Who would ever know that something as generally unmemorable as wallpaper could affect someone so violently? The short story of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a well-orchestrated tale where such a simple thing indeed seems to drive the narrator mad. At first it seems that the color and patterns are just mildly irritating to the normal, but perhaps a little unwell, female speaker of the story. As pages go by, it is obvious that there is much more behind her disgust towards the paper as it develops into a disturbing antagonist who moves and taunts her in the night. To me, it seems easy to jump to the idea that what she sees in the walls is in fact a distorted reflection of herself. The way that the layers of the pattern hold back the creeping woman behind is not unlike the bars on the narrator’s window and the manner in which she is entrapped in the bedroom for what surely feels like eternity. With no exit, anyone would start to lose their mind. As the room becomes her only home and the idea of leaving it becomes less and less favorable, she probably begins to fear the outside world. Thus, seeing the creeping woman out the window is related to her containment and this growing obsession with staying in the room. I remember hearing cases of solitary confinement prisoners where they would often be sitting in a tiny bare room in pitch blackness for 23 hours a day. Such an environment can quickly bring someone to insanity. Of course, the narrator’s cell is a little more pleasant than one of these, but the effect can be very much parallel over time. It seems pretty incredible that her husband could do such a cruel thing to his wife, yet she is so gone that she only sees it being out of love. It’s often very hard for people to accept that a particular problem may in fact be psychological and in this case they refused to properly address the situation until it was too late. The fact that they wouldn’t even say what was really going on and she instead lightly referred to her condition as mere nervousness (a name probably given by her doubtful husband) says a lot about their denial. Even when there’s what seems to be an end in sight, such as moving out of the house, failing to acknowledge issues like this can potentially be very dangerous.
"It seems pretty incredible that her husband could do such a cruel thing to his wife, yet she is so gone that she only sees it being out of love. It’s often very hard for people to accept that a particular problem may in fact be psychological and in this case they refused to properly address the situation until it was too late."
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing these thoughts, Tony. Something that keeps coming to my mind as I read through these blogs is the importance of communication. I imagine the narrator to have a number of things on her mind prior to the start of the story that she was unable to express. I don't know why she was not able to express them. I just feel that it is extremely important for two people in a relationship to communicate. Good work!