After reading The Yellow Wallpaper, it is clear that Jane’s mental stability
continually declines to the point where she loses her identity and takes on a
different persona. Jane has a solid grasp on society when in the beginning,
Jane’s illness has had little effect on her as she describes herself to be
normal “…ordinary people like John and myself…” (Gilman 647). However, as the
story progresses, John’s infantilizing of Jane worsens her condition. By
forcing Jane to not write, work, or even leave her room, Jane’s sanity starts
to decline as she once wanted to write in a secret journal but eventually her
desire slowly fades as well “I don’t know why I should write this. I don’t want
to. I don’t feel able” (Gilman 651). To pass her time, instead of writing her
thoughts down on paper, she begins to obsess with the yellow wallpaper in her
room. After observing how the wall has many different marks, she begins to see
a design which forms into a woman crouching. At this moment in the story, Jane
has reached a point beyond saving as she begins to see imaginary people locked
away inside a wall. Despite bringing up such a disturbing scene to John, his
response is always the same where he brushes her concerns aside. If John had
actually paid attention to his wife’s condition and concerns, then Jane could
have been saved. However, by not allowing her to leave her room, then Jane
officially loses her consciousness as she ends up truly believing she is the
woman trapped in the wall, not Jane the wife and mother. Although this short
story is more effective in the nineteenth century since the background is
greatly influenced by the medical field of the time, the morals still have a
lasting influence in today’s society. Since doctors truly believed that the
only cure for women with similar situations was doing no work, Gilman tried to
attack the social norms of the time. However, now that the medical field as
developed real treatments for people with these types of problems, the idea
that women had no say in society is still clearly something we can relate to
today.
Works
Cited
Gilman, Charlotte
Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. N.p.,
n.d. United States Library of Medicine. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
I agree with you that this specific story belongs to its time, I'd also argue that it can definitely function as an allegory. I think the social ideology of that era had so crept into Jane's psyche (you see what I did there ? ;) that when she could not become the one thing she was "allowed" to be, she fell apart. Today, we don't have the same belief system in our culture, but we still hold expectations for people that, when folks feel they can't meet them, can lead to depression and worse.
ReplyDeleteB- Rooke, loved your use of text evidence to support your claims made especially in the beginning of the post. Also, loved the ending as you relate what has happened to Jane morally to our present day society today. There are definitely parallels to be drawn and lessons to be learned. Hope you have a great Spring Break bud!
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