I know its pretty long, but I'd really appreciate any comments and advice. Also, I was thinking of changing the title--any suggestions?
Superficial Perception
At the most basic level, perception is the act of looking and taking in things as they are. But as more and more of the subtle differences that point to reality are ignored, perception becomes superficial and results in a paradigm so warped that the distinction between what is true and what we want to be true becomes non-existent. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” uses the recurring theme of contrasting between superficial perception and reality to critique the society of the Victorian era for its medical, patriarchal, and rationalist ideals, as are portrayed in Dr. S. Weir Mitchell’s “Fat and Blood,” and further critiqued in Conrad Shumaker’s “‘Too Terribly Good To Be Printed’: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” The contrasts themselves come at different levels, starting from the interpretations of the short story itself, leading to contrasts at the individual (from the perspective of the narrator), physical (from the perspective of the wallpaper and what it symbolizes), and societal (with regards to the relationship between John and the narrator) levels.
The short story’s gradual rise to popularity, and its varied interpretations, can be taken as an example of this contrast. As arrived at in Conrad Shumaker’s critique, “The Yellow Wallpaper” can be interpreted at different levels, each level forming a surface for the one below it. Initially, the original audience read it to be a “tale of horror or depiction of mental breakdown” (Shumaker 243), but subsequent interpretations lead to widespread acknowledgement that it was a critique of the medical treatment known as the “rest cure” as well as a feminist text. Shumaker himself went a level deeper and called it a debate between reason and emotion, rationality and imagination, and linear and circular thought, on the basis of gender roles: “Through the characters of the ‘rational doctor’ and the ‘imaginative wife’ Gilman explores [the] question… What happens to imagination when it is defined as feminine and has to face a society that values the useful and the practical and rejects anything else as nonsensical?” (Shumaker, 243). Thus, as the story gained more and more popularity, more and more of its superficial interpretations were peeled off to lead to deeper meanings of the text.
Within the short story itself, the contrasts are more apparent. The narrator of the short story is a study in contrasts. She is administered the “rest cure” for her “nervous depression” and “hysterical tendency” (Gilman 287). The “rest cure” is intended to be as much a punishment as it is a cure because it allows no work to be done by the patient. The narrator believes otherwise: “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Gilman 287). So she goes to great lengths to ensure that both her husband, John, and his sister, Jennie, do not really know what is actually on her mind: “Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able—to dress and entertain, and order things” (Gilman 289). She tries to deceive them on three accounts. First, she hides the fact that she writes in her journal; second, she withholds her feelings of depression and melancholia from them; and third, she lies about obeying their instructions. The narrator does not believe that absence of intellectual stimulation would improve her condition, hence writing is her form of opposition to this treatment: “I did write for a while in spite of them, but it does exhaust me a good deal—having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition” (Gilman 287). She further deceives them about how depressed and melancholic she feels: “I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. Of course I don’t when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone” (Gilman 291). This does not help her case because John continues administering the rest cure, thinking she is actually improving, and this is turn further deteriorates the state of her mind. The continuation of the treatment fuels her desire to deceive John and Jennie even more and she stops following whatever little instructions she used to at the beginning of the story: “Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal. It is a very bad habit, I am convinced, for you see, I don’t sleep. And that cultivates deceit, for I don’t tell them I am awake—oh, no!” (Gilman 294). Therefore, what started as a small opposition to the “rest cure” snowballs into a full-blown deception. Not only that, John actually helps her in these deceptions by deluding himself into thinking that the rest cure is working, simply because he sees the narrator gain flesh and color: “’You really are better dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you’” (Gilman 293). Hence, John sees this superficial perception of the narrator, which is in reality a carefully crafted deception, and uses it to reinforce his belief in the “rest cure”. John is used as a representation of the medical establishment of that period and by putting John at fault, Gilman indirectly accuses it.
A particular example where Gilman uses contrast to show the patriarchal as well as the rationalist basis of the medical establishment is how she uses one of the expected outcomes of the “rest cure” as proposed in S Weir Mitchell’s “Fat and Blood” and contrasts it with what is actually happening beneath the surface observation. "Besides this, the sense of comfort which is apt to come about the fifth or sixth day,--the feeling of ease, and the ready capacity to digest food, and the growing hope of final cure, fed as it is by present relief" (Mitchell 49). This relief as a milestone in Mitchell's timeline of recovery is seen in the narrator's case as well: "Life is very much exciting now than it used to be... I really do eat better, and am more quite than I was... I'm feeling so much better!" (Gilman 294). Assuming that Gilman is right, and that the rest cure does not work, by inserting this lapse in the depressive state of the narrator, Gilman is trying to show that the "relief" that Mitchell and the other doctors observe in the patients in not a sign that they are getting better, but that they are getting worse, as is seen from the narrator's reason for her happiness: "I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wallpaper--he would make fun of me. He might even want to take it away" (Gilman 294). Thus, Gilman is accusing the medical establishment of taking the superficial observation and twisting it to accommodate their beliefs and theories by blurring the line between fact and stereotype.
Gilman uses contrast at the physical level to symbolize the patriarchal ideals of the society, through the patterns the narrator starts seeing in the wallpaper: “This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade…I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk behind the silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman 291). By now, the narrator is guilty about deceiving John and is conflicted between who she is expected to be and who she wants to be. Slowly, this conflict starts taking a personified form of a lady within the sub-pattern: “It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (Gilman 292). As the narrator’s feelings of confinement and conflict begin to increase, the outer pattern becomes clear as well: “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind is as plain as can be” (Gilman 294). These bars represent symbolically both the confining nature of the rest cure as well as the confining stereotypes of the society. Gilman’s personification of both the lady as well as the symbolism of the bars represents the conflict-of-identity women of the Victorian era faced on a daily basis: being more than someone’s obedient wife, someone’s caring sister, and someone’s loving mother.
Gilman’s final use of contrast comes through at the level of the society and this ties-in with the ending of the story. Throughout the story, Gilman talks of the patronizing nature of John: "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that" (Gilman 287), showing how women were subjugated within that society. Both the narrator and John act out the parts of the stereotypical husband and wife of the Victorian era. John is the rational, loving and protecting husband and the narrator is the imaginative, docile, and obedient wife, and superficially, they appear to be just that. But what actually transpires beneath this surface truly is seen through the ending of the story, which results in both of their downfalls, so to speak. John faints and the narrator goes insane, truly believing that she is the woman behind the wallpaper (Gilman 298). It is through this spectacular ending that Gilman contrasts superficial perception and reality, the reality being that the narrator is conflicted between being an obedient wife and being herself. This conflict is directly caused by her belief that John does actually love her, which might be true, given that he is doing the best he can for his wife, with the knowledge and beliefs he is taught all is life. It is further aggravated by the fact that John refuses to see the narrator in any way but superficially. To him, she is nothing but a wife and a patient. He completely misses the person struggling beneath what the narrator wants him to see. Also, he refuses to believe anything that she says to be true, blinded by his rationalist beliefs. Both stay true to the characters laid out for them by the society, and the ending is Gilman showing us what it can lead to. As stated by Conrad Shumaker in his critical analysis, “The passage suggests strikingly the way both the characters are doomed to act out their respective parts of loving husband and obedient wife right to the inevitably disastrous end” (Shumaker, 248).
Thus, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a classic example of how people tend take what they see and twist it to accommodate whatever warped paradigm they may have of the individual and/or of the society. Gilman’s use of contrast does the excellent job of shattering these warped paradigms, mainly because of two reasons. Firstly, the short story is written by a person who herself was subject of these paradigms; Gilman was a woman living in the Victorian era as well as a patient who underwent the rest cure. Secondly, it was made more credible because the short story was written by a woman, during a time where almost everything that the society believed to be fact and science was arrived at by men, from their patriarchal and rationalist perspectives. This, in turn, makes the short story as relevant today as it was then because even in today’s society, it is far easier to let out paradigms get the better of us. We look, but we do not see; we hear, but we do not listen. Hence, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the perfect cautionary tale reiterating the importance of looking beyond the calm, superficial façade of both, the individual as well as the society.
Gender:
Points: 497
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