Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Yellow Wallpaper novella/short story was first published in 1892, and if I remember correctly, it was one of the recommendations in Stephanie Butland’s book, Found in a Bookshop. Well, a recommendation to a customer who had my reading taste, and the story spoke to me (did I already say that you should read Stephanie’s books?).
In this short story, the author explores gender, mental health, medical authority, and the restrictions imposed on women during the 19th century. The story is written as a series of journal-like entries and follows an unnamed woman who is taken to a secluded house by her husband, John, a physician, after experiencing what would now be known as severe psychological distress after birth. The unnamed diary writer is prescribed rest, isolation, and banned from intellectual or creative activity, so she gradually becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in the room where she is confined.
The story is particularly strong in the way it shows the reader the gradual decline of the woman and how she increasingly becomes more and more unstable. At first, she dislikes the room and questions her husband’s judgment, and expresses desire and longing to write and engage in meaningful activities, but then as her confinement continues, the wallpaper becomes the focus of her attention and she begins to see patterns, which eventually shape themselves into a woman trapped behind the design, struggling to escape so she tries to take off the wallpaper to set the trapped woman free.
The yellow wallpaper is a symbol because it represents confinement, which goes beyond the physical and extends into intellectual, emotional, and social realms. The unnamed woman is prescribed to do absolutely nothing. Her husband repeatedly dismisses her perceptions and treats her judgment as unreliable, while his authority as both husband and physician gives his opinions institutional as well as personal power. Gilman, therefore, presents the narrator’s breakdown not merely as an individual medical tragedy but as something produced and intensified by a system in which women are denied control over their own lives and experiences. The narrator is infantilized, discouraged from writing, prevented from making decisions, and repeatedly told that her own interpretation of her condition is incorrect. John, the husband, is not portrayed as an aggressor but as benevolent and caring, which shows paternalism and infantilization of women.
Journaling becomes a form of resistance because John opposes his wife’s writing, but she secretly writes and resists, thus documenting the effects of the oppression. Towards the end, the unnamed woman identifies with the wallpaper woman, which results in disturbing behavior and the ultimate psychological breakdown or grotesque liberation, depending on how one sees it. In other words, she has managed to escape the identity imposed on her, but only through the destruction of the previous self, thus showing the impossibility of claiming freedom in the oppressive social system of the 19th century.
More than a century since its publication, the novella still resonates because many groups are today also asking who has the authority to define another person’s existence and experience, how institutions can silence individuals while claiming to protect them, and what happens when people are denied agency over their own lives. The gender problem is historically grounded, but the examination of power, credibility, and paternalism is as contemporary as it is historical.
It is highly unusual to write a longer blog for a short story than for some whole books, but that just shows how good this story was and how much it made me reflect on things. Read this story, please!
Thank you for reading!