Surrounding the mansion is plenty of fresh air, an aspect of her treatment. But the wife suspects an air about the house -- an air of an unwanted presence. Being isolated, the mansion is a perfect place for her confinement, another aspect of her treatment. Her husband has prescribed a version of the “rest cure”. His “rest cure” amounts to being idle. The wife is a writer with artistic sensibility. She is deeply offended by the yellow wallpaper and its “sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (p 677). She needs an outlet to express herself, through writing, but is prevented from doing so, as part of her “rest”. However, she still writes, covertly. John is a physician, an expert on physical illness. Being practical, he is not predisposed to be an expert on the artistic temperament. She disagrees with her treatment, but remains silent on that issue, displaying appropriate wifely behaviours.
To be appropriate, to exhibit “proper self-control” (p 676) is required as his wife in the nineteenth century. She is the property of her husband and must appear to submit to his will. John is, by modern standards, a control freak -- a well intentioned control freak. He controls her environment by choosing the mansion and the choice of their room. He controls her activity with a “schedule prescription”. “He hardly lets (her) stir without special direction” (p 676).
John devalues his wife by disregarding her feelings and desires. She wishes to stay in another room or to change the offending wallpaper, but John, as caretaker, feels there is “nothing worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (p 678). She wishes to go away to visit relatives, but he will not allow it. Her value as his wife is limited to what she provides for her husband – sex, a mother for his children and comfort. The wife can “not do her duty in any way” (p 677). She is a recent mother. Her sister-in-law is managing the house and a nanny is caring for the baby. She was supposed to be “his darling and his comfort” (p 681) and she “must take care of herself for his sake”
(p 681). Instead she is a source of worry and distress. She knows she has failed on all three counts and thus has less value to her husband.
This poor woman likely suffers from post partum depression. Her treatment offers little to help her be well again. In fact, the treatment, together with her social and environmental conditions restrict her and thus increase her obsession with the wallpaper to the point that she starts to hallucinate and imagines a “woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern”
(p 681). Sadly, the wife is motivated to be “well”, but has given up on negotiating a different scenario for herself – “what is one to do?” (p 676), she repeats. Instead, she chooses to defeat the only opponent she can fight, an imaginary one – the woman behind the wallpaper.
Works Cited
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. 6th ed. Eds. Cassill, R.V. and Bausch, Richard, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. p 675-687.
The “rest cure” was popularized by Silas Weir Mitchell, in the 19th century to manage nervous disorders.
