What Does Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' Mean? (2024)

Like Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour,"Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"is a mainstay of feminist literary study. First published in 1892, the story takes the form of secret journal entries written by a woman who is supposed to be recovering from what her husband, a physician, calls anervous condition.

This haunting psychological horror story chronicles the narrator's descent into madness, or perhaps into the paranormal, or perhaps—depending on your interpretation—into freedom. The result is a story as chilling as anything by Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King.

Recovery Through Infantilization

The protagonist's husband, John, does not take her illness seriously. Nor does he take her seriously. He prescribes, among other things, a "rest cure," in which she is confined to their summer home, mostly to her bedroom.

The woman is discouraged from doing anything intellectual, even though she believes some "excitement and change" would do her good. She is allowed very little company—certainly not from the "stimulating" people she most wishes to see. Even her writing must happen in secret.

In short, John treats her like a child. He calls her diminutive names like "blessed little goose" and "little girl." He makes all decisions for her and isolates her from the things she cares about.

Even her bedroom is not the one she wanted; instead, it's a room that appears to have once been a nursery, emphasizing her return to infancy. Its "windows are barred for little children," showing again that she is being treated as a child—as well as a prisoner.

John's actions are couched in concern for the woman, a position that she initially seems to believe herself. "He is very careful and loving," she writes in her journal, "and hardly lets me stir without special direction." Her words also sound as if she is merely parroting what she's been told, though phrases like "hardly lets me stir" seem to harbor a veiled complaint.

FactVersus Fancy

John dismisses anything that hints of emotion or irrationality—what he calls "fancy." For instance, when the narrator says that the wallpaper in her bedroom disturbs her, he informs her that she is letting the wallpaper "get the better of her" and refuses to remove it.

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John doesn't simply dismiss things he finds fanciful though; he also uses the charge of "fancy" to dismiss anything he doesn't like. In other words, if he doesn't want to accept something, he simply declares that it is irrational.

When the narrator tries to have a "reasonable talk" with him about her situation, she is so distraught that she is reduced to tears. Instead of interpreting her tears as evidence of her suffering, he takes them as evidence that she is irrational and can't be trusted to make decisions for herself.

As part of his infantilization of her, he speaks to her as if she is a whimsical child, imagining her own illness. "Bless her little heart!" he says. "She shall be as sick as she pleases!" He does not want to acknowledge that her problems are real, so he silences her.

The only way the narrator could appear rational to John would be to become satisfied with her situation, which means there is no way for her to express concerns or ask for changes.

In her journal, the narrator writes:

"John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him."

John can't imagine anything outside his own judgment. So when he determines that the narrator's life is satisfactory, he imagines that the fault lies with her perception. It never occurs to him that her situation might really need improvement.

The Wallpaper

Thenursery walls are covered in putrid yellow wallpaper with a confused, eerie pattern. The narrator is horrified by it.

She studies the incomprehensible pattern in the wallpaper, determined to make sense of it. But rather than making sense of it, she begins to identify a second pattern—that of a woman creeping furtively behind the first pattern, which acts as a prison for her.

The first pattern of the wallpaper can be seen as the societal expectations that hold women, like the narrator, captive. Her recovery will be measured by how cheerfully she resumes her domestic duties as wife and mother, and her desire to do anything else—like write—is something that would interfere with that recovery.

Though the narrator studies and studies the pattern in the wallpaper, it never makes any sense to her. Similarly, no matter how hard she tries to recover, the terms of her recovery—embracing her domestic role—never make sense to her, either.

The creeping woman can represent both victimization by the societal norms and resistance to them.

This creeping woman also gives a clue about why the first pattern is so troubling and ugly. It seems to be peppered with distorted heads with bulging eyes—the heads of other creeping women who were strangled by the pattern when they tried to escape it. That is, women who couldn't survive when they tried to resist cultural norms. Gilman writes that "nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so."

Becoming a Creeping Woman

Eventually, the narrator becomes a creeping woman herself. The first indication is when she says, rather startlingly, "I always lock the door when I creep by daylight." Later, the narrator and the creeping woman work together to pull off the wallpaper.

The narrator also writes, "[T]here are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast," implying that the narrator is only one of many.

That her shoulder "just fits" into the groove on the wall is sometimes interpreted to mean that she has been the one ripping the paper and creeping around the room all along. But it could also be interpreted as an assertion that her situation is no different from that of many other women. In this interpretation, "The Yellow Wallpaper" becomes not just a story about one woman's madness, but a maddening system.

At one point, the narrator observes the creeping women from her window and asks, "I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?"

Her coming out of the wallpaper—her freedom—coincides with a descent into mad behavior: ripping off the paper, locking herself in her room, even biting the immovable bed. That is, her freedom comes when she finally reveals her beliefs and behavior to those around her and stops hiding.

The final scene—in which John faints and the narrator continues to creep around the room, stepping over him every time—is disturbing but also triumphant. Now John is the one who is weak and sickly, and the narrator is the one who finally gets to determine the rules of her own existence. She is finally convinced that he only "pretended to be loving and kind." After being consistently infantilized by his comments, she turns the tables on him by addressing him condescendingly, if only in her mind, as "young man."

John refused to remove the wallpaper, and in the end, the narrator used it as her escape.

What Does Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' Mean? (2024)

FAQs

What is the meaning behind The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

The yellow wallpaper in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a symbol of society and patriarchy. It is ugly, faded, and torn in some spots, and a figure of a woman is trapped in the paper. It symbolizes women, or the woman in the story, being trapped within the constraints of a patriarchal society.

What is Gilman's message in The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

The Subordination of Women in Marriage

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman uses the conventions of the psychological horror tale to critique the position of women within the institution of marriage, especially as practiced by the “respectable” classes of her time.

What was Charlotte Perkins purpose in writing The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

She wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” soon after her move to California, and in it she uses her personal experience to create a tale that is both a chilling description of one woman's fall into madness and a potent symbolic narrative of the fate of creative women stifled by a paternalistic culture.

What is the meaning of the ending of The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

At the end of the story, as her husband lies on the floor unconscious, she crawls over him, symbolically rising over him. This is interpreted as a victory over her husband at the expense of her sanity.

What is the moral of The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

The moral of the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is that women should be given a say in their recovery instead of being dismissed, controlled, or infantilized during their recovery from mental health issues.

What does her illness symbolize in The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

Answer and Explanation: In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the illness of the main character represents her deviation from the accepted norms for women's behavior in the late 1800s.

What is most ironic about the ending of the story "Yellow Wallpaper"? ›

Quick answer: What is ironic about the ending of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is that it's the narrator who is supposed to be hysterical, yet her husband is the one who faints. Throughout the story, he has been the voice of cold, scientific reason.

What is the argument of The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story that allows us to view male doctors as misguided. Use the details from the story to argue that the narrator's husband is controlling and insensitive, purposing confining his wife in order to force her to be dependent on him.

Why does John faint at the end of The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

Why does John faint at the end of the story? John faints at the end of the story because the narrator's erratic and destructive behavior shocks him. He cannot believe that his wife, whom he presumed was improving in her condition, has fallen into such animalistic behavior.

What was Gilman's reason for writing The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

As Gary Scharnhorst points out, this treatment originated with Dr. Weir Mitchell, who personally prescribed this “cure” to Gilman herself. She was in fact driven to near madness and later claimed to have written “The Yellow Wallpaper” to protest this treatment of women like herself, and specifically to address Dr.

What is the author's purpose in The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

The story's purpose is to explain how harmful it is to neglect a woman's striving for self-growth and development. The narrator has nothing else to do but lay down all day and stare at the yellow walls in her room. There is no mental activity other than analyzing their patterns and reflections.

Why does the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper go crazy? ›

Due to her isolation in the yellow room, her brain is consumed with the color and her senses become entangled with the smell. The narrator's confinement is what ultimately drives her insane.

What is the deeper meaning of The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

Clearly, the wallpaper represents the structure of family, medicine, and tradition in which the narrator finds herself trapped. Wallpaper is domestic and humble, and Gilman skillfully uses this nightmarish, hideous paper as a symbol of the domestic life that traps so many women.

What is The Yellow Wallpaper main idea? ›

The main theme of The Yellow Wallpaper centers around the mental, emotional, and physical harm caused by the limited role women were allowed to play in society and their own families during the Victorian era. The unnamed narrator is not allowed self-expression, autonomy, or a voice in her marriage.

Does the woman hang herself at the end of The Yellow Wallpaper? ›

Although the story does not directly state this, it is believed that the narrator from "The Yellow Wallpaper" does hang herself at the end of the story. This is indicated in the passage where she discusses hiding a length of rope in her room and finding a way to escape her confinement, despite never leaving the room.

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