Licen, Christian Ray C.
BA English Major in Literature
III-V
Criticism of Fiction: Psychoanalysis Criticism
Selection: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’
Psychoanalysis Criticism:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’
In this story, the narrator suffers from nervous condition namely postpartum depression. Together with her husband who is a doctor, they move in to a temporary old mansion house for a rest-cure therapy where she is to recuperate in solitude- free from any mental, physical and emotional activity. Her husband has forbidden her to write because it is taxing and tedious on her part. All she has to do is to simply rest and empty her self from any obligation and tension. But that did not encumber her for she writes her diary furtively. She and her husband sleep in a commodious room who she believes was once a nursery. Having been overwhelmed by its grand architectural design, she then takes notice of the hideous wall paper which had turned yellow due to antiquity. Add to it, the barred windows and gloomy structure symbolizes a depressing atmosphere with the narrator herself whose voice and tone is melancholic. Little did she know that she becomes obsessed with the yellow paper that she keeps staring at the pattern- its obscure design and linear demography. Thus, having been obsessed by the yellow paper, it has disintegrated her thoughts gradually. She feels nostalgic for her baby- a usual symptom of post-partum depression patients. How she must have attained the rest cure therapy was in itself an inhibition of her recovery because it has left her in psychological distress. Moreover, her lucid stare at the wall paper had her depict a woman incarcerated at the back of the yellow paper. How she has ever thought of this was all due to her repressed feelings. In Freud’s Theory of Repression, the id is the repository of all guilt feelings, desires, wishes and fears suppressed by the conscious mind because of social mores, taboos, and other factors (Gillespie, p.1088). Could it be that she was anxious about the recent episodes on her life? Or could it also be that the woman who she keeps hallucinating is merely a reflection of her own misery? In this case, it is interesting to note how the “voice” in story does not only convey the narrator’s struggle but of the author herself, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. As I’ve researched over the internet, I found out that she really has suffered from the same condition. She states that, “For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887. Clearly, such work of fiction is Gilman’s own experience which prohibited her from writing and labeled her feminism and social critique as symptoms of uterine illness (www.yale.edu.). Since a psychoanalytic critique has roots from an author’s milieu, it is but deliberate also to consider the symbolism and use of Gothic elements prescribed in the story as this would lead us to understand the story in context. Seemingly, Gilman’s depiction of the narrator’s hallucination of the woman incarcerated behind the wall paper implies her struggle and that of the narrator’s upon the onset of the rest-cure therapy. The employment of Gothic elements as evident in the moving of the yellow wall paper and creeping of the woman sideways, then jumping out of the window and crawling on the floor convinces the readers that the narrator’s human psyche has indeed been deteriorated. Her exclusion from reality is in context a drive towards insanity. Such device, of using the Gothic element, proves how effective and substantial this can be to deepen one’s understanding of the selection. I commend Gilman for this exemplary yet mad attempt. Gilman’s own voice has been reflected through the narrator’s stream of consciousness such that, she wants to reveal how her plight had worsened her condition. Not only that, her vehement vindication to win over the yellow paper is characteristic of a burgeoning feminine voice who wishes to establish her own identity and purpose. No wonder that towards the conclusion of the story, she makes herself become one with yellow paper. Surprisingly though, this evokes a sympathetic response to the readers. As I read this material a couple of times, I’ve realized how powerful the repressed subconscious moves a person either in sanity or madness. As one famous physician in Gilman’s time notes: “… such story ought not to be written. It was enough to drive anyone mad to read it (The Forerunner, October 1913).” Why should this not be written when in fact it has supplanted the notion of the people at that time about the gradual detriment of the psyche with the use of neurasthenia, or the so-called rest-cure therapy? Why has Gilman survived over such predicament had she not dissuade herself from the conventional recovery process of curing a psycho-related disease? This and more makes us realize Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story as a realistic depiction of what happens to the mind when faced with forced inactivity. It is not just a read to entertain or drive us madly but a realistic representation of human beings' desire to overcome feelings of uselessness and insanity.
