Imagery in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: Gender Oppression and Mental Health

Reflecting Reality: Gilman’s Personal Struggles and the Misunderstanding of Postpartum Depression

Some people use literature as a way of telling a story about their life that is hard to tell. For instance, the narrator of the story is a reflection of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in The Yellow Wallpaper. She is a young wife and mother that has begun to suffer symptoms of depression and anxiety after giving birth to her baby. Which now we know is the case of postpartum depression.

Postpartum depression is a depression by a mother after she gives birth. At the time that this occurred, there was no idea of what postpartum depression was. The narrator’s husband prescribes her the “rest cure,” which is a treatment that ensures her minimal mental and physical stimulation and to rest in bed for long periods of time.

Imagery in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: The Struggle for Agency and the Bonds of Marriage

The narrator wants to be a good wife to her husband and a good mother, but she wants to express her creativity. Throughout the story, she sees a female figure trapped behind the yellow wallpaper using it to symbolize her well-being. Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her story “The Yellow Wallpaper” to share her own personal issues and some common feminist issues in her time and today’s time. The main reason she suffered from a mental breakdown was the way her husband restrained her within the house. When prescribing “the rest cure,” he made it impossible for her to leave the baby’s nursery upstairs. At the time that this story was written, it was normal for husbands to be in control of their significant others. The relationship between the two is obvious in the narrator’s fourth journal entry when she accidentally wakes up her husband in the middle of the night. She gets up from her bed and goes to John because she wants to talk. While talking, it is clear that John is talking down to his wife because he calls her “little girl.” It seems like he declines to acknowledge the fact that his wife’s condition is not improving even though he is constantly acting like she is. In their relationship, John is the dominant one, and it is very obvious. The narrator relies on John for comfort, but John never really gives it to her.

Imprisoned in Imagery: The Narrator’s Evolving Relationship with ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’

After John placed his wife in an upstairs bedroom, where she ended up spending all of her time away from the rest of the world, her illness only escalated. When the narrator begins her journal, she starts by talking about the house her husband has taken her to for their “summer vacation.” She describes it, wonders how they were able to afford it, and why the house had been empty for so long. “That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don’t care–there is something strange about the house–I can feel it.” (Gilman 314) She wanted a bedroom downstairs, but John would not listen. She hated the room he put her in. The narrator is trapped in the room while attempting to obey John’s wishes and demands for her to stay isolated in the room with no activity whatsoever, but the narrator writes in her journal in secrecy, seeking comfort from how lonely she feels. She writes in her journal since she does not have the ability to share her feelings aloud, which causes her to write about her relationship with different objects in the room. ‘I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper'(Gilman 316). She is beginning to write things about the color of the wallpaper and what she sees in it. “It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw-not, beautiful ones like buttercups but old foul, bad yellow things” (Gilman 318).

Yellow’s Dual Meaning: Symbolism of Illness and Societal Constraints in Gilman’s Tale

The color yellow symbolizes illness, which she has. She then sees a female figure trapped behind the pattern of the wallpaper and realizes that both of them are suffering from the feeling of being imprisoned. She then tries to free the female figure, which is figuratively her setting herself free from this sickness that she feels. The narrator allows herself to believe all she is told, such as allowing herself to believe that listening to her husband is going to make her better. “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency-what is one to do?” (Gilman 313) Her being sent up away to a room only adds the feeling of loneliness to her illness. When she is told not to write or not to go and see family and friends, it continuously adds to her loneliness because she is separated from society. Being so, she feels like she really is alone. She starts to feel like it is okay for her to be alone because a male has made her feel like it is. She gives into everything that her husband says instead of listening to her own thoughts, which only leads her to complete madness. Gilman used this story to tell a time in her life that was very hard for her, but she did overcome it. Though this story can be perceived in many ways, it has helped show how research has had growth over the years, but how men being dominated still occurs in today’s society. This story used a great deal of symbolism that showed clear meaning.  

Works Cited

1. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader, edited by Ann J. Lane, Pantheon Books, 1999, pp. 3-20.

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