Male Domination in "The Yellow Wall Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

            The Yellow Wall Paper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about a woman who suffers from a nervous depression after giving birth to her son and being forced to have a perfect rest by her husband, John, in a huge old mansion during the summer. The woman, whose name is unstated, is not allowed to ‘work’ because her husband, a physician of high standing, thinks that tonics, exercise, air and a lot of sleep will make her get well soon. This story somehow illustrates that women have a little to no control over their own life. The husband, on the other hand, always in control about everything; even though it is as trivial as a choice of room. The woman wants one downstairs with ‘‘roses all over the windows’’, but her husband would not hear of it and choose the nursery at the top of the house instead. ‘‘[H]e... hardly lets [his wife] stir without special direction.’’  Afterward, the woman hints her dislikeness of the yellow wallpaper by saying,’’I never saw a worse paper in my life’’ and asks her husband to re-paper the room or let her go downstairs. John with all his sweet talk calls his wife ’’a blessed little goose, and [says] he would go down cellar if [he] wished’’ but yet, he still does not re-paper the room nor let her move downstairs. These events represent how dominant John’s opinions over his wife's will, he always convinces his wife that he does it for her own good, because ‘‘he is so wise’’ and ‘‘he loves [her] very dearly.’’ When in fact, he does not let his wife choose the room downstairs because there is ‘‘no near room for him’’ to work in.

The main character of this story, the woman, represent the protagonist character. Ever since the story starts, the woman wants to ‘‘work’’. She believes that ‘‘congenial work, with excitement and change, would do [her] good.’’ and ‘‘it would relieve the press of ideas and rest [her]’’, but her husband, as the antagonist, forbid her to do so. He wants her to ‘‘have perfect rest’’ and ‘‘sleep all [she] can’’ until she is well again. This prohibition makes her ‘‘work’’ secretly, she only writes when John is away, and ‘‘it does exhaust [her] a good deal— having to be so sly about it.’’ She hates to write in secret. It makes her feel tired easily and ‘‘[i]t is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about [her] work.’’

The woman then starts to lose her strength. She lies down a lot in her room but does not sleep. She keeps staring at the yellow wallpaper, trying to observe its patterns, colors, smells and everything. Soon, she gets obsessed with the yellow wallpaper because she spends too much time lying on the bed, with nothing to do but staring at the wallpaper. She examines how the patterns look like ‘‘strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths’’ before starts to fancy that there is ‘‘a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern.’’ She starts to imagine something that is more likely a reflection of what she feels in that room; trapped. As she starts to lose the line between fantasy and reality, on the last day of her stay in the mansion, she knows that this is the day where she finally will be free! ‘‘[She peels] off all the paper [she] could reach standing on the floor’’ and tells her husband that ‘‘‘[she has] got out at last,... in spite of [her husband] and [her husband's sister]! And [she has] pulled off most of the paper, so [they] can't put [her] back!’’’

The issue of male domination in a relationship can be seen in the passage by how the wife, as a narrator, repeatedly saying ‘‘John says’’ or ‘‘He said’’ in every other possible word. The husband’s perspective and opinion matter more than his wife’s wishes, although the woman already has depression, her husband still forced his will and made his wife obey his wishes. This condition caused the woman’s depression got worse and made her lose her sanity.

(The analysis was written by me to be submitted as an assignment for Prose Class, English Department, University of Pamulang)

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