The Yellow Wallpaper

Mikaila Garfinkel

English 48B
1/07/2009
Journal #2: Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first, and then playroom and gymnasium. I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story that describes a woman's journey through treatment for her mental illness, which in the end, destroys her sanity. The treatment itself is basically forcing the woman to bed rest, and forbidding her to participate in any though provoking acts, especially writing, of any kind. The woman's husband, a physician, moves her into a mansion for a couple months, in order to help her with her treatment. She is forced to stay only in the attic, with its barred windows and ringed walls, which she is convinced was once a nursery. The most fascinating, and disturbing, part of the room is the yellow wallpaper, which the woman, with nothing else to focus on, becomes obsessed with. Charlotte Gilman based her story on her personal experiences with mental illness, and treatment she was suggested, which included "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again". It was this doctor that "treated" her who "so nearly drove [her] mad". While she never hallucinated such as the woman in the story, she was forced to suffer treatment through a dull, dormant life in which she was treated with no more respect than that of a child. It was her madness that also drove her to change the sexism that carried out even in mental illness, and her "supposed insanity" gave her the power to become one of the leading feminist writers to date.

In first reading the above quote, sitting alone without the company of words such as "nervous disorder" and "phosphates", it seems as if it is describing a rather cheerful room. A room full of sunlight and distant echos of children laughing. However, when reading the sentence with the rest of "The Yellow Wallpaper", it is anything but a desirable room. The woman in the story is described as "mentally ill", but as the reader begins to become more aware of her thoughts and the actual situation, it is questionable as to who the crazy characters are. Her husband, John, acts as if he treats her with nothing but doting acts and loving words, and the woman appears to, for the most part, buy it, or at least play along. The attic in which is is "getting better" in, is interpreted as not actually being a gymnasium, but a room in which woman like her have been treated as well. In other words, some form of a mental facility. I think that covering up the room as a child's room is used to symbolize how she is treated by her husband and others. They are constantly patronizing her, and while they are trying to be "gentle" with her, they are ultimately treating her like a child. Furthermore, the fact that the woman believes the room was once a nursery, just shows how naive she is to the way she is being treated. The room isn't "big and airy", it is filled with only a bed, which is nailed to the floor, and no other furniture. The woman's description of the room gives off a somewhat relaxed, passive tone, which as the story progresses, begins to change. Her cooperation disintegrates with her sanity, and by the end, John is the '"little boy", and she grows from being a child, into a rambunctious adult.