In 1897 Charlotte Perkins Gilman tried to place “The Yellow Wall Paper” in the Atlantic Monthly. The rejection note said, “I could not forgive myself if I made others as miserable as I have made myself,” presumably, the editor meant, by reading it. Gilman placed her story in a smaller magazine, were it went relatively unnoticed until 1973, when it was re-printed by the “Feminist Press.” It is now widely anthologized as a preeminent feminist text, famous for its themes of women’s social, economic and linguistic oppressions.

 

 

In her paper “Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Feminist Tradition of the American Short Story” Martha Cutter explains that during the stories time, the ideal woman was perceived as “pure and pious, domestic, subservient and silent.” Yet Gilman was writing from a subversive “New Woman” point of view. The “New Woman,” espoused by feminists was financially independent, more outspoken and less domestic.

 

The story touches on themes of social and economic oppression, but for our purposes the most interesting theme is perhaps that of linguistic oppression. Much feminist theory of the 1970’s focused on the way women characters in literature were seen as objects who are spoken about rather than speakers and subjects in their own right. Women have been figuratively described as empty vessels or blank pages – the object into which things are poured or on which things are written, not as writers or speakers themselves. Gilman’s use of first person voice is significant in this respect. Our narrator tells us in graphic detail her side of the story – she speaks for herself, and in direct opposition to her husband who has ordered her not to write.

 

Like the voice in “The Tell Tale Heart,” the narrator’s voice in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a split voice, and in a sense carries the conflict of the story. The narrator’s voice slips between toeing the patriarchal line, as when she says, “Oh, but John is right. I will try and rest,” to veering off into imaginative, and complex analysis and description. Some critics have interpreted her voice (along with the larger conflict between husband and wife) as representing “a clash between masculine and feminine discourses.” Paula Treichler wrote “the narrator’s description of the yellow wallpaper represents a new vision of women – disordered illogic yet ultimately more creative, an impudent  and prophetic response to the what we are supposed to understand as rational ordered male discourse, authoritative ancestral and dominant.”

 

Where in the story can you find examples of what Triechler calls feminine vs. masculine language?

 

Some helpful cultural background:

 

Perkins describes the narrator as being ordered to undergo the “rest cure,” a cure that was a popular and influential, and was a “cure” she herself underwent.  Designed by S. Weir Mitchell, the program forbid intellectual women who suffered from what we now call post-partum depression, to read and write. It forced them to rest and spend time with their babies.

 

Prompts, and Questions:

 

The story is told in the form of undated diary entries. We also know that the entries are being written in secret, that they may be rushed, and may not come at regular intervals. What is the effect of this on you as a reader?

 

Compare and Contrast the different voices, each moving toward madness in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Tell Tale Heart.”

 

Are there reversals in “The Yellow Wallpaper”?

 

Is there a moment of recognition in “The Yellow Wallpaper?”