The Yellow Wallpaper

For the thriller film, see The Yellow Wallpaper (film).

The Yellow Wallpaper
1997 Dover Publications cover
Author(s)	Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject(s)	Feminism, women's health, autobiography
Genre(s)	Short story
Publisher	The New England Magazine
Publication date	1892
Pages	Fifteen pages, or 6,000 words
ISBN	0-486-29857-4
OCLC Number	36892894

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the nineteenth century toward women's physical and mental health. The story also has been classified as Gothic fiction and horror fiction.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is written in epistolary style, specifically as a collection of first person journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of a house that he has rented for the summer. She is forbidden from working, and has to hide her journal entries from him, so that she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency," a diagnosis common to women in that period. Her husband controls her access to the rest of the house. A key locks the door.

The story depicts the effect of confinement on the narrator's mental health, and her descent into psychosis. With nothing to stimulate her, she becomes obsessed by the pattern and color of the wallpaper. "It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw—not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper—the smell! … The only thing I can think of that it is like, is the color of the paper! A yellow smell."

In the end, she imagines that there are women creeping around behind the patterns of the wallpaper, and comes to believe that she is one of them. She locks herself in the room, now the only place where she feels safe, refusing to leave when the summer rental is up. "For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."

Plot synopsis

Told in the first-person perspective as a series of journal entries, the story details the unreliable narrator's descent into madness. The protagonist's husband, John, believes that it is in the narrator's best interest to go on a rest cure after the birth of their child. She may be suffering from what would now be called postpartum psychosis.

The family goes to spend the summer at a colonial mansion that has, in the narrator's words, "something queer about it." She is confined to an upstairs room that she assumes was once a nursery, as the windows are barred, the wallpaper has been torn, and the floor is scratched. However, she comes to suspect that another woman was once confined here against her will. The reader is left unsure as to whether the damage she describes in the room is in fact being done by the narrator herself rather than by previous occupants—at one point she bites the wooden bedhead—and the bars may have been placed on the windows by her own husband as a precaution.

The narrator devotes many journal entries to obsessively describing the wallpaper in the room —its "yellow" smell, its "breakneck" pattern, the various missing patches, and the way it leaves yellow smears on the skin and clothing of anyone who touches it. She describes how the longer one stays in the bedroom, the more the wallpaper appears to mutate and change, especially in the moonlight. With no stimuli other than the wallpaper, the pattern and designs become increasingly intriguing to the narrator. She soon begins to see a figure in the design and eventually comes to believe that a woman is creeping on all fours behind the pattern. Believing that she must try to free the woman in the wallpaper, the narrator begins to strip the remaining paper off the wall.

On the last day of summer, the narrator locks herself in her room in order to strip the remains of the wallpaper. When John arrives home, she refuses to unlock the door. When he returns with the key, he finds her creeping around the room, circling the walls and touching the wallpaper. She exclaims, "I've got out at last," and her husband faints as she continues to circle the room, stepping over his inert body each time she passes.

Interpretation

Feminist interpretation

This story has been interpreted by feminist critics as a condemnation of the androcentric hegemony of 19th century medical profession. The narrator's suggestions about her recuperation (that she should work instead of rest, that she should engage with society instead of remaining isolated, that she should attempt to be a mother instead of being separated entirely from her child, et cetera) are dismissed out of hand using language that stereotypes her as irrational and, therefore, unqualified to offer ideas about her own condition. The feminist interpretation has drawn on the concept of the "domestic sphere" that women were held in during this period.

Modern feminist critics focus on the degree of triumph at the end of the story: while some may claim that the narrator slipped into insanity, others see the ending as a female's assertion of freedom in a marriage in which she felt trapped. The emphasis on reading and writing as gendered practices also illustrated the importance of the wallpaper. If the narrator were allowed neither to write in her journal nor to read, she would begin to "read" the wallpaper until she found that for which she was looking—an escape. Through seeing the women in the wallpaper, the narrator realizes that she could not live her life locked up behind bars. At the end of the story, as her husband John lies on the floor unconscious, she crawls over him, symbolically rising over him. This is interpreted as a victory over her husband, at the expense of her sanity.

Gilman's interpretation

Gilman explained that the idea for the story originated in her own experience as a patient: "the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways".

Gilman had suffered years of depression, and consulted a well-known specialist physician who prescribed a "rest cure" which required her to "live as domestic a life as possible." She was forbidden to touch pen, pencil or brush and allowed only two hours of mental stimulation a day.

After three months and almost desperate, Gilman decided to contravene her diagnosis and started to work again. After realizing how close she had come to complete mental breakdown, she wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" with additions and exaggerations to illustrate her own misdiagnosis complaint. She sent a copy to Mitchell but never received a response.

She added that her purpose in writing "The Yellow Wallpaper" was "not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked." Gilman claimed that many years later she learned that Mitchell had changed his treatment methods, but literary historian Julie Bates Dock has discredited this. Mitchell continued his methods and as late as 1908 (sixteen years after "The Yellow Wallpaper" was published) was interested in creating entire hospitals devoted to the "rest cure" so that his treatments would be more widely accessible.

Other interpretations

"The Yellow Wallpaper" sometimes is referred to as an example of Gothic literature for its treatment of madness and powerlessness. Alan Ryan, for example, introduced the story by writing "quite apart from its origins [it] is one of the finest, and strongest, tales of horror ever written. It may be a ghost story. Worse yet, it may not."

Another interpretation is to doubt the veracity of many of the narrator's early statements. There may never have been a husband, sister, baby, or any other characters as described in the story, meaning the entire story (or a large part of it) is the product of a deluded mind, so the reader cannot know what is true and what is not.

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, in her book Wild Unrest: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of "The Yellow Wall-Paper", concludes that "the story was a cri de coeur against [Gilman's first husband, artist Charles Walter] Stetson and the traditional marriage he had demanded." Gilman was attempting to deflect blame to protect Gilman's daughter Katharine and her step-mother, Gilman's friend Grace Channing.

Media adaptations

• A version of it was performed twice on the radio program Suspense by Agnes Moorehead.
• In 1977, Marie Ashton through Women Make Movies produced a short film adaptation.
• In 1989, the novel was adapted into a film produced by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) for "Masterpiece Theatre". It was adapted by Maggie Wadey and directed by John Clive.
• In 1989, an episode of The Twilight Zone featured a variation on Gilman's story titled "Something in the Walls". In the episode, a woman commits herself to a mental institution, and insists on plain white walls and no patterns within her hospital room, after having seen faces in the patterns of her bedroom's yellow wallpaper, and hearing ominous voices from those faces.
• An audio book of "The Yellow Wallpaper" additionally was produced by Durkin Hayes, and read by Win Phillips in 1997. This Radio Tales version can also be heard on Sonic Theater on XM Radio.
• Painter Jonathan Sutton completed two pieces, in 1999 and 2000, respectively, referencing specific points in the story, titled "The Yellow Wallpaper I: I always lock the door when I creep by daylight", and "The Yellow Wallpaper II: I quite enjoy the room now it is bare again".
• An adaptation of the original short story was scripted and directed by Heather Newman as part of the 2003 season at Theater Schmeater in Seattle, Washington. The production starred Mary Jane Gibson as Charlotte, Stephen Loch as John, Annie Lareau as Jennie, Lisa Viertel as Mary, Erin Knight as Lucy and Jim Catechi as Dr. Weir Mitchell. This adaptation won the 2003 Seattle Times "Best of the Fringe" award. The adaptation also was produced in 2005 at Tarrant County College by Doctor Judith Gallagher, directed by Melinda Benton-Muller with Kami Rogers as Charlotte. In May 2010, Heather Newman, Melinda Benton-Muller, and Doctor Judith Gallagher spoke on a panel about this adaptation at the –American Literature Association with members of the ALA and Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society. Kami Rogers moderated the panel.
• BBC Radio dramatized the story for the series Fear on Four.
• A stage adaptation was performed at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
• Song "Yellow Creep Around" on the Mary's Danish album Circa, published one century after the original.
• An adaptation of the original short story was scripted and directed by Sarah Elaine Stewart in 2008. “The Yellow Wallpaper” has been performed at The Courtyard Theatre, Hoxton, July 2008, The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, August 2008, Midnight Matinees at the Tristan Bates Theatre, Covent Garden, December 2008. A revised version was performed at the New Wimbledon Theatre Studio, March 2009. Written and directed by Sarah Elaine Stewart, costumes by Lauren McCarthy, sound by Joseph Olney, Charlotte played by Emmeline Creswell, John played by Thomas Kirkin, the Woman in the Wallpaper played by Joanne Clarke, Jennie played by Emma-Rachel Blackman (Courtyard, Edinburgh, Bates) and Tara Quinn (Wimbledon)
• ShadyJane Theatre Company performed their adaptation, "Her Yellow Wallpaper" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2009.
• The Yellow Wallpaper, a 2011 gothic thriller film

References

• Barth, Melissa E. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Masterplots II: Short Stories Series. Frank N.

Magill. California: Salem Press Inc., 1996. 4331-4333. 10 vols.

• Ford, Karen (1985). "The Yellow Wallpaper and Women's Discourse," Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, volume 4, issue 2.
• Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories. Ed. Robert Phillips. New York: Carrol and Graf Publishers Inc., 1989
• Gilman, Charlotte Perkins (1892). The Yellow Wallpaper, this edition Dover Publications, 1997.
• Hochman, Barbara (2002). The Reading Habit and "The Yellow Wallpaper". Duke University Press.
• Johnson, Greg (1989). "Gilman's Gothic allegory: rage and redemption in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'," Studies in Short Fiction, volume 26, pp. 521–530.
• Ryan, Alan (1988). Haunting Women: Chilling Stories of Horror by Fourteen Acclaimed Women Writers. Avon Books.
• Thomas, Deborah (1997). The changing role of womanhood: from true woman to new woman in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 'The Yellow Wallpaper'.
• Thrailkill, Jane F. (2002). "Doctoring 'The Yellow Wallpaper'," ELH, volume 69, issue 2.
• Treichler, Paula A. (1984). "Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'," Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature.

Further reading

• The Yellow Wallpaper at Project Gutenberg.
• Full Text of The Yellow Wallpaper, retrieved January 22, 2008.
• Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Why I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper", The Forerunner, October 1913, accessed November 15, 2009.
• The Yellow Wallpaper, audio, CBS radio, 1948.
• The Yellow Wallpaper at the Internet Movie Database
• The Yellow Wallpaper A 2006 film inspired by the short story that relies on the gothic/horror interpretation.
• Bak, John S. (1994). "Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Foucauldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'," Studies in Short Fiction 31.1 (Winter 1994), pp. 39–46.
• Crewe, Jonathan (1995). "Queering 'The Yellow Wallpaper'? Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Politics of Form," Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 14 (Fall 1995), pp. 273–293.
• Cutter, Martha J. "The Writer as Doctor: New Models of Medical Discourse in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Later Fictions." Literature and Medicine 20. 2 (Fall 2001): pp. 151–182.
• Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan (1980). The Madwoman in the Attic. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-02596-3
• Golden, Catherine (1989). “The Writing of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ A Double Palimpsest," Studies in American Fiction, 17 (Autumn 1989), pp. 193-201.
• Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature’s Ancestral House: Another Look at ‘The Yellow Wallpaper," Women’s Studies 12 (1986): 113-128.
• Hume, Beverly A. "Gilman’s ‘Interminable Grotesque’: The Narrator of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper," Studies in Short Fiction 28 (Fall 1991): 477-484.
• Johnson, Greg. “Gilman’s Gothic Allegory: Rage and Redemption in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Studies in Short Fiction 26 (Fall 1989): 521-530.
• King, Jeannette, and Pam Morris. “On Not Reading Between the Lines: Models of Reading in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Studies in Short Fiction 26.1 (Winter 1989): 23-32.
• Klotz, Michael. "Two Dickens Rooms in 'The Yellow Wall-Paper'" Notes and Queries (December 2005): 490-1.
• Knight, Denise D. “The Reincarnation of Jane: ‘Through This’ - Gilman’s Companion to ‘The Yellow Wall-paper.’” Women’s Studies 20 (1992): 287-302.
• Lanser, Susan S. “Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the Politics of Color in America.” Feminist Studies 15 (Fall 1989): 415-437.
• Treichler, Paula A. "Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (1984): 61-75.