with Weir’s characterization of female hysterics as “self-made invalids” by blaming his wife for her own ailments. Gilman ascribes John with logic similar to Weir to stress this issue as pertinent and dire, as well as criticize Weir’s unempathetic and shortsighted view of women. 

Gilman tactfully wrote the story to confuse and aggravate the reader to emphasize the rest cure as wholly debilitating. In “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman explains that the story “was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy” by highlighting the maddening effect of the rest-cure on a patient. She invites the reader into the mindset of a woman experiencing depression and psychosis, forcing us to emphasize with her submissive position created by the structure of her household. Gilman uses the yellow wallpaper to mirror the effects of the household’s restrictive authority over the protagonist, where the yellow wallpaper acts in symbiosis with her mental state. The protagonist begins to view the wallpaper as a living being, repulsive yet mesmerizing, until she finally fixates on the wallpaper completely. Gilman characterizes the yellow wallpaper as both an oppressive force and a mirror to the protagonist, separating the paper into two representative beings; the first: the domestic ideals of womanhood and the restrictions it imposes, and the second: the women who suffer under those ideals. 

The yellow wallpaper symbolizes the oppressive force of her husband, and more broadly, the oppressive force of the domestic tradition so often conflated with femininity. When observing the wallpaper, the narrator notes its “vicious influence” over her, how “the impertinence of it and [its] everlastingness” makes her “angry” (45). With the use of “impertinence” she seems to ascribe a human brazenness to the paper, yet its’ inanimate status makes it permanent and “everlasting,” which aggravates her (45). Here, the narrator replaces the domination of her husband with the perplexing provocation of the wallpaper, neglecting to recognize the true actor of control in her life. As the protagonist falls deeper into paranoia and psychosis, she realizes she is “getting a little afraid of John,” and wonders if “it is the paper” that has had this peculiar influence on him (51). She finally begins to notice a connection between her husband’s subjugating behavior and the malice lurking within the paper. As she becomes increasingly intrigued by the paper and intent “that nobody shall find it out but [her],” her condition begins to improve as her mind becomes stimulated again (51). However, when the paper begins to divulge the reality of her life and her fate as forever subordinate in the domestic space, her condition again worsens. She later reconciles the oppressive force of her household when she accepts the woman in the paper as her double, telling John he “can’t put [her] back” in the paper now that she’s broken free (57).

The yellow wallpaper, or rather the woman the protagonist sees within it, acts as a personified double of the narrator. The protagonist’s relationship with the wallpaper remains confusingly inconsistent throughout the story, as she moves back and forth from describing it as “repellant,” “sickly” and “torturing” to ascribing animate features to the pattern (43, 50). As the protagonist continues to observe the paper more closely, she sees “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (46). Her use of gothic imagery and language denotes a supernatural element while providing insight into how she views herself, the effects of her illness, and the influence of the rest cure. She also explains how “there are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will,” alluding to some inherent collusion and kinship between the wallpaper and herself (49). Nearing the climactic point of the story, the protagonist notices how the paper “becomes bars” in the “moonlight” and “the woman behind” “takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard,” attempting to escape (51, 53). Here, the protagonist separates the wallpaper into two parts: the paper-prison and the woman trapped within its bars. At the end of the story, the narrator’s perspective merges with the woman behind the paper, and she no longer refers to the woman behind the paper as an ‘other,’ instead referencing the woman in the first person. When John breaks into the room and sees her, she yells at him: “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!” (57). The protagonist, or perhaps Jane, reconciles the imprisoning nature of the paper with her husband’s domestic domination over her. She recognizes him as her jailer, the one who trapped her within the paper by refusing to recognize her as an autonomous being.

The women seen within the paper by the narrator represents the collective experience of women under the tyranny of the rest cure. The protagonist explains how “sometimes [she] think[s] there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one,” highlighting the character’s conflation of her own experience with the experience of other women like her (53). Here, Gilman alludes to the rest cure’s widespread use and her fear that other women might suffer as she once did due to improper treatment. When musing about the paper, she notes how the paper “has so many heads” that “nobody could climb through” because once “they get through” “the pattern strangles them off” (53). While her judgment turns illogical here, it’s clear she grapples with the confining nature of her situation and her fate as a woman. The “strangles” of the pattern reference the restrictions of domestic virtue as inherent to femininity.  When the narrator accepts the woman as her double, she notices “there are so many of those creeping women” around her and “wonder[s] if they all [came] out of the wallpaper as [she] did?” suggesting that she is not alone in her imprisonment (56).

Gilman, while critical of the domestic ideals forced upon women of her era, does not excuse women of all blame. Through her character, Jane, Gilman highlights how women can become vehicles of their own oppression through uncontested submission to the forces that subjugate them. Jane, while internally rebellious against her household, represses those urges so forcefully that she drowns further into her illness. The yellow wallpaper is so immediately distressing to her as it forces her to see the reality of her situation, a reality that she often denies. When she accepts herself as doubled, she names herself as complicit in her imprisonment, seemingly separating herself from ‘Jane’ and embodying the woman trapped in the wall. While Gilman mainly critiques the structures that bind women, she also calls upon them to speak out against it and become autonomous actors in their own lives. 

Works Cited

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Four Stories by American Women, edited by Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Penguin, 1992, pp. 41–58.

S. Weir Mitchell. “Invalid Women.” Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked, 1871, pp. 133-141.