So far, I have explained how women were thought of, how they were treated, why women were vulnerable to mental derangement, and why Gilman fought for women’s independence. Next I will look at the question of insanity in "The Yellow Wallpaper". “The Yellow Wallpaper”22 is one of Gilman’s most famous works and it was first published in the 1892 issue of the New England Magazine (Dock 48). The story is written partly of Gilman’s own feelings when she suffered from nervous prostration and was being cured by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell’s “rest cure therapy23” when she was twenty-seven years old (Gilman, Living 90,95). Weir's prescription to Gilman was:
Live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time. Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours' intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live. (Living 96)
Following these orders for three months, Gilman’s condition became far worse and she was extremely close to mental breakdown (Gilman, “Why I Wrote” 331). As Gilman puts it in her autobiography, “I had been as far as one could go and get back” (Living 121). Fortunately, Gilman did not lose her mind but she wrote this tale to warn women of their social situation.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story about a female writer who rents a house in the suburbs with her physician husband to cure her depression and hysteria. The narrator is an upper class wife, a professional writer, and a mother. She would probably be able to support herself if she were unmarried as Gilman herself was after her divorce. As I have proved that work is mentally good in Chapter II, the protagonist also feels that work will help make her healthy. She wishes to do “congenial work, with excitement and change,” but her husband opposes it, saying that it will be bad for her (Gilman, “Yellow” 29). Being confined to the home with nothing to do but let her imagination go wild looking at the wallpaper the protagonist becomes insane.
There are two ways to look at this short story. One perspective is that she was driven crazy. Another is that she chose to become crazy in order to escape from her feminine role. Showalter states that mental sickness offers a “respectable reason to be alone and opportunities for self-development” (64). Women might have become mentally ill by choice unconsciously in order to flee from all feminine responsibilities. It is written in The Female Malady that:
When the hysterical woman became sick, she no longer played the role of the self-sacrificing daughter or wife, as did the anorexic. Instead, she demanded service and attention from others…. Hysterics found themselves… indulged with special delicacies, and excused from ordinary duties. (Showalter 133)
Perhaps in some cases women’s only choice in life was choosing between staying sane or becoming insane. It is only natural for women to go insane when men deny them a voice to speak out as in the case of the narrator in the story. As Hedges states, “Madness is her only freedom” (131). There was no other way for the protagonist to escape her imprisonment and reject society. Kennard writes, “It is the interpretation of madness as a higher form of sanity that allows feminist critics finally to read this story as a woman’s quest for her own identity” (82). In short, it is understandable that women who suffered from an identity crisis would breakdown so they could search for their identity in a state of liberation from their duties as a woman.
Now that I have speculated why the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” might have lost her sanity theoretically, next I will look at the empirical reasons that pushed her off the edge into madness. The husband and wife relationship in the story is not an admirable one from today’s perspective. Outwardly, it seems as if the husband is very caring and wishes the best for his wife. However, when studied meticulously it becomes clear how manipulative he is. The main character’s husband, John, seems to mock his own wife, which could be seen from the sentence, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (Gilman, “Yellow” 29). Victorian husbands rarely seem to take their wives’ opinions seriously as John scoffs at his wife repeatedly. Kennard writes that, John’s role as a rational man who laughs at what cannot be put down in figures, “emphasizes his position as representative of a male power which excludes feeling and imagination” (81). John completely neglects what his wife wants and she can do nothing but obey. For instance, the narrator wants the room downstairs but “John would not hear of it” (Gilman, “Yellow” 30). John always disagrees with her and controls her. “[John] hardly lets me stir without special direction…. he takes all care from me” (Gilman, “Yellow” 30). We must take note that Gilman did not intend only John the individual to be the antagonist. Three doctors appear in “The Yellow Wallpaper”: John, the narrator’s brother, and also S. Weir Mitchell. Not only does John represent the male sex and husband but he also represents doctors who misapplied their treatments. Therefore, the antagonist of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is not just John but also physicians and patriarchal men all over America.
As we will discuss later, “The Yellow Wallpaper” was intended to send a message to S. Weir Mitchell. This is implied in the story two times. The first is when the narrator writes in her diary:
John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. But I don’t want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so! (Gilman, “Yellow” 33)
Gilman is publicly insulting Mitchell’s treatment here and warning that women should be alarmed by it. Another example is, “John is a physician, and perhaps – perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” (Gilman, “Yellow” 29). The protagonist is suspicious that her husband is trying to make her sick on purpose. Although it is unlikely that John is trying to do anything to harm his wife on purpose, he is unconsciously driving the protagonist into further mental derangement. This is because the study of psychiatry was still in an early stage of development and doctors were brainwashing men and society that their cures were effective though their patients were quite doubtful. This is possibly a reason why the narrator was suspicious of her husband. Physicians could not be trusted even if they were one's own husband. Wood argues that male doctors "used their professional superiority [on sick dependent women] as a method to prolong their patients’ sickness and, consequently, the supremacy of their own sex" (117). Furthermore, during the nineteenth century there was a procedure called clitoridectomy24, which was performed to cure female insanity (Showalter 75). It is absolutely absurd to think that the clitoris was surgically removed for the cure of mental disorders now. However, its effectiveness can be imagined for the wrong reason. If troublesome women went through such an operation, women would humbly return home from fear and loss. The enemies were the male physicians who forced women into undergoing unwanted treatment, doing worse rather than good to womankind.
Hence, “The Yellow Wallpaper” convincingly demonstrates that the consequence of women’s oppression is madness because it is based on Gilman’s own experience. Women were driven into losing their sanity because they could not bear being treated like an inferior creature rather than as adults on an equal level to men. Also, physicians’ domination over women and their erroneous treatment debased women, making them feel less than human. “The Yellow Wallpaper” portrays the complications of male-female, husband-wife, and doctor-patient relationships. The complication of the former subjugating the latter led women into madness. It is not surprising if women suffering under such circumstances chose to become mentally deranged to escape such a society.