The Feminist Paradox of “The Yellow Wallpaper”

This article discusses the feminist paradox in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Ashley N. Brooks. The author explores the symbolism of the yellow wallpaper and the garden in relation to domesticity and mental illness. The article argues that the wallpaper represents the narrator’s entrapment in and obsession with her illness, while the garden serves as a symbol of domestic life. The author also discusses how the narrator’s attitude toward the garden mirrors her attitude toward domestic life.

Papers & Publications: Interdisciplinary Journal of
Undergraduate Research
Volume 6 Article 18
2017
Nursery Versus Straightjacket: The Femin
Paradox of “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Ashley N. Brooks
University of North Georgia
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/papersandp
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Recommended Citation
Brooks, Ashley N. (2017) "Nursery Versus Straightjacket: The Feminist Paradox of “The Yellow Wallpaper”," Papers &
Interdisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Research: Vol. 6 , Article 18.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/papersandpubs/vol6/iss1/18

Nursery Versus Straightjacket: The Feminist Paradox of “Th
Wallpaper”
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Dr. Chris Bell for telling me to write and then rewrite. Thank you to Dr. Leigh Dillard
me to put my work into the world.
This article is available in Papers & Publications: Interdisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Re
https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/papersandpubs/vol6/iss1/18

102 | Brooks
Nursery Versus Straightjacket
That CharlottePerkinsGilman’sshortstory“The Yellow
Wallpaper” is studied in classrooms worldwide is no surprise
Upon publication, the story was met with an equal amount
of critical acclaim and controversy. Gilman wrote the st
following a harrowing experience with a doctor prescribed rest cure,
once-common treatment for women suffering from mental illnesses,
Gilman’s (and likely the narrator’s) case, post-partum depression
rest cure entailed nothing but sleeping and resting. Women who wer
prescribed the rest cure could not participate in any stimulating activ
such as reading, writing, learning, socializing, or anything else consid
too strenuous by their male doctors. Such a treatment is not conduci
to mental health and is more of an attempt to oppress rather than to
fix. Gilman’s experience is evidence of the harmful nature of th
cure, and this experience reflects that of many women in the ninetee
century. By writing “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman sought to immor
ize the medical mistreatment of the rest cure while also illustrating h
and why women are often labeled as hysterical or unstable. “The Yel
Wallpaper” is not only a critique on such harsh and unnecessary med
practices, but also a feminist outcry against a patriarchy that would r
subdue women than address the true nature of their problems. Gilma
emphasizes the realistic plight of the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpap
and the dramatic ending of the story leaves much for interpretation
women’s place in a male-oriented world. “The Yellow Wallpaper” refl
the narrator’s ensnarement in a feminist paradox: to remain trapped
her illness while preserving her autonomy, or to become forever con
by domestic life and lose any sense of control over her own identity a
fate.
Gilman illustrates the feminist paradox through the use of various
symbols, the most obvious and ironic being the yellow wallpaper itse
The yellow wallpaper is symbolic of the narrator’s illness, but it is wo
noting that her illness is one brought on by patriarchal constraints. A
Heilmann argues that the narrator’s obsession with the wallpap
mirrors her automatic obsession with fulfilling patriarchal obligations
but as the story progresses, the narrator becomes more concerned w
tearing the wallpaper down, symbolizing her defiance and rebel
against such oppressive norms: “Gilman was visualizing her em
feminist opposition to the ‘pointless pattern’ of male thought a
cultural production, juxtaposing these with a womancentered po
and perspective, the central female consciousness of her text” (Heilm
Nursery Versus Straightjacket:
The Feminist Paradox of “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Ashley N. Brooks
University of North Georgia
Ashley N. Brooks is an English Major with
a concentration in Writing & Publication at
Universityof NorthGeorgia.Shecurrently
works at a public library and hopes to pursue
a joint Master’s degree in Library Science and
English upon graduating from UNG. Ashley
is an active member of Sigma Tau Delta on
the Gainesville campus of UNG, where she
holds the office of President. She presented
a version of this paper at the 2017 Sigma Tau
Delta convention in Louisville, Kentucky.

Brooks | 103
Papers & Publications, vol. 6
6). The narrator’s transition from subservience
into defiance is reflected by her reaction to the
wallpaper, which evolves as her illness progress-
es. At first, the narrator abhors the wall paper,
and describes it as such: “The color is repellent,
almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow,
strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It
is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly
sulphur tint in others” (Gilman 257). Ironically,
the wallpaper is yellow, an eye-catching color
that normally signifies happiness and energy.
The narrator does not react positively to the
wallpaper, but the pattern grabs her attention
and holds her thoughts hostage. As the narrator’s
illness progresses, her reactions to the wallpaper
become passionate, even possessive. “But I am
here, and no person touches this wallpaper but
me —not alive!” (Gilman 267). This quote illus-
trates the contradictory relationship the narrator
has with her illness. On one hand, her illness,
like the patriarchal standards and dominance,
holds her prisoner and invades her every waking
thought. On the other hand, her illness is the
only thing that is truly hers, though it is arguable
whether she would be suffering in this way in the
first place if her fate was not controlled by the
men in her life. For example, her husband and
doctors prohibit her from expressing her feelings
through writing, and she is also prevented from
reading,working,or engagingin any other
creative distraction.
Paradoxically, the wallpaper represents the
disease (mental illness exacerbated by patriarchal
expectations and control) but it also represents
the cure (societal liberation through rebellion
via insanity). As described by Greg Johnson,
the narrator could not have liberated her own
autonomy without having first been impris-
oned: “Rather than simply labeling the narrator
a madwoman at the story’s close, we might view
her behavior as an expression of long-suppressed
rage: a rage which causes a temporary breakdown
(like those actually suffered by both Dickinson
and Gilman) but which represents a prelude to
psychic regeneration and artistic redemption”
(Johnson 522). The narrator’s agency is taken
from her by her husband and male doctors, and
she is trapped by their expectations. Because
she is left with no other options, she begins to
ruminate on the wallpaper and succumb to her
illness: every other means of distraction and
expression is taken from her, and she has only
her illness and the wallpaper left to fill the void.
Rather than submitting to patriarchal suppres-
sion, she allows her anger to build until it has
reached critical mass, and she uses this anger
to triumph over those that try to silence her.
Without her illness as a part of her identity,
she is but a commonplace woman, eternally
confined to humdrum domestic life at the will
of her husband and the other male figures, with
little hope of rising above her station or existing
outside of societal norms. In her illness, she finds
something to fixate on that cannot be prohibited
or silenced by her husband, doctors, or family
members, no matter how they try.
If the wallpaper represents the narrator’s en-
trapment in and obsession with her illness, the
garden serves as a symbol of domestic life. The
narrator first begins to describe the garden after
reproaching herself for dwelling too long on her
illness. At first, Gilman describes the garden in
a positive light: “There is a delicious garden!
I never saw such a garden—large and shady,
full of box-bordered paths and lined with long
grape-covered arbors with seats under them”
(Gilman 256). The garden appears fertile and
welcoming, but the narrator’s description of it
is underwhelming. Her initial reaction to the
garden reflects her initial reaction to domestic
life; she responds appropriately at first, focusing
on the quaint, appealing features of the garden.
Lee Shweninger describes how wives and gardens
are viewed as similar instruments in a patriar-
chal society: “The patriarchal colonists set aside
both wife (as opposed to woman) and garden (as
opposed to nature or wilderness) as sites of purity
or manufactured ideality” (Shweninger 27). The
narrator at first views the garden as bright and
fertile, much like how traditional domestic roles
are portrayed by society as a whole.
It can be assumed that the narrator, like
many women before her, was initially enthusi-
astic about her role of wife and mother, until
realizing that this role was the only one she would
ever be able to fill. Upon realizing domesticity
will strip her of her individuality, she begins to
view the garden as an ominous space. As the

104 | Brooks
Nursery Versus Straightjacket
story progresses, her descriptions of the garden
become more foreboding: “I can see the garden,
those mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous
old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly
trees” (Gilman 258). The words that Gilman
uses to describe the garden imply subtext about
the narrator’s attitude toward domesticity. The
arbors being “mysterious” and “deep-shaded”
implies deception, while the word “riotous” used
in conjunction with “old fashioned” to describe
the flowers implies an exuberance of outdated
ideals regarding femininity, while “gnarly trees”
invokes a feeling of danger or difficulty. The
narrator’s changing descriptions of the garden
reflect her changing attitude toward domestic
life. By the end of the story, the narrator hal-
lucinates about women “creeping” through the
garden, a manifestation of her anxieties towards
the duties of motherhood and marriage; saddled
with these impending burdens in addition to
her illness, she cannot walk confidently (Gilman
266). Instead, she creeps through the garden as a
representation of her struggle with domestic life.
The narrator struggles against her illness as well,
as represented by her vision of a woman trapped
behind the paper. However, the narrator is not as
preoccupied by the garden (domesticity) as she
is in the wallpaper (her illness), so her reaction
to the perceived woman creeping in the garden
is not as strong as her reaction to the perceived
woman behind the wallpaper.
The comparisonbetweenthe narrator’s
reaction to the garden and her reaction to the
wallpaper are further evidence of her entrap-
ment betweenthe two circumstances.The
narrator reacts to the wallpaper with disgust,
though her contradictory transfixion to it is
apparentin her writing. Whereat first she
writes about domestic subjects (the house, the
garden) and provides limited or flat description,
writing about the wallpaper causes her writing
style to become more florid and ardent, as if
she were mirroring the wallpaper pattern with
her words: “It is dull enough to confuse the
eye in following, pronounced enough to con-
stantly irritate and provoke study, and when
you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little
distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge
off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in
unheard of contradictions” (Gilman 257). The
description of the wallpaper is far more poetic
and well thought out than that of the estate’s
garden: “I never saw such a garden-- large and
shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with
grape-covered arbors with seats under them”
(Gilman 256). When the two descriptions are
compared side by side, it is hard to believe that
they were written by the same person. Though
initially attracted to the beauty of the garden,
the narrator is not as infatuated with it as she is
with the wallpaper, as evidenced by the contrast
in her writing style when addressing each. The
narrator’s attitude toward the garden mirrors
her attitude toward domestic life; she describes
the gardenplainly,politely,and passionless-
ly. Her descriptions of the garden evoke either
no image or else a very generic one. She reacts
this way to the garden because, as Shweninger
asserts, the garden represents the patriarchal
norm. The garden, like women, has been tamed
by men and forced to grow in an unnatural,
ordered way: “The garden becomes the site of
limits, of control, of the artificial, of denial, of
the male’s triumph over the wildness of nature”
(Shweninger 27).
The narratoris at first attractedto the
garden because it is what is expected from her,
not because she has genuine interest. Her lack
of interest in the garden and in domesticity is
reflected in her bored writing style. The garden
representspassivedomesticity,whereasthe
garden represents her illness and entrapment in
patriarchal systems. Her reaction to the wallpaper
is one of shock and horror, but her descriptions
are vivid enough to evoke a specific image of the
lurid color and pattern. The narrator may hate
the wallpaper, but it is the only source of distrac-
tion available to her that has not been prohibited
by the rest cure. She fixates on the wallpaper in
the same way that she fixates on her illness, and
it is not long before those two things are the only
thing she feels she has ownership of and control
over. Though she feels oppressed and surround-
ed by the wallpaper much in the same way that
she is oppressed and surrounded by the male
figures in her life, the wallpaper provides her
with something to rebel against. In the end it is
the wallpaper that frees her from her entrapment

Brooks | 105
Papers & Publications, vol. 6
by driving her completely mad. In her madness,
she is liberated from the confines of patriarchal
domesticity, and she regains the autonomy that
she had begun to lose because of marriage and
motherhood.
Even her own child cannot inspire the same
level of interest as the wallpaper. The narrator
mentions her nervousness about the baby in
conjunction with her horror of the wallpaper,
contradicting herself again shortly thereafter.
She muses about how she couldn’t fathom any
child living in the nursery with the wallpaper,
appearing to come to the conclusion that is
it betterthat she herselfoccupythe room.
However, the wording that she uses is mislead-
ing: “I never thought of it before, but it is lucky
that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so
much easier than a baby, you see” (Gilman 262).
The wording of this statement implies a double
meaning; is the narrator stating that she can
stand living in the nursery with the wallpaper
better than a baby could stand it, or is she
implying that she would rather be confined to
the nursery with the wallpaper than be confined
to the duty of motherhood? As the narrator
talks more about the wallpaper, she mentions
the shape of the woman in the subpattern. She
says, “I do not like it a bit. I wonder-- I begin to
think-- I wish John would take me away from
here!” (Gilman 262). This sentence contradicts
her earlier statement about being able to tolerate
the wallpaper better than a baby. It implies that
she cannot, in fact, stand the wallpaper. She
“wonders and begins to think,” and in doing so
she expresses her longing for an escape, not only
from the glare of the nursery’s nauseating interior
design, but from the entire estate, from every-
thing that represents her domestic confinement.
That the narrator is confined to a nursery
is yet another clever use of irony by Gilman.
Though the narrator expresses a preference for
a different bedroom, her request is overruled
by her husband, and she is instructed instead
to board in the nursery with the wallpaper. The
wallpaper is not the only unsettling detail about
the nursery. There are also bars over the windows,
and various ring and other equipment left over
from when it was (presumably) a gymnasium for
children. John Bak describes how the narrator is
able to free herself from the prison-like norms
of domestic life by succumbing to the very
nervous illness brought on by patriarchal op-
pression. By succumbing to her nervous illness,
she breaks from the Victorian norm and regains
her autonomy by becoming a madwoman: “The
Victorian mind-set her patriarchal society has
instilled in her – she has essentially released
herself from the external bars and rings that John
(or all nineteenthcentury men, for that matter)
uses to restrain her” (Bak 44). Despite not
being able to tend to her child without feeling
anxiety, and being prohibited from taking part
in the duties of domestic life, the narrator is still
physically confined to a nursery. It is this ironic
confinement which drives her to the brink of
madness, which in turn serves as the catalyst for
her own unconventional liberation.
Nadkarni describes the narrator’s reaction
to the wallpaper in conjunction to her reaction
to motherhood, noting the parallels between
her ill-feelings toward both: “What makes the
wallpaper so monstrous is that it is constantly
multiplying and breeding—it has a life of its
own. Interestingly,Gilman’scharacterizations
of the wallpaper index something more than a
general anxiety about procreation and prolifera-
tion” (Nadkarni 5) Nadkarni’s observation of the
narrator’s nervousness about procreation is all
the more poignant given that the narrator lives
in a nursery for much of her rest cure. Gilman’s
decision to board her narrator in a nursery rep-
resents a perpetual entrapment in domestic life,
even in the face of mental illness. The narrator
is powerless, trapped between two completely
different yet equally undesirable fates, nervous
illness or the monotony of domesticity. She does
not want to be ill anymore, as evidenced by her
abhorrence of the yellow wallpaper. Despite her
unhappiness, she feels that she can better deal
with her illness than she can with marriage
and motherhood, hence why she envisions the
creeping woman behind the subpattern. Though
she hates the wallpaper and is at first frightened
by the woman, she is nonetheless possessive of
it, mentioning over and over again how no one
should touch it but her (Gilman 264).
Bak asserts that the narrator projects her
own yearnings for individuality and autonomy

106 | Brooks
Nursery Versus Straightjacket
onto the woman she imagines is trapped behind
the wallpaper: “In objectifying herself through
this imaginary woman, the narrator can free
herself, if only in mind, from the external prison
her husband places her in” (44). The narrator is
trapped by her illness, yet her illness is the only
thing that truly belongs to her and is within
her control. She is a mother ironically confined
to a nursery by her condition, but should she
recover, she would still be confined to a nursery:
that of her own child. The narrator is trapped
in a paradox, unable to avoid one fate without
ultimately surrendering to the other. In the end
she chooses to be mad of her own volition rather
than be stripped of her autonomy and subdued
into a domestic role.
The conclusion of “The Yellow Wallpaper”
is open-ended and leaves much for interpreta-
tion regarding the narrator’s fate. Going mad
lends some agency to the narrator and allows
her to control a small aspect of her fate, but
only for a moment. Though we do not know
what happens to the narrator at the story’s
close, it can be assumed that she was institu-
tionalized by her husband and male doctors for
failing to get well according to their standards.
The narratorexercisestemporaryagencyby
choosing her illness over traditional domesticity,
but she is not truly free. The very act of being
ill confines her to the will of the patriarchy, as
male authority figures decide how to cure her,
they set the standards for wellness, and they can
decide whether or not she is fit to participate in
life. Gilman’s use of irony and contradiction in
the story serve to further illustrate the narrator’s
tenuous plight: her entrapment in the feminist
paradox of domesticity versus mental illness. The
narrator is prevented by her husband and male
doctors from doing anything of substance, and
this treatment gradually drives her further into
obsession with the yellow wallpaper and into the
grip of her illness, the only thing she that she
feels she has ownership over. The narrator con-
tradicts herself in the way that she writes about
the wallpaper, expressing horror at the color and
pattern yet writing about it with a descriptive
eloquence not previously seen in the other topics
she writes about; contradictorily, this suggests
not horror, but passion. Ironically, the narrator
is confined to a nursery as part of her treatment,
just as she would have been if she had been well
enough to take care of her own child. When
the narrator muses about whether she can stand
the wallpaper better than a child, the feminist
paradox is brought full circle. By the end of the
story, the reader is left to wonder whether or not
the narrator is successful in overcoming such a
confining paradox. The narrator rebels against
patriarchal constraints and seems to decide her
own fate by succumbing to her illness, but she
can never be truly free, because male-dominat-
ed tradition ultimately decides her fate, even
though she was able to gain a semblance of
control by rebelling against the rest cure and
choosing illness over domestic subservience.
Works Cited
Bak, John S. “Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Fou-
cauldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins
Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Studies in
Short Fiction, no. 1, 1994, p. 39. EBSCOhost,
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lr&AN=edsgcl.15356232&site=eds-live&-
scope=site.
Heilmann, Ann. “Overwriting Decadence:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Oscar Wilde,
and the Feminization of Art in ‘The Yellow
Wallpaper’.” Short Story Criticism, vol. 62,
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and Redemption in ‘The Yellow Wallpa-
per’.” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 26, no. 4,
Fall89, pp. 521-530. EBSCOhost, libproxy.
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Nadkarni, Asha. “Reproducing Feminism in Jasmine
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man’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.” Isle: Interdisci-
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vol. 2, no. 2, 1996, pp. 25-44. EBSCOhost,

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per.” The Portable American Realism Reader.
Ed. James Nagel and Tom Quick. New York:
Penguin, 1997. 254-69. Print
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Dr. Chris Bell for telling me to
write and then rewrite. Thank you to Dr. Leigh
Dillard for telling me to put my work into the
world.