A Response to Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In 1913, Charlotte Perkins Gilman stated her short story entitled The Yellow Wallpaper "was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy." It was then, years after its publication, Gilman drew herself close to her readers and told them her story was a cautionary tale. She insisted it was an informative work that warned against the use of "rest cures" to treat the malady of depression. Nevertheless, as straightforward as her analysis of her own work appears, it is important to remember these thoughts were spoken in hindsight, and, although revealing, they could very well be misleading and contrary to the author's original intent. In all, the truth Gilman asked her readers to believe may not have been wholly accurate.

Before continuing further, The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written in 1892. With the exception of a few readers, it was not widely read at first. It was not until 1973 that it began to achieve real notoriety. The story itself is about a woman, of indeterminate age, who suffers from a depressive condition. As a result of this, she is prescribed a "rest cure" by her doctoring husband to sort out her preexisting malady. Unfortunately, the cure has an increasingly bad effect on her, and she slips into a realm of artistic stiflement, abandonment, and eventual insanity...

"So I take phosphates or phosphites--whichever it is--and tonics, and air and exercise, and journeys, and am absolutely forbidden to work until I am well again" (317).

Now, if I were feminist, I would say The Yellow Wallpaper is a rallying call for the feminist ideal. Gilman, after all, was outspoken in these matters, and it would be logical to assume her principles found their way into her fiction. "I've got out at last," her heroine declares as she observes her pampering, chauvinistic husband fall to the floor (327). With a feminist approach, Gilman's story becomes a tortured cry for freedom. It becomes a significant contribution to writings that speak of equality and change.

If I were a romantic, I would proclaim her story to be a direct assault upon the restraints of reason. In choosing this interpretation, I see Gilman is no longer a writer subject to the petty rules of an antagonistic husband "who scoffs openly at things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures" (317). Rather, Gilman is a gifted artist, and she is eternally wizened through her years of hard-living. With this approach, I discover an intuitive writer who realizes a life lived for reason alone would be a life not worth living. I discover her intention for writing The Yellow Wallpaper was to reaffirm a romantic disposition toward life--a road to salvation.

But, what would I say if I were Gilman? Suddenly, things are not as clear. I can visualize her, however. I can see her frail frame quietly hunched over a sheet of paper as she hurriedly inks her words. I can see her flashing the literary world a delighted grin as she composes an afterthought to a story she had written years before. Yet, despite this welcoming scene, I can also see there is something waiting and wasting away at her. There is something in this woman's mind that knows, after all these years, the healing voice within has yet to make a sound. And, as she sits and meanders along, like an ignorant child stupefied by its own light, I watch it as it tests her. How many years will pass before it slips in and wrests her control away? How long will it be before it begins to fully comprehend it is more than able to leap up, grab hold, and have its way with her? Gilman spent her early years in poverty. She spent a fair amount of time in depression. In 1935, she takes her own life. Yet, "I seem to be flourishing in spite of my wallpaper," her heroine says (324).

As a whole, I must admit I did enjoy reading The Yellow Wallpaper. It is an amazing story. Regardless, I think for a person like Charlotte Perkins Gilman to have made bold statements about mental health would not have been unlike Mohandas K. Gandhi practicing passive resistance with a gun. Simply put, I feel Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper following a fit of insanity, and it was her own insanity she chose to romanticize. If there was a purpose to her story, it was not to caution or enlighten. It was never intended to, as she says, "save people from being driven crazy." It was written merely to offer readers a chance to eavesdrop on all the dreadful noise people can make when they find themselves powerless and screaming.

Works Cited
Lynn, Steven. Literature: Reading and Writing with Critical Strategies. New York: Pearson, 2004.