The Subordination of Women in Marriage
In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman uses the conventions of the
psychological horror tale to critique the position of women within the
institution of marriage, especially as practiced by the “respectable”
classes of her time. When the story was first published, most readers took
it as a scary tale about a woman in an extreme state of consciousness—a
gripping, disturbing entertainment, but little more. After its rediscovery
in the twentieth century, however, readings of the story have become more
complex. For Gilman, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class
marriage, with its rigid distinction between the “domestic” functions of the
female and the “active” work of the male, ensured that women remained
second-class citizens. The story reveals that this gender division had the
effect of keeping women in a childish state of ignorance and preventing
their full development. John’s assumption of his own superior wisdom and
maturity leads him to misjudge, patronize, and dominate his wife, all in the
name of “helping” her. The narrator is reduced to acting like a cross,
petulant child, unable to stand up for herself without seeming unreasonable
or disloyal. The narrator has no say in even the smallest details of her
life, and she retreats into her obsessive fantasy, the only place she can
retain some control and exercise the power of her mind.
The Importance of Self-Expression
The mental constraints placed upon the narrator, even more so than the
physical ones, are what ultimately drive her insane. She is forced to hide
her anxieties and fears in order to preserve the façade of a happy marriage
and to make it seem as though she is winning the fight against her
depression. From the beginning, the most intolerable aspect of her treatment
is the compulsory silence and idleness of the “resting cure.” She is forced
to become completely passive, forbidden from exercising her mind in any way.
Writing is especially off limits, and John warns her several times that she
must use her self-control to rein in her imagination, which he fears will
run away with her. Of course, the narrator’s eventual insanity is a product
of the repression of her imaginative power, not the
expression of it. She is constantly longing for an emotional and
intellectual outlet, even going so far as to keep a secret journal, which
she describes more than once as a “relief” to her mind. For Gilman, a mind
that is kept in a state of forced inactivity is doomed to
self-destruction.
The Evils of the “Resting Cure”
As someone who almost was destroyed by S. Weir Mitchell’s “resting
cure” for depression, it is not surprising that Gilman structured her story
as an attack on this ineffective and cruel course of treatment. “The Yellow
Wallpaper” is an illustration of the way a mind that is already plagued with
anxiety can deteriorate and begin to prey on itself when it is forced into
inactivity and kept from healthy work. To his credit, Mitchell, who is
mentioned by name in the story, took Gilman’s criticism to heart and
abandoned the “resting cure.” Beyond the specific technique described in the
story, Gilman means to criticize any form of medical care that ignores the
concerns of the patient, considering her only as a passive object of
treatment. The connection between a woman’s subordination in the home and
her subordination in a doctor/patient relationship is clear—John is, after
all, the narrator’s husband and doctor. Gilman implies that both forms of
authority can be easily abused, even when the husband or doctor means to
help. All too often, the women who are the silent subjects of this authority
are infantilized, or worse.
