Concept Of Haunted House In The Yellow Wallpaper

How gender roles affect the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Gender roles and social constructs are often detrimental and constricting to people or their personalities. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses a house and things within it, such as barred windows, the yellow wallpaper, and a shadow, along with the narrator’s views of the house symbolize the adverse effects women feel from gender roles. Just like the narrator, some women will be discouraged from resisting their urges to escape the stereotypes driven by society. Through the use of a character who has been restricted to societal roles, the setting in which the narrator is forced to reside in, and the symbolism of the woman trapped inside the wallpaper, Gilman expresses the oppression of women during the 1800s. The story portrays a significant effect of the gender roles that were faced by the narrator to the story.

John, the husband, and the narrator live in a colonial mansion, where she describes as a haunted house. In that house, the loving couple, John and her wife, the narrator, has no equal power, or freedom. Her husband does not respect her, and somehow, she accepts that as what a woman must expect in her marriage, “John laughs at me, of course” (Gilman p.1). John is a respected physician and possesses full liberty and authority towards decision making in their marriage. The narrator is not allowed to make decisions for herself, and she must follow what her husband deems right. John makes all decisions for his wife, and he does not involve her on any matters related to her. This leaves the wife with no option rather accept any decision, some of them being unfavourable to her as a woman. The wife stays in a haunted house, and she feels that her female gender roles are rejected. The reason behind this is the fact that John assumes things as being irrational and imaginative. She feels imprisoned in her undesirable nursery room with “the windows are barred” (Gilman p.2). She was like a little bird living in that ugly cage, being cared for, and has no control over her life. In this way, by accepting the gender roles of being a housewife, the narrator gets no say to her life, and she is treated like a person with no personal control life matters.

The fact that the narrator is kept in that room and forbade to go outside by her husband angers her. It is just like in her marriage, she has no power to make a decision, and she cannot escape from. She describes the wallpaper in the room and her feelings towards it by saying that with the everlastingness and impertinence of the manner, she gets angry easily (Gilman p.4). The wallpaper seems insignificant at first glance, but when looking at it more closely, the wallpaper is like the image for her marriage dull but irritating. She spends her countless time in that room to study the incomprehensible pattern in the wallpaper. “I start, we’ll say at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of conclusion” (Gilman p.5). Psychological instability, pressure, and no one share, made her condition worse. Her mind collapsed, and negative thought-forms. She starts to picture a lady in the pattern creeping furtively around, a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.

The narrator also goes as far as to state, “she is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession” (Gilman p.4). It is clear that the narrator is not only suffocated by her illness, but by her role as a woman in a man’s society. John himself is affected by this. Losing his wife to absolute insanity strips away his strong, manly mental state and leaves him shocked to unconscious on the floor. The room where the narrator and her husband reside in a peculiar one, packed with symbolism regarding the narrator’s oppressed character. “It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls” (Gilman p.2). This caged environment directly imitates the narrator’s caged life in which she has no control over, but it is also a continual reminder of children, the original reasoning behind her mental illness.

If the narrator’s marriage with John is the wallpaper, then that creepy woman is like a symbol for her mind, instability, trying to escape, and just waiting to rebel; “the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman p.7). She wants to be free of herself, to escape from her current marriage, from the pattern that married women suffer in their marriage. The narrator thought that those are just her desires that she would probably never be able to achieve, she would have to continue to live like that, in the shadow of her husband, and has no right to decide anything for herself. With the woman in the wallpaper, the narrator sinks deeper into her obsession. But then she finally gives way to madness, locking herself in her room and ripping off the paper (Gilman p.10). By showing her desire to freedom, the narrator, however, encounters more in house locking from her husband. In this case, the women are considered to remain in-house, with the only men being the gender to undertake any other roles outside. In the end, the narrator shows more mental disorders and other posttraumatic disorders from spending uncountable hours trapped in a room.

The relationship between genders in the nineteenth century was where women were raised to be men’s subordinates, not to question their word and go by their authority. This feature is exploited so very subtly. All characters conform to their roles without trouble except our main character, and her undoing was brought upon because of it. The symbolism of women being caged by an unjust society is shown through the use of a setting that seems fine at first glance but becomes toxic once looking at the details. The woman trapped in the wallpaper speaks to all women trapped in a patriarchal society. Still, it could also be said that the lack of the narrator’s name is a symbol for women as a whole instead of one individual in a story. Altogether, it is evident that Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the treacherous end result of an unequal society.

Work Cited

1. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Jan 1892. https://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman/The_Yellow_Wallpaper/T e_Yel low_Wallpaper_p1.html