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Victoria Vinci
English 102
Professor Jones
March 21, 2016
The Yellow Wallpaper
In “The
Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman the narrator claims to have given
birth, but isn’t taking care of the baby, because her husband, John, wants her
to rest. John is a “physician of high
standing” and he prescribed his wife rest treatment (308). The treatment takes place in a large summer
home, where John’s sister, Jennie, helps take care of the narrator when John
isn’t around. The narrator is confined
to a room with bars over the windows, a bolted down bed, and yellow wallpaper
that the narrator severely hates. The
narrator fixates on the wallpaper, even believing it gives off a smell. She claims to see images within it. The narrator believes to see women, in
various situations like being caged and trapped, but claims the women escape
during the daytime. One day, the
narrator goes mad and locks herself inside the room and tears down the yellow
wallpaper. John, hearing the commotion,
runs to the room, but the narrator had already thrown the key out the
window. When John retrieves the key and
opens the door what he sees is so horrific that he faints, and the narrator
creeps over him. The narrator isn’t a
reliable source of information because the whole story is a figment of her
imagination due to her hallucinations, and isolation from the real world.
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One can’t believe everything read in
this story, for the narrator is crazy. The
narrator being forced to be in a room with bars over the windows and a bed
bolted to the ground isn’t a coincidence, or have anything to do with air
quality, like when John says, “…air you can absorb all the time” (Gilman 309),
which was one of the main reasons John insisted the narrator have that room
with the yellow wallpaper. The narrator
is unstable and cannot take care of herself.
She says, “I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he
takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value more”
(Gilman 309). This would not be the case
for a sane person. Having to take a
prescription for every hour of the day is extreme and extravagant. Doctor Szasz, a Psychiatrist interviewed by
Koehler in “Review of Cruel Compassion”, claims that people with mental
illness, which is a brain disease, are dangerous to themselves or others
therefore, “Such persons have their liberty removed, in the interests of their
own health and security” (Koehler). This
would explain why John confines the narrator to a room that sounds more like a
mental hospital instead of a vacation or ‘resting home’; thus setting to insure
health and security for others and the narrator herself. Also when the narrator states that John says,
“…there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him
if he took another” (Gilman 308). John
says this in defense for why the narrator can’t have the nice room she wants
that’s “opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window…” (Gilman 308). Why would the narrator and John need two beds
if they’re married? Could it be John
isn’t really her husband and just her doctor?
The narrator herself says that John isn’t always there at night because
he has to be with more serious patients, but it can be because she’s his
patient, and he doesn’t really live with her (Gilman 309). Furthermore,
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there’s probable cause to suspect that Jennie, John’s
supposed sister, isn’t really the narrator’s sister-in-law, like the narrator
says. Jennie is most likely just a nurse
to watch the narrator while John is away, because the narrator isn’t stable, so
she can’t be alone all the time. The narrator isn’t a trustworthy source of
information, because she’s mentally insane, and it’s not from having a
baby.
Another reason the narrator isn’t
reliable, is she has hallucinations throughout the story, like when she sees
women in the wallpaper escaping in the daytime.
It doesn’t take a doctor to know this is crazy and not something a sane
person would articulate. However, Doctor
Peter R. Breggin, a Psychiatrist from Harvard University says, “Many people who
hallucinate have extraordinary auditory and visual capacities. Otherwise, they would not be able to hear and
to see things so vividly that their reality becomes indisputable to them…They
can also become empowered by the realization that the creation of elaborate,
meaningful hallucinations may be beyond the capacity of other people”
(Breggin). The power of hallucinations is
so strong according to Breggin, this may be why the narrator locks herself in
her room before she tears down the wallpaper, she feels like she has to do this
on her own because she truly feels invested in all these ‘women’ she’s been
seeing for so long. She needs to finds
meaning in her hallucinations, and needs to do this without John and Jennie
around to stop her or make sense of what she is doing. The narrator is a creative soul, she’s a
closet writer. She writes in her spare
time, but she doesn’t want John to know, probably because her writing is so
deranged John might have to do more drastic intervening for her mental health.
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The only people known that the
narrator comes in contact with are her supposed husband John and sister-in-law
Jennie. That’s it, according to her, she
can’t see anyone else, not even her cousins, Henry and Julia. The narrator says, “It is so discouraging not
to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask
cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit…” (Gilman 310). However, maybe cousin Henry and Julia don’t
even exist. They could be a figment of
the narrator’s imagination and John just says this to play along with her
delusions and hallucinations. The narrator
appears to spend majority of her time just locked inside of her room, which
would cause anyone to go mad. But when
someone is already crazy, they naturally create more insanity and fantasies in
their mind. Aparna Shankar, who works in
the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London,
says, “Social isolations and loneliness are believed to affect health behaviors
through their impact on social support or social cues for behavior choices”
(Shankar). Basically, the narrator being
alone all day, isolated and probably lonely; for she makes up women she sees in
the wallpaper, is part of the reason why she’s crazy, and needs the help she’s
receiving. This is a logical reason why
the narrator has hallucinations, because too much seclusion and not enough
human interaction, is causing her to be delusional.
The narrator has always been crazy,
she’s not a reliable source of information due to her hallucinations and separation
from the world. She’s probably lived in
that house her entire life, since she says herself, “So we took the nursery” (Gilman
309). The narrator says the room is for
children, probably her childhood room.
She isn’t in the right state of mind, and hasn’t been her entire life. She has to make things up, because that’s the
only life she has. This whole story is a
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figment of her imagination, no one knows what to believe
since the narrator is unstable. She has delusions
and is isolated from the world, because she’s inside of an institution and not
resting at a ‘vacation home’.
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Works Cited
Breggin, Peter R. "Understanding and Helping People with
Hallucinations Based On The
Theory of Negative Legacy Emotions." The
Humanistic Psychologist 43.1 (2015): 70-87. PsycARTICLES. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The Norton Introduction to Literature.
Eds. Kelly J. Mays. 11th ed.
New York: W.W Norton & Company, 2014. 307-320. Print.
Koehler, Martin. "Review of Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric
Control of Society’s Unwanted." Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal 18.3
(1995): 148-149. PsycARTICLES. Web. 9
Mar. 2016.
Shankar, Aparna, et al. "Loneliness, Social Isolation,
And Behavioral and Biological Health Indicators
in Older Adults." Health Psychology
30.4 (2011): 377-385. PsycARTICLES. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.
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