FREEDOM THROUGH MADNESS
by Staci Gillilan
Plato considered emotion the inferior part of the soul and something to be hidden away and to be ashamed of expressing. In other words, Plato’s philosophy was that women were flawed because they were emotional and expressive of those emotions. He believed that all emotions should be hidden and kept silent: “we should…order our affairs in the way which reason deems best; not, like children who have had a fall, keeping hold of the part struck and wasting time in setting up a howl, but always… banishing the cry of sorrow by the healing art” (Plato 36). Plato likens the show of emotion to that of the behavior of children. In essence, he was comparing women to children.
Although Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written 2400 years after Plato’s Republic, Plato’s characterization of women, their frailties, and their emotionalism persist in Gilman’s famous short story. One of the key issues in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the medical treatment of women in the late 19th century. When women experienced perinatal depression often, they did not discuss their symptoms, and those who did received a diagnosis of “nervous disorder” or “neurotic.” Along with these diagnoses came harmful treatments such as the “Rest Cure.” Doctors like S. Weir Mitchell and George Beard studied the treatment of what was referred to as nervous exhaustion. The study was focused on middle-class women, and the results were linked to those who were educated. The theory was that an over-educated woman who had a lack of exercise and was experiencing too much stress could suffer damage to their nervous system that could show up later in life in the form of headaches, hay fever, fatigue, indigestion, or hysteria (Martin and Tichi 109-113). In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator Jane’s experience of perinatal depression is subject to the medical opinions of her brother, who was a doctor, and her husband, who was her treating physician as well as the treatment of the Rest Cure.
Because women’s health, and specifically mental health, was solely in the hands of men, so too were studies surrounding the subject. As a result of the studies conducted by Weir, he developed a popular treatment called the “Rest Cure.” Weir’s treatment required patients to be remanded to rest for between six to eight weeks, during which the first week the patient was not permitted to sit upright or feed themselves. Restriction of all activity was deemed necessary, including reading and writing. A caretaker was assigned to meet all the patient’s needs and provide muscle massage. A bland food diet was prescribed, omitting medications such as stimulants and narcotics that were commonly prescribed. Gradually, normal activities would be resumed if progress was shown. At the end of the treatment, patients were often told to live as domestic a life as possible, limit intellectual life and avoid things like pens and pencils indefinity. The restriction of physical and mental stimulation was meant to provide a hysterical woman with a quiet and still mind, promoting a restful state, thereby curing her of hysteria. Jane, the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” appears to have been the recipient of this kind of medical treatment.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman highlights the issues of a woman’s place in society in the late 19th century, the public perception of perinatal depression and its effects on reasoning skills, along with the energy of oppression from one's community. Gilman focuses on the expectations placed on women, their duties, and the absence of another life apart from keeping a home and tending to their families. Gilman’s story is centered on a narrator struggling with postpartum depression in the late 19th century. Her husband, who is also her treating physician, has prescribed an accepted treatment for a woman considered to have a nervous condition. Because of society’s view at the time on mental illness and a woman’s place in society, she could not be an active participant in her care, which proved detrimental to her mental health, causing her to go insane. While Jane, the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” displays mental illness, she paradoxically achieves a sense of freedom through her relationship with the wallpaper. The story depicts Jane’s paradoxical struggle for freedom through her reaction to other characters, her struggles with her physician-husband John, and ultimately her changing relationship with the yellow wallpaper itself.
The first character that Jane interacts with in her paradoxical journey toward freedom through madness is her sister-in-law, Jennie. The narrator Jane’s sister-in-law, Jennie, has come to the summer house to take care of things so Jane can rest. Jennie is John’s sister and has taken over caring for all forms of housekeeping. Jane seems fond of Jennie and comments on her excellent housekeeping while observing that Jennie is content with her domestic duties. Jane believes that Jennie would disapprove of her writing, so she keeps it hidden from her. It seems both Jennie and John feel that writing is harmful to Jane and will hinder her recovery. “There comes John’s sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing. She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and she hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which makes me sick” (Gilman 83). Jane, the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” takes precautions to hide her writing from both John and Jennie because she realizes that her sister-in-law’s perspective on her illness is similar to her husband John’s. “John is to stay in town overnight and won't be out until this evening. Jennie wanted to sleep with mesly thing! But I told her I should [rest] better for a night all alone” (Gilman 90-91). Jennie paralleling John’s attitude about Jane’s illness and treatment ultimately takes away the narrator’s ability to express herself physically by reinforcing Jane’s lack of stimulation.
Just as the narrator’s sister-in-law Jennie takes her role as John defines it, demonstrating total subordination and therefore her inferiority to men, Plato states in Republic V that women are inferior to men in all ways, including intellect. “You are right…that the [female] is far surpassed by the [male] in everything, one may say” (Ferguson 455d). Although the texts have 2400 years between them, they both infer that women are inferior to men and, therefore, men should maintain control over women’s lives.
The second primary character that Jane interacts with in her paradoxical journey toward freedom through madness in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the narrator’s husband, John, who is also her physician. Jane describes John as being “practical to the extreme” and lacking all patience with things having to do with faith. “[He has] an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures” (Gilman 79). John is not an emotional person and is not receptive to talking about emotions since they cannot be felt or seen. Jane is feeling depressed, and she cannot speak to John about it because he does not make conversation about feelings seriously, which equates to Jane not feeling she is being taken seriously. “You see, John does not believe I am Sick! If a physician of high standing, and one’s husband, assures friends and relatives that there is nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do” (78). She notes that he laughs at her concerns, but she expects it. According to Sabina Dosani, “[Jane] is surrounded by men of science. John, ‘a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband’, and her brother, ‘also a physician, also of high standing’, are paternalistic and condescending’ (411). John’s attitude and the attitude of the men of the medical establishment that the narrator has to fight against is Platonic.
Just as Plato likened the show of emotion to that of children’s behavior, comparing women to children, John infantilizes Jane. While she is up, unable to sleep because of all the rest she is prescribed during the day, John addresses Jane in a way that communicates that he views her as a child. “What is it, little girl?” he said. “Don’t go walking about like that—you’ll get cold” (86). The language John uses to address Jane sets the tone for him being the adult in the relationship and therefore knows best. Jane is seen and treated as the child in the relationship and in need of his guidance and wisdom.
Jane, the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” attempts to communicate her needs to her husband John in an effort to participate in her care. Each request is rebuffed with explanations as to why her requests are unreasonable. Six times throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator makes a request of her husband John, and each time the requests are denied, and she is infantilized. She requests to have a different room and then to repaper over the yellow wallpaper, but John refused because he said it was not healthy to give in to such fancies (81). Jane expressed how much she wanted to visit her cousin. “I tried to have a reasonable talk with [John] how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia. But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there…” (85). Not only did John refuse Jane’s request, but he also presumed to tell her that she would dislike the very thing she requested as if she was a child who didn’t know what she wanted. John communicated that he knew better than she did about herself, further reinforcing their adult-child roles. Jane is cut off from expressing herself physically because of the lack of stimulation. By John telling Jane what she feels, he isolates her off from herself on an emotional level as well.
The inability of Jane, the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to successfully communicate her needs to her husband John, and have them met, leads Jane to feel alone. Jane is aware that John is not meeting her needs and that it is making her feel worse. She believes the fact that John is a physician is the reason she is not getting better faster. “John is a physician, and perhaps—…perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” (79). She also believes John is acting out of love and concern and, on some level, is taking some of his words to heart. “He is very loving and careful and hardly lets me stir without direction” (79). While she yearns for the freedom to make choices that she feels will help her, she is under the care of her loving husband, a well-respected physician, and all the men around her agree with his form of treatment. “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me some good” (80). Jane’s interaction with both Jennie and John adds to Jane’s sense of suffocation and loss of self. In her isolation and loneliness, Jane begins to start observing the yellow wallpaper.
The third significant relationship Jane finds in the story is the most important but the most paradoxical as well: she develops a relationship with the wallpaper itself. After being remanded to her room for most of her days and all night, the narrator Jane is left without any form of stimulation and begins noticing details about the wallpaper that are merely unpleasant to her at first. She looks at the paper as a whole piece, and it is the color that she finds repulsive (79). After spending two weeks in the room, Jane is becoming upset by the presence of the wallpaper and requests that John have the room repapered, a request John denies (80). As time goes on, Jane begins to study the pattern in the wallpaper in detail. “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck, and two bulbous eyes stare at you, upside down. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere” (81). The narrator is observing the wallpaper with more detail and for more hours of the day, resulting in her becoming fixated on the pattern, which is starting to take the shape of eyes. This is the moment when Jane is beginning to see herself in the wallpaper subconsciously. As Jane continues to spend more time in her room, her feelings and even her perception about the wallpaper begins to evolve from repulsion to familiarity and comfort.
After Independence Day, Jane is no longer repulsed by the yellow wallpaper but becomes more comfortable interacting with the wallpaper. She writes in her secret journal, “I am getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper. It dwells in my mind so! I lie here…and follow that pattern about by the hour...I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion” (83). The narrator is no longer opposed to being in her room and is beginning to interact with the wallpaper. She continues to see things in the pattern, and the eyes she once saw have now evolved into the figure of a woman, “…stomping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (84). Isolation and lack of stimulation are taking their toll on Jane, and as a result, she is beginning to hallucinate. She is starting to relate to the woman in the wallpaper, whom she believes is trying to get out just as she wants to get out of the house and go home, “I wish John would take me away from here” (84). Jane is starting to notice parallels between herself and the woman in the wallpaper. This similarity Jane is subconsciously noticing causes the relationship with the wallpaper to progress.
As Jane continues to notice parallels between herself and the figure in the wallpaper, she begins to feel better and more enthusiastic about her interactions with the wallpaper. She has created something to look forward to, and this new activity has enabled her mood to elevate and her appetite to improve. Despite feeling better, she is no longer sleeping at night. “I’m feeling so much better! I don’t sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments…” (88). Instead of just staring at the walls during the day and sleeping at night, the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” finds herself watching the wallpaper at all hours. “At night in any kind of light…worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be” (87). Jane is actively watching the wallpaper to observe the woman inside. “By daylight, she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It keeps me quiet by the hour” (87). The narrator is still and quiet during the day while observing that the woman in the wallpaper is also still and quiet. Jane has now transitioned from observing the wallpaper to collaborating with the wallpaper. This transition becomes evident when Jane synchronizes her schedule to active hours with the woman in the wallpaper.
As Jane begins to collaborate with the figure in the wallpaper by synchronizing her schedule with the figure, Jane simultaneously observes that the woman in the wallpaper is also trying to get out. “I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night…I have finally found out. The front pattern does move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” (89). The narrator observes that the figure in the wallpaper is no longer content to remain still and quiet in the wallpaper. “…in the very shady spots she takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through that pattern—it strangles so…” (89). As the woman in the wallpaper becomes restless, Jane finds herself feeling restless and discontent to be still and quiet any longer.
As the narrator finds herself discontent to remain still and quiet, she becomes bolder in her efforts to maintain her relationship with the wallpaper and a real change begins taking place. In fact, the figure is no longer a separate entity, but Jane begins to take on the characteristics. “I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can’t do it at night, for I know John would suspect something…I don’t want anyone to get that woman out at night but myself” (90). Jane believes she sees the woman in the wallpaper walking around the grounds during the day, sneaking around the rose bushes and hiding in the shadows. When the sun begins to set, she once again sees the woman in the wallpaper at night. The belief that the figure is getting out of the wallpaper causes the narrator to spend her daylight hours creeping around her room to try to catch the figure. Jane views the figure as mischievous and evading her during the day but in need of rescue during the night, projecting her own need to be rescued onto the woman in the wallpaper.
Because Jane has come to believe the woman in the wallpaper needs to be rescued, the narrator becomes determined to remove the wallpaper and let her out. “There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her” (91). Jane has become sympathetic towards the woman in the wallpaper. She views the woman in the wallpaper as trapped, just as she views herself and begins to work in concert with the figure to free her. “I pulled, and she shook, I shook, and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper” (91). In Jane’s mind, there is nothing left to do but finish removing the wallpaper to free the woman inside. She no longer refers to the figure and herself as “she and I” but instead now she is referring to the two of them as “we.”
Working together, Jane is desperate to finish removing the wallpaper to free the woman trapped inside. “There is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it. We shall sleep downstairs tonight and leave in the morning...but I must get to work” (91). There are less than twenty-four hours before John will take Jane home. The room is now bare like it was when they arrived. Jennie and the servants have left the house, and John will not arrive until evening. Jane finally has a day with no one watching her or keeping her from doing what she wants, so she is free to spend the day removing the wallpaper without interruption: “…no person touches this paper but me,—not alive...I have locked the door and thrown the key… I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anybody come in, till John comes” (91). Jane is desperate to free the trapped woman in the wallpaper. With no way to help herself, she instead chooses to help the woman in the wallpaper escape her fate. The narrator felt helpless in her situation but felt empowered to help another trapped woman. She is fully iden- tifying with the figure in the wallpaper without consciously recognizing it is herself.
As the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is now fully identifying with the figure in the wallpaper without consciously recognizing it is herself, she completes the destruction of the wallpaper. “I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (91). While Jane’s relationship with the wallpaper was transitioning throughout her time spent in the room, in the end, the narrator became the woman in the wallpaper. By freeing the woman in the wallpaper, the narrator paradoxically frees herself.
At the same time the narrator has paradoxically freed herself, she also sees her husband John lose control of himself and faint. “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time” (92). Although John had insisted that Jane resist having any feelings of sadness, excitement, anger, it was he who could not control his feeling and reaction. Throughout the story, John refers to Jane’s feelings and thoughts as “false” and “foolish” and asks her to suppress them. “My darling, I beg you, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind...It is a false and foolish fancy” (87). By the end of the story, John and Jane trade places; John is behaving like a woman or child while Jane questions his extreme reaction.
While John is seen behaving like a woman or child by expressing his emotions, we are reminded that Plato frowned upon such expressions of emotion. “That we should take counsel about what has happened…order our affairs…not, like children who have had a fall…wasting time in setting up a howl, but…always accustoming the soul forthwith banishing the cry of sorrow by the healing art” (Plato and Ferguson 36). Plato felt that showing emotion or having a reaction in front of others was shameful and embarrassing. He thought that women and children were more likely to display such weakness and that emotions and reactions should be avoided to maintain dignity just as the men felt in “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
Like Plato, society in the late 19th century shared the same views and discouraged open shows of emotion. The subject of feelings and reactions were associated with misbehaving children and women with nervous disorders. Because of the attitudes of men and the medical establishment, women suffering from mental health issues such as postpartum depression often kept their symptoms to themselves and did not seek help. When women did discuss concerns about their health, they were often met with an extreme form of treatment such as Dr. S. Weir Mitchell’s Rest Cure. “Nineteenth century physicians… [described hysterical women] as…narcissistic, impressionable… deceitful and morally repulsive. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell declared that “a hysterical girl is a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people around her” (Ussher 9). Because Dr. Mitchell was known to be the best doctor in neurology, he was respected, and his opinions and treatments were accepted. The Rest Cure was trusted by male physicians, who then prescribed it to their female patients. “But for the part for which Dr. Mitchell himself would claim the greatest importance would, probably, be that on treatment” (Mitchell 81). The effectiveness of the Rest Cure was not questioned by physicians and was considered the best treatment for depression, anxiety, and nervous disorders (Martin and Tichi 109-113).
Because the Rest Cure was considered the best treatment for depression and its effectiveness was not questioned, no one surrounding Jane thought that the Rest Cure might not be the proper treatment for her postpartum depression. Jennie accepted her domestic role in life and content following her brother John’s lead and instructions in caring for Jane. Part of that care consisted of restricting all of Jane’s activity and even movement and confining her to her room for most of the day. “…I heard [John] ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give. She said I slept a great deal in the daytime” (Gilman 90). At John’s direction, Jennie checked in on Jane throughout the day to ensure she was free from any physical stimulus and reported back to John, acting as a spy. Jennie supported John’s strict adherence by assisting in preventing Jane from having any stimulation.
While Jennie was acting as a support to John, assisting in preventing Jane from having any stimulation, John is the facilitator of stripping Jane of her agency. With the help of Jennie, the narrator’s husband systematically cuts Jane off from the things that are meaningful to her. Jane craves travel, visits with family, and desires to move to a different room. She wants to be active, to write, and to be able to speak openly to John about her condition and treatment and to be taken seriously. John denies the narrator of all the things she desires for herself, and in doing so, he removes all opportunities for Jane to experience self-expression. Because Jane is without a physical or emotional outlet and has lost her agency, she, in turn, loses herself in the wallpaper.
While Jane has lost herself in the wallpaper, she has found a way to occupy her mind. Spending time watching, tracing, and thinking about the wallpaper has provided her with mental stimulation and eventually elevates her mood and gives her physical stimulation as she moves about the room creeping and searching for the figure. Jane creates a relationship with the wallpaper, and it becomes another character with which she interacts. She believes that what she is experiencing is a woman trapped in the wallpaper, unaware that she is the trapped woman. Dosani states, “There is a formal parallel between the breakdown of Gilman’s story and her narrator’s mental breakdown” (1). As she sees shadows moving across the paper and a figure moving as the sun falls, and shadows of bars cast across the wallpaper, her beliefs are reinforced. Plato writes of such a scene in “Allegory of the Cave” where he describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to the shadows, believing them to be real (Plato and Jowett). In the absence of stimulation, the mind creates ways to be active.
Because of the absence of stimulation, Jane’s mind created ways to allow her to be active and stimulated by observing, interacting, and eventually collaborating with the yellow wallpaper. Jane’s role with the woman in the wallpaper ultimately progressed to that of a rescuer. As the narrator works to free the woman in the wallpaper, she eventually goes mad and paradoxically finds her freedom. In freeing the woman in the wallpaper, Jane not only frees herself, but she also simultaneously upends the traditional Platonic sense of mimesis. “The imitator has no knowledge worth mentioning of what he imitates.” Plato taught that the tangible things man perceives in his existence are shadowy representations of his ideal type (Plato 34). According to Plato, Jane was looking for her ideal self in the wallpaper, which was the third bed, the art, and she uses the art to free herself.
It’s rare that a piece of literature can affect medical practice; however, once “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published, physicians began to take notice. Gilman sent S. Weir Mitchell a copy of the short story. “But the best result is this…I sent a copy [to Dr. Weir]. Many years later, I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’” (Levine). Gilman struggled with depression much like her character Jane. Unlike Jane, Gilman did not remain chained to her husband and domesticity. She divorced her husband in 1894 after being separated for six years, which was highly unusual at the time. At the age of seventy-five, Charlotte Perkins Gilman would choose to take her life. Her suicide note revealed that she had been diagnosed with inoperable breast cancer. Gilman had managed to survive her depression by living a long life full of activism, and in the end, she exercised her freedom by choosing not to succumb to what she considered a dreadful disease. Even at the end of her life, Gillman was still advocating for a woman’s right to make choices about her health and life.
Citations
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Gardner, Janet E., and Joanne Diaz. “The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” Reading and Writing about Literature: A Portable Guide edited by Bedford/St. Martin’s, Macmillan Learning, 2017, pp. 79–92.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Norton Anthology: American Literature 1865-1914. Ed. 8, Vol. C. Nina Baym: General Editor, Robert S. Levine, Associate General Editor. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 804. Print.
Lefkowitz Horowitz, Helen. Wild Unrest: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of The Yellow Wall-Paper. Oxford University Press, USA, Year: 2010.
Martin, Wendy and Cecelia Tichi. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: A Historical Exploration of Literature, Greenwood, 2016, pp. 109–113.
Mitchell, S. Weir. “Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Especially in Women, Oct. 238 pp.” Journal of Mental Science, vol. 28, no. 121, 1882, pp. 81–84., doi:10.1192/s0368315x00230387.
Mitchell, S. Weir. “The Treatment by Rest, Seclusion, etc., in Relation to Psychotherapy,” The Journal of the American Medical Association, 50 (June 20, 1908, 2036)
Plato, and Benjamin Jowett. The Allegory of the Cave. Enhanced Media, 2017.
Plato, and John Ferguson. Republic, Book X. Bradda Books, 1978.
Ussher, Jane M. The Madness of Women Myth and Experience. Routledge, 2011.
Staci Gillilan graduated in 2021 with a Baccalaureate in English and a minor in Creative Writing. Selected by Daniel Kline.