Work Through It
The setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman consists primarily of one large, ill-papered room at the top of a colonial mansion, and I believe that this room symbolizes the unnamed main character's changing life, mind, and sanity. For most of the story she is confined to this one room to recover from depression, and at first it doesn't seem too bad. To paraphrase her description, it is " a large room with lots of windows and sunshine, ready for kids, but it has a distracting and ugly yellow wallpaper." (Gilman 487) I believe the room represents the life she is supposed to live with kids,sunshine, air, and not a whole lot else, and at first she seems fine with it, but she can already see how unappealing the boarders of that life are. Later she tries to talk to her husband about her issues with the room, and laughing at her plight, he talks her out of it when she implores, "Then do let us go downstairs, there are such pretty rooms there." (Gilman 488) Everybody has different aspects of their lives, maybe a creative side, a family side, or a professional side to name a few, and I think the different rooms of the house represent different parts of her life. While the room upstairs represents a life of family and domesticity, the other rooms could represent an academic, social, or professional life, and when she expresses an interest in trying one, her husband laughs and tells her the one upstairs is the best one for her. With only this one room, or aspect of her life and mind, she begins to focus on the yellow wallpaper and its pattern which she describes as, "strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths that shriek with derision!" (Gilman 496) Towards the end of the story I think the room becomes her entire world, represents her whole mind, and she is trapped in that one narrow aspect of it. The wallpaper represents the boarder of sanity around her mind, and I believe the yellow color of the wallpaper was meant to caution her and the pattern was meant to distract or scare her away in order to protect her sanity. By the end of the story she throws caution to the wind, isn't thwarted by the pattern, and shreds the wallpaper.
In my opinion, and I think Gilman would agree, the best way to treat depression is to get busy in life physically and mentally, not laying around all day bored and pensive. In my limited experience with depression several years ago many aspects of my life were disrupted, and I had to make a choice: I could sit around and feel sorry for myself, or I could work through it. I have never been one to feel sorry for myself, so I began to work through it. I took this very literally, and began working extra hours, going to the gym everyday, running, bicycling, enrolling in college, and doing odd-jobs at my mom's house, like plumbing, masonry, and yard work. All the while, I was too busy to think about how unhappy I was, and at night I was too physically exhausted to lay awake pondering. Before I knew it I didn't need the distractions anymore, and my life was taking some positive turns; I'm back in school, have picked up some useful trades along the way, am in pretty amazing shape, and, more importantly, I'm happy again. When we don't acknowledge our problems, and just shut them up in a room hoping they'll go away, they grow and drive us crazy.
When we ignore our problems on a national or global scale we begin to see social injustice, like the U.S. before and after the Civil Rights and Women's movements, that are upheld emphatically, often times violently, and are extremely difficult to repair. The "Yellow Wallpaper" to me is a precursor to the Women's movement and the "problem with no name," proposed by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique. On a national scale, the plight of women across the U.S. was ignored and belittled. As a result we saw a national epidemic of "sick" women, and I wonder how many of them went insane or did something deplorable. Whether you think there is a problem or not, and whether you like it or not, if someone, or many someones say that there is a problem, then it's time to talk about it and hopefully reach some sort of solution that doesn't leave anybody in the dust. I think a world where we faced our problems head-on and out in the open would foster a general sense of equality and the togetherness of people, and I would love to live in that world of discussion and reasoning, where nobody tried to get ahead at the cost of another person.
Works Cited:
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." 1892. 1865-Present. Ed. Nina
Baym. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 485-97. Print.
Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 2 vols.
Baym. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 485-97. Print.
Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 2 vols.
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique / by Betty Friedan. 20th Anniversary ed. New York: Norton, 1983. Print.
I agree with your comment about working through depression helps. I believe that sitting around and doing nothing all of the time can only worsen the depression. I think that's was the women's problem is in The Yellow Wallpaper. She is confined to one room and throughout the story her depression seems to get bad very quickly. I feel that if she was allowed to do something other than sit in that room the depression may not have gotten as bad.
ReplyDeleteI tried to draw on my own experience and connect it with the story. I think that the woman in the story is representing not only herself, but a whole group of women who felt quite the same. Even as a collective, women had very little power in those days, and couldn't really do anything about their situation, and were led to believe that other women were very content with a similar lives, adding to their isolation. I think i said it in class but I believe that the worst thing to do for a depressed person is to leave them with their own thoughts.
DeleteI like how you've taken a broader view on the story and applied it to the general world. While I believe that the authors medical terminology is only a small clip of what the story is trying to convey, I think that your ideas are on track.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I really found this story to really be about having an open dialogue with the people around you, for good or bad. I think that honesty with each other and with ourselves is the best way to maintain healthy relationships, without honest communication we end up doing things we don't want to do, going where we don't want to go, and even believing what we don't want to believe. In the Yellow Wallpaper it cost her her sanity.
ReplyDeleteI'm intrigued by the connection to Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique--it's interesting to think about how the Cult of Domesticity starts this emphasis on women's confinement to the domestic sphere, and how Gilman's story shows us a particularly dysfunctional vision, and then Friedan expands upon this 70 years later. Where do we stand today, I wonder?
ReplyDeleteI had the same thoughts you did, on how Gilman would agree that keeping the mind busy, would help treat depression. I like how you pointed out that shutting the problem in a room would basically just make the problem so much worse. Also, way to be brave and share your story!
ReplyDeleteThanks. I believe that throughout history, people have for the most part kept their problems to themselves, even when they bore dire consequences. I still see this problem today, if we all just got over ourselves, shared our problems, questions, and feelings, we might begin to move towards the America that was dreamed of by so many, and not the morally ambiguous nation that we are.
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