The Yellow Wallpaper

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2- Gilman’s narrator as a frustrated women in search of identity

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Introduction:

The patriarchal control of society suffocates the rationality and creativeness of women and restrain their rights and freedom to an extent of detrimental mental depression. Such oppression of women is often apparent in the institution of marriage, where feminism is frowned upon unless, women seek escape from such enforced ‘identity imprisonment’ and combat the male hegemony. Usually, under such oppressive controls, women acquire two-dimensional approach, where they either become conformist or rebellion to the patriarchal ideology. More often than not, a prolonged oppression becomes the reason of depression and neurasthenia in women. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a semi-autobiographical Gothic novel of nineteenth century that focuses on similar feminism issues and women’s sufferings. It is a story of an unnamed female narrator/protagonist, an upper-middle-class female who is a well-respected physician, and her struggle against the patriarchal ideologies that force her to a state of lost identity.

Male domination and female suppression especially in the institution of marriage, was a typical behaviour of societal structures of nineteenth century. Gilman’s critique of the patriarchal ideology of that time is exemplified in her narrator’s conformist attitude, being forced to follow her husband’s (John) view, despite being a well-known physician herself. This may seem a bit incongruous today but was an established conduct back then. John’s derogatory remarks such as, “Blessed little goose”, “little girl” and “bless her little heart” for the narrator, prove that women were treated like children whose identity was a subject matter of their custodian’s (husband).

 Gilman’s protagonist reflects two contradictory characters. On the one hand, she feels inferior to her husband and lack self-identity, “I am a comparative burden already!” and on the other hand, she projects herself as the one who needs an escape from this frustrating status quo and search her identity, “I’ve got out at last”. Despite being mentally abhorrent toward the oppression of men, her husband John and her physician brother Dr Mitchell, she feels an onus to follow their views to an illness level.  Overall this reflects her effort as a woman in search of her self-identity in the given settings of her societal marriage structure.

The narrator is constantly longing for an emotional and intellectual outlet e.g. keeping a journal as a way to “relief” her emotional turmoil and neurasthenia. Even in that journal she uses verbal irony and sarcasm to express her deepest frustration to her husband’s condescension, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage”. The narrator projects her personal frustration onto the wallpaper, as if the wallpaper is an outbreak of her mental imbalance. She lives vicariously through the woman in the wallpaper.