Next, I will look at women’s exclusion from work in the professions as a major reason for women’s mental derangement during the early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. This is important to recognize as one of the reasons for the protagonist’s insanity in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” During the nineteenth century, upper class women had nothing to do with the economy. In fact, a lady was not to be involved with politics, business, or the industrial work world (Ehrenreich and English 106). Gilman published Women and Economics in 1898 to fight for women’s equal opportunity to join the work force. According to Bruno, in Women and Economics, Gilman argues for “equitable division of labor in the home and marketplace” (115). Barbara Solomon says, “Women’s economic dependence, relegation to drudgery in the home, exclusion from work in the professions, industry, and commerce, and submission to male authority were preventing women from leading fully human and productive lives” (xv). During the nineteenth century, upper class men were energetically working as manufacturers and merchants and were bringing plenty of money home. On the other hand, upper class women stayed home and were completely dependent on their husbands (Ehrenreich and English, Own Good 105). According to Yalom, Women and Economics insist that, “female dependence upon male income was the primary reason for women’s secondary status” (History 289). It was necessary of women to depend on their husbands because they were forbidden to earn money themselves. Reading Gilman’s short stories it can be displayed that it was shameful and absurd for men to have their wives work because it looked as if they could not support the family without relying on their wives. For example in “A Partnership”11 the husband opposes his wife saying:
Don’t I earn money enough? Don’t I give you money enough? It’s absurd - utterly absurd!… Fortunately, I’m doing enough and people know it - they won’t think you are helping me, at any rate. (257).
In another instance Gilman writes in her short story “If I Were a Man”(*12), “Yes, we blame them for grafting on us, but are we willing to let our wives work? We are not. It hurts our pride, that’s all” (268). Additionally, men used the fact that the instability of the female nervous system made women more vulnerable to mental derangement than men, a reason to keep women out of the professions and to keep them under male control in the family (Wagner-Martin 56-57).
Women were “mere consumers” but wishing to become “producers” (Gilman, “Surplus” 311). After Gilman watched several locomotives arrive at a railway station, she said, “All that,… and women have had no part in it” (qtd. in Gale xxxviii). Women lived in a world they had no part in making. Everything was made and done by men and they were not allowed to contribute to the society because that was the men’s job. However, Gilman wished for this to be different. Gilman writes one of her ideals in her story “Bee Wise”(*13):
The economic base might vary widely, but wherever there were a few hundred women banded together their combined labor could produce wealth, and their combined motherhood ensure order, comfort, happiness, and the improvement of humanity. (234)
Gilman was certain that women could work as well as men do and she strongly believed that engaging willingly on labor outside the home helped women achieve a strong identity and a healthy sense of self-respect. As she wrote in her lecture in 1903:
We shall have far happier marriages, happier homes, happier women and happier men when both sexes realize that they are human and that humanity has far wider duties and desires than those of the domestic relations. (“World” 1616)
Women were productive by means of cooking and cleaning and raising children and Gilman recognized domestic labor as work with economic value (Yalom, History 290). However, according to Yalom, she believed that in order to improve women’s secondary status, women must perform work that is either recognized by society or work that is equitably rewarded (History 290). Men had to admit that women’s work is meaningful and have women’s status adjusted to its rightful place, equal that of men. Shulman writes that Gilman had developed ideas about women attaining “fully human [lives] based on meaningful work and about the basic role of women and [how women’s status will] conscious[ly] change as integral to human evolution” (xxi). These ideas are also expressed in Gilman’s Women and Economics.
The connection between madness and women’s exclusion from work can be strengthened if it can be proven that there is a difference when women find meaningful work, that is, when women have something else to do besides housework and start working like men, it does them good mentally. Showalter states that women became stronger and less vulnerable to mental breakdown when they were faced with real crises, such as war, and when they were given meaningful work (195). In the early twentieth century, there was a change in the structure of the work force because of World War I. During times of war, women were responsible for the family and home while the men were out on the battlefield. Women filled the position of the absent men as the main labor force. It was a time when fragile women were expected to be strong. Gilman observes:
All had been brought out by the war(*14), out from their previous limitations, aspirations, and contentments. Everyone of them [the women] was larger and stronger, abler, more open to idea and to action, because of that cataclysmic experience. They had been democratized by it, not merely in theory, but in the practise [sic] of associate labor. (“Surplus” 307-308)
However, after World War I, the men who came back took their industrial jobs back from the women who had replaced them. In 1921, the female work force dropped back to 29 percent, which was the same as in 1911 and did not significantly increase for the next thirty years (Showalter 196). Women were encouraged by propaganda15 by the government and society to return to domesticity and chastity and nervous disorders among women gradually increased again (Showalter 196-197). Without meaningful work, women had no goal in life and had a higher risk of becoming depressed but having work highly motivated women to become lively.
Next, I will look at the reception of working women and how Gilman thought it necessary for women to become independent economically in order to become free. In contrast to what was expected of women, there were women who did not want to be dependent on men. Even so, Victorian conventions still believed that the women’s place was the home and working women were considered “a dangerous threat to the sanctity of the home and family life” (Dulles 103).
One of the professions that were open to upper class women was a writer. Women authors were able to support themselves sufficiently through their profession. Therefore, several famous authors chose not to get married until late or never. These authors include, Jane Addams, Edith Wharton, Catherine Beecher, Louisa May Alcott and more. These unmarried upper-middle class women were considered a social problem by society and were often called “redundant” and “odd” (Showalter 61). Jane Addams, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman were also subject to mental disorders and were patients of S. Weir Michell. What these women had in common is that they were intelligent, imaginative, ambitious and energetic. Their ways of thinking were ahead of their time. Perhaps the reason they had consulted S. Weir Mitchell for their depression was because their independence roused criticism from society that their sensitive minds could not bear to take. However, being the fact that these women were also very strong willed, some of the authors such as Gilman was able to overcome her depression and succeed even more as a writer writing influential stories based on her own experiences.
Next, I will look at why Gilman was supportive of women becoming independent. In contrary to what society thought of independent women, Gilman wanted more women to become less dependent on men. In the early 1890's Gilman began her lifetime career as lecturer and reformer giving speeches on the labor movement and the ethics of woman’s work (Shulman xxi). She also wrote many stories of women winning their independence. Mostly, the stories can be divided into two kinds. One kind are stories of independent women declining marriage to keep their freedom. “The Jumping-Off Place”18 and “Three Thanksgivings”19 are such stories. To Gilman and these heroines, independence is usually the essential goal of a woman’s occupational success. By gaining independence, they also gained respect and social status. After that came marriage as a choice women made when the right man came along, not as a financial support but as someone with whom to share the enjoyments of life.
The second kind of stories are of married couples that discover keeping separate spheres makes a “happier marriage, happier homes, happier women and happier men” (Gilman, “World” 1616). This is a frequently recurring theme in Gilman’s novellas. For instance, in “Their House”20 the wife makes a successful business out of her husband’s dry food store while the husband is abroad for four years doing what he has always wanted to do. Shulman explains that, “The drama in these stories often involves the threat of dependency and the gradual sudden assertion of independence as the woman discovers or asserts her ability to do meaningful work in the face of the emptiness of her life” (xxviii). Another example is the short story, “Old Mrs. Crosley.”21 In this short story Mrs. Crosley is lifeless after her children have all married and is in search for something meaningful to do for the remainder of her life. She consults a young pastor and is told, “you have not done your duty” (Gilman, “Crosley” 253). Usually duty refers to the duty as a wife, but here the pastor is referring to duty as a human being, which in this case is to use Mrs. Crosley’s special ability to manage servants “for the good of the community” (Gilman, “Crosley” 254). Hence, Mrs. Crosley starts an intelligence office overcoming violent opposition from her children and husband and succeeds in making a “comfortable independent income” on her own (Gilman, “Crosley” 254).
Gilman tries to inspire women of her time by showing again and again how woman can succeed in business, using her short stories as a manual. To show that financial independence is achievable now, and not in the utopian future, Gilman repeatedly goes into precise detail of how much it would cost to run an enterprise and how much profit would be gained from it (Shulman xxix).
Gilman’s heroines are tremendously admirable and inspirational even in the eyes of women today. The characters are strong-willed persons of action, and are able to get even with their male rival. “New life, new hope, new interests, new duties, new pleasures, and possibly new pains” will make women more lively and healthy (Gilman, “Crosley” 256). From the short stories she has written, the message she was trying to send to the readers of her time can be apprehended: Women are able as men to manage and develop businesses and when they do become independent financially it can make both husband and wife happy. Freeing women from economic dependence released women from submission, giving them a life with purpose and saved suffering women from the kind of madness that Gilman endured for part of her life.
It is possible to believe that the increase in women’s mental illness is because most upper class women were not able to hold jobs. The American woman didn’t know who she was, what she could be and what she wanted to be, because she had no choice to become lawyers or dentists (Friedan 64). Without work women’s lives were empty; they had neither goals nor dreams.
Gilman tries to inspire women of her time by showing again and again how woman can succeed in business, using her short stories as a manual. To show that financial independence is achievable now, and not in the utopian future, Gilman repeatedly goes into precise detail of how much it would cost to run an enterprise and how much profit would be gained from it (Shulman xxix).
Gilman’s heroines are tremendously admirable and inspirational even in the eyes of women today. The characters are strong-willed persons of action, and are able to get even with their male rival. “New life, new hope, new interests, new duties, new pleasures, and possibly new pains” will make women more lively and healthy (Gilman, “Crosley” 256). From the short stories she has written, the message she was trying to send to the readers of her time can be apprehended: Women are able as men to manage and develop businesses and when they do become independent financially it can make both husband and wife happy. Freeing women from economic dependence released women from submission, giving them a life with purpose and saved suffering women from the kind of madness that Gilman endured for part of her life. On the other hand, women with work were able to gain independence and freedom making them full of life. They were not allowed to live their own lives because they had far less chances and choices to change their ways of life. If a woman cannot find meaning in life and forget who she really is and what she is living for, it is only natural that she should become depressed or even insane.