To understand what kind of position women were placed in, it is important to understand what was expected of women, the consequence of marriage and motherhood, and how rebellious women were treated by society. In this Chapter, first I will prove that there is a fundamental alliance between mental derangement and women. Then, I will look at what was expected of women during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to see what kind of position women were in and its connection to mental derangement.
Showalter states that, “madness is a female malady” and it is statistically proven that the majority of the patients in public lunatic asylums were women in late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century (3). Doctor Richard Napier notes that among his patients there were nearly twice as many cases of mental disorder among his women patients as among men (MacDonald 36-40). Also “Women of all social classes complained more of stress and unhappiness in marriage, expressed more anxiety over their children, and suffered more from depression in their daily lives than their male peers” (MacDonald 74). Catherine Beecher reports, “a terrible decay of female health [is] all over the land,” which was “increasing in a most alarming ratio” (Beecher 165). Showalter states that, especially during the decades from 1870 to 1910, the nervous disorders of anorexia nervosa, hysteria2, and neurasthenia3 became widespread among women (18). In addition, what the majority of female American mental patients had in common were that they were educated, urban, and middle class, which were also characteristics of Gilman’s protagonists (Showalter 136).
Now that I have explained that women unmistakably suffered more from mental derangement compared to men, next I will look at some of the reasons for it. During the late nineteenth century women were restricted to what was in the “woman’s sphere.” Women were confined to roles of daughters, wives, and mothers and if they did not fulfill their feminine roles it was disgraceful and hurt the family reputation (Showalter 3). The privileged nineteenth century woman normally spent a quiet and peaceful life indoors, sewing, drawing, sketching, reading books, and supervising servants and children (Ehrenreich and English, “Sick” 91). Women’s clothing was “a sort of portable prison of tight corsets and long skirts prevented activity any more vigorous than a Sunday stroll” (Ehrenreich and English, “Sick” 91). Ehrenreich and English state that, “the requirement for fashion insured that the well-dressed woman would actually be as frail and ornamental as she looked” (Own Good 109). The confining lifestyle and apparel men urged women to live in were femininity itself because men defined what was feminine and what was not.
It was considered feminine to be frail and idle, even sickly (Ehrenreich and English “Sick” 95). Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, a woman doctor of the nineteenth century, wrote on women’s frailty in 1895:
… it is considered natural and almost laudable to break down under all conceivable varieties of strain — a winter dissipation, a houseful of servants, a quarrel with a female friend, not to speak of more legitimate reasons…. Women who expect to go to bed every menstrual period expect [sic] to collapse if by chance they find themselves on their feet for a few hours during such a crisis. (307)
Women were so delicate that they broke down for the most insignificant reasons. However, it was so common for women to languish under strain, Ann Douglas Wood labeled women’s frailty as “the fashionable diseases” (110). This is reflected in the fiction of the period. To illustrate, the main character in ’ “The Story of an Hour4,” by Kate Chopin5, faints when she hears of her husband’s death. Women were expected to faint when shocked. According to Edwards, “To the upper and middle class, ideal females were pale, fragile flowers who read little, exercised less, and gave no thought to worldly matters” during the 1800’s (5). Middle class women in the nineteenth century expected to be protected from harm and fright. Women were refrained from walking alone on the streets at night and if a woman refused a man’s escort to home a man in the 1870’s would say, “But any man would be glad to protect a woman. Man is a woman’s natural protector!” (Gale xxxviii). Men naturally thought women as weak and dependent.
Despite the historical changes and reforms of the nineteenth century such as the end of slavery, acceptance of women in high schools and colleges, and the ratification of the nineteenth amendment, the image of the ideal woman and the way women were treated overall did not change much during the early twentieth century. In 1926, Vanity Fair published comments by well-known men characterizing of the ideal woman. Most men replied uniformly, stressing beauty, modesty, submissiveness, and charm, which were the very virtues of nineteenth century womanhood (Behling 86). For example, the Broadway actor Florenz Ziegelf offered ideal physical proportions, which were 5 feet, 5 1/2 inches tall, 117 pounds and a size 5 foot, as well as the requirements of “femininity, an over worked term, but indicative of loveliness, grace and imagination” (“Ideal Woman” 53). Perhaps men thought the smaller the woman, the weaker and more the need for protection. Ehrenreich and English declare that women were merely ornamental:
It was the wealth extracted in that harsh outside world that enabled a man to afford a totally leisured wife. She was the social ornament that proved a man’s success: her idleness, her delicacy, her childlike ignorance of ‘reality’ gave a man the ‘class’ that money alone could not provide. (“Sick” 92)
Women’s femininity was essential to being a part of high society; it was part of being well-mannered. It should be put to attention that a women’s “childlike” character was seen as part of femininity since I will discuss the “childlike” character given to the protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” later on. Being “childlike” meant that she was not allowed to do anything by herself like a child. A woman was taken all care of protected from any kind of harm. Negatively speaking, she was forbidden to do anything of her own will that could be thought as dangerous or unwoman-like.
Another trait women were expected to have was domesticity. “A woman’s place is the home,” writes Gilman in “A Surplus Woman” (304). “Women were trapped inside the rigid nineteenth century ideology of the ‘woman’s sphere,’ a world defined by domestic concerns,” says Meyering (2). Therefore, the more domestic a woman was, the more desirable she was as a wife. In Gilman’s short story, “The Cottagette,”(6) a good friend advises the main character, Lois, how to get the man she likes to ask her to marry her. The advice is:
What [men] care for most after all is domesticity. Of course they’ll fall in love with anything; but what they want to marry is a homemaker. Now we are living here in an idyllic sort of way, quite conducive to falling in love, but no temptation to marriage. If I were you – if I really loved this man and wished to marry him, I would make a home of this place. (133-134)
This passage demonstrates how essential it was for women to be domestic. Love and marriage were two different things during this time. A man could fall in love with any women but the one he would marry was the domestic one. Women were expected to be able to cook, clean, get married, and make a comfortable home for their husbands.
However, the downfall of domesticity was suffering from an identity crisis. Domesticity also confined women to the home isolating them from the rest of the world. To give an example of a case where a woman becomes mad from isolation, the following is a review of Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” in the Woman’s Journal published in 1899 by Henry B. Blackwell(*7):
Nothing more graphic and suggestive has ever been written to show why so many women go crazy, especially farmers’ wives, who live lonely, monotonous lives. A husband of the kind described in this little sketch once said that he could not account for his wife’s having gone insane—“for,” said he, “to my certain knowledge she has hardly left her kitchen and bedroom in 30 years.” (187)
What is so chilling about the above quote is that the husband truly could not figure out that the reason for his wife’s insanity was the limited and isolated life she lived. This shows how much the average wife lacked vividness in her life and how she could do nothing about it.
Motherhood also brought tremendous suffering to women. Marilyn Yalom says that, “the extent to which maternity, as option or experience, serves as a catalyst for mental breakdown” (Maternity 5). Motherhood chains women to a child to care for it day and night and the mother’s needs and wants come last. For instance, in Gilman’s short story “Making a Change”16 the musician mother is sleepless from the baby’s crying and the husband does nothing but complain. The main character Julia’s “nerves were at the breaking point” and she is “nearly crazy from weariness” (182-183). She would have been reduced to attempting suicide if her mother-in-law had not stopped her and tried to “make a change” in their lives. A woman’s life was not one’s own; it was devoted to bringing up children and making a comfortable relaxing home for the husband.
Next, I will discuss how women were criticized for being outside the “woman’s sphere.” As I have explained earlier, during and before Gilman’s time, society expected women to be fulfilled through making a peaceful home for their husbands and motherhood (Meyering 2). Hence, women who questioned their roles as mothers, who complained, or were angry about those roles, were not understood by men (Wagner-Martin 52). They were called “unnatural mothers” as in Gilman’s ironic tale about a mother who had chosen to save the village by notifying the people that the dam was overflowing than going to save her own baby at home in her short story, “An Unnatural Mother”9. This story is a response to the scandal Gilman is accused of for leaving her daughter with her ex-husband rather than taking care of her herself after their separation (Shulman xxiv). Gilman was criticized hostilely for leaving her husband and child but she thought it necessary for her health and in order to devote her life to saving women (Baym 1656).
In 1911, the humorist Carolyn Wells published a short poem titled the “The Last Straw,” which criticizes the loss of femininity in suffragists.
I don’t denounce all suffragists—
This poem mocks strong women who do not shriek at the sight of mice and have abandoned their femininity. It was considered unladylike and was a disgrace to act as bold as men. To stop clinging to their husbands like vine for dependence and wearing pants questioned women’s femininity.
Some few of them are rather nice;
But one of them declared last week
That they are “not afraid of mice”!
Shades of eternal feminine!
This is the last and hardest blow!
But let up hope there’s some mistake,
Perhaps it isn’t really so.
We have forgiven many things—
From night-keys to divided skirts.
They’ve lost their clinging-vine effects;
But this new message really hurts.
Oh, woman, if it’s come to this,
That you, unmoved, a mouse may see,
Nor scream and climb up on a chair,
You’ve lost your femininity! (84)
Femininity and domesticity were essential characteristics for women because they were merely bred to become presentable daughters and ornamental wives. Perhaps a wife who was humble, gracious, and fragile was more desirable because she was easier to control. Women’s lives were controlled by men: they became feminine to be desired by men and became domestic to make men happy. Femininity, domesticity, marriage, wifedom, and motherhood trapped women inside a “woman’s sphere” and anyone who was not compatible with this “woman’s sphere” was subject to criticism and being labeled crazy by society. The people who decided this were, of course, men. Hence, women’s isolation, debasement, and their confinement to the role of mother and wife led them to madness.