Characterisation

The Narrator

The narrator is a young wife and a new mother, suffering from bouts of anxiety and unrecognised post partum depression. The narrator knows she is unwell, however the doctors regard her state as a "temporary nervous depression". Her physician husband John prescribes the infamous "rest cure"; which involves isolation and a restriction of creativity that may stimulate her mind, especially her writing. Nevertheless this treatment becomes rather significant in her descent into madness.

The narrator is portrayed as an upper middle class woman, an intelligent figure who is expressive and imaginative, and a talented story teller. Initially she is aware of her depressive illness as she states "I cry at nothing and I cry most of the time. Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone." This is the first insight into her deteriorating condition; yet her treatment poses an opposite effect, which results in a darker more reclusive character. The trouble is the narrator knows what would be good to lift her mood and improve her condition "Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good", here it proves that her opinion is constantly disregarded and has other people other than herself controlling her life. The narrator is seen as a belonging rather than an individual; and she is accepting this way of life by conforming to the patriarchal norms of the nineteenth century. Patriarchal obedience has stripped the narrator of her freedom as she strives to be the idealistic wife and mother.

Yet her reasoning and emotions rebel and her only freedom is represented through her secret diary, here is where she seeks solace due to her inactivity and for the most part, loneliness. Her diary helps to hide her thoughts from the real world and live through her creativity in a fantasy world; which is brought on via natural attention to neutral objects to avoid her growing frustration, and becomes preoccupied with the yellow wallpaper.

At the end of this short story the narrator has became totally fixated on the woman trapped behind the patterned yellow wallpaper "The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be"; she recognises that both the woman and herself are suffering from oppression and imprisonment. In the end the narrator has lost all sense of reality "I've got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" and is found by her husband creeping on the floor of her confinement, following the pattern of the wallpaper. By successfully realising the woman in the wallpaper she’s helped to liberate herself by choosing the path of insanity and discarding her earlier beliefs of being an idealistic wife and mother.Throughout the narrator is simply held within a paradox, she loses touch with reality and succumbs to her inner reality; as she is faced with normal situations such as relationships and objects they pose an opression towards the narrator which results in her mental suffering, or does it become her saviour?

John

John is the narrators physician husband who does not believe anything serious is a matter with his wife, other than as previously stated "a slight hysterical tendency", the narrator clearly loves her husband yet does not believe that in his care she can recover fully because of their unequal relationship. "John is a practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of the things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures" this portrays his character as a rational man a man of science, which is in stark contrast to his wife's creative persona. The differences in the two are shown through his abilities as a doctor, he disregards her opinion which results her in hiding her feelings. John represents the nineteenth century patriarchal/ chauvinistic man. John is patronising and derogative in manner to his wife by acknowledging her as his "blessed little goose" and "little girl"; little things like not adhering to her wishes, (when the narrator wanted to change rooms) with his dry clinical authority both him and his wife seem unsuited as he is unable to understand his wife’s’ creative mannerism. He is unable to accept her as an equal and it seems when faced with confrontation he fixes himself with an authorative position which shows his paternalistic divide between man (who goes out to work) and woman (who tends to the family and the home) of the age.

John seems the obvious villain to blame for his wife's mental breakdown; but as a man of position it would be believed he would try to help his wife rather than make her condition worse, yet it is his ignorance towards his wife that proves most harmful. He does not see the suffering, struggling woman on the inside, their unequal relationship can only add to their troubles of him understanding her as a wife rather than a patient. By treating her as a case, she is unable to conform to society’s domestic role and John’s uncertainty helps to destroy her. He does not see that his isolation cure has in fact pushed her to insanity.

Synopsis: The Yellow Wallpaper

 

Physician John takes matters into his own hands when his wife, the narrator is suffering from a 'nervous depression'. Her treatment instructs her to abandon her previous intellectual life and almost everything stimulating around her, especially her writing. As an act of rebellion the narrator keeps a journal to relieve her mind. She soon sinks into a deeper darker depression, invisible to her husband, who believes he knows what’s best for her condition. Confined and alone, she is fascinated by the disturbing yellow wallpaper that lines the attic of their rented home, and is where her descent into madness begins.

                     The Yellow Wallpaper (Bandari. 2010)

Biography: Charlotte Perkins Gilman

      

                       Charlotte Perkins Gilman (The University of Adelaide, 2012)

Born Charlotte Anna Perkins on July 3, 1860, in Hartford Connecticut. Butterworth (2001) states that her mother was Mary (Fitch) Westcott and her father was Frederick (Beecher) Perkins, a close relative to the influential writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. Yet, her father abandoned the family leaving Mary to raise two children on her own. Charlottes education suffered greatly due to the mobile tendancies of her family. When discussing Charlotte’s childhood experiences, Dunn (1997) informs us 'Charlottes mother decided to prepare her daughter for hardships by denying affection. Not only did she withhold from Gilman natural physical contact, but she also saw to it that Gilman had no intimate friends. Gilman turned to books for solace'. Charlotte had an artistic nature and attended Rhode Island School of Design. Her formal education covered eight years in seven different schools, and at the age of fifteen her formal education was finished (Bily, 2003). Yet she determined to educate herself further. As a maturing woman she lived independently earning an income as a private and commercialised artist, but her aspirations were to become a writer (Dunn,1997).

Charlotte met painter Charles Walter Stetson and denied his request for marriage for more than two years, eventually in 1884 they were married. Here Bily (2003) acknowledges Charlotte’s independent nature ‘Although Stetson respected Gilman and understood her objections to a traditional marriage, it was not to be a happy union’. The following year, 1885, they had a daughter Katherine; but Charlotte fell victim to bouts of depression after her daughters birth, which is recognised today as postpartum depression. Charlotte was treated for hysteria by neurologist S. Weir Mitchell and presecribed total bed rest and rest of anything that could stimulate her mind to create tension and trauma. Dunn (1997) states 'that Doctor Mitchell of Philadelphia recommended a rest cure and the chronicle of that treatment became the inspiration for her famous work, The Yellow Wallpaper. Charlotte feared for her sanity and could not accept her change in life roles as traditional wife and mother against her own desires. In 1887 she and Katherine left her husband and travelled to California to continue her work as artist, poet and publisher to short stories.

In 1892 Charlotte was granted a divorce from Charles which resulted in Katherine returning into her fathers care (Spartacus Educational, 2012). Charlotte Perkins Gilman was quite the intellectual and produced influential writings during the 1800s and 1900s. In 1898 she publishes Women and Economics which focuses on the ineqaulity between men and women and helped her secure a position as a social theorist. Bily (2003) believes 'It made Gilman a sought-after writer and lecturer and a financially independent woman at last'. In 1900 Charlotte married a second time, her cousin a George Houghton Gilman, within this marriage Charlotte felt content as Bily (2003) agrees 'It was understood from the beginning that they would continue their separate careers, and this freedom, along with the freedom to enjoy sex without the fear of pregnancy, gave her great contentment'. From 1909 to 1916 Charlotte established a magazine, The Forerunner which enabled her to publish women's ideas and ideas of social reform. This publication complimented her artistic nature which featured short stories, poetry, essays and opinion pieces.

George Houghton Gilman provided Charlotte with companionship and support until his death in 1934 (Dunn,1997). Previously Charlotte had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and so retired to her daughters side in California soon after where she chose to spare her family the ordeal of losing a loved one through cancer choosing to end her own life than to suffer. Charlotte Perkins Gilman committed suicide on 17th August, 1935 at the age of seventy-five. In her suicide note, McMillan (1935 cited in Spartacus Educational, 2012) unveils, "When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. I have preferred chloroform to cancer."