"The Yellow Wallpaper"--Off The Wall Entertaining

                Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an iconic feminist author saddling the 19^th and 20^th centuries with her works featuring female characters. However unlike most feminists (Virginia Woolf), she isn’t boring.

 Bringing Sexy Back

                "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a creepy story. I honestly cannot describe it any other way. It ends with the main character descending into madness and “creeping” all over the room. “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.” First question: what is a smooch? But let me back up.

                The main character, an unnamed woman, is bedridden after having a child, in a room she assumes to be nursery coated with the distinct titular yellow wallpaper which she despises. But the house is a rental so no one will repaper it; she sits all day staring at the wallpaper until she becomes convinced there is a woman trapped in the wall. So she starts peeling.

                She spends hours, not sleeping, peeling away paper from this wall, trying to free this woman. And the entire time her husband is comforting her and telling her everything will be fine—but it’s not, because soon this woman goes off the deep end and starts “creeping”. The story ends with the narrator making circles around the room over and over, making grooves (probably synonymous with a "smooch"?) in the walls with her shoulder. Just endless creepy repetition.

                I love the entire premise of this story. It’s short but effective, employing plenty of haunted elements. I will list them as concisely as possible.

A.      The Chamber. The Gothic theme of a woman imprisoned or trapped as the protagonist in her yellow room.

B.      Women. More in tune with the supernatural. She sees the woman “creeping” in the walls.

C.      Artists vs. Doctors. The woman’s husband is a doctor and insists he knows best and she must stay in her room. The woman is a writer who is more irrational and therefore affected by the haunting.

D.      Location. Big manor they rent in the country, hinted it might have been an asylum. Clearly a location for a haunting.

E. Repression. The woman's husband doesn't like her getting out of bed or writing. Insists she stay in the room.

               All of these motifs, and yet there are no ghosts! This is a perfectly framed horror story, but there is nothing (probably) supernatural. It's the woman's own mind that haunts her (being a woman is hard, guys. You don't even know).

                So last but not least, feminism. This is what I love about this work—the feminist themes aren’t aggressively shoved down your throat. The woman is suffering postpartum depression, but her husband doesn’t recognize it (when he asked her what was wrong, she replied “nothing” in a voice that clearly implied something). The husband ignores her requests to go outside and patronizes her in a way most similar to Ibsen’s A Doll House (a feminist play written by a man, might I add).

                So in the end, to break free from her domestic role of mother and wife, she loses her mind. Which is deep if you think about it. So women, next time you don’t want to do the dishes, fake psychosis. This story is recommended.

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