Charlotte Perkins Gilman 18601935 and The Yellow Wallpaper

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) and The
Yellow Wallpaper
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I. Her life

• born in Hartford, Conn.,1860
• her father deserting the family, which thereafter
  lived in frequent movement and in near poverty
• studying two years at Rhode Island School of
  Design,1878-80
• marrying Charles Stetson, 1884
• bearing her first daughter and suffering from
  postpartum depression, 1885
• beginning treatment with Dr. Weir Mitchell, 1886
• separating from Stetson and coming to California,
  1888
• getting divorced with Stetson, 1894
• marrying George Houghton Gilman and beginning to
  live in NY, 1900
• moving from NY to Norwich, Conn., 1922
• diagnosed with breast cancer, 1932
• moving to California and living with her daughter
  after Georges death, 1934
• taking her own life, 1935

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II. Her major works

• The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892
• Women and Economics, 1898
• Concerning the Children, 1900
• The Home, 1904
• Human Work, 1904
• Man-made World, 1911
• Herland, 1915
• His Religion and Hers, 1923

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III. The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
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The inspiration

• Charlottes postpartum depression
• the rest cure prescribed by Dr. Mitchell
• from confinement to near insanity

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Comments

• The Yellow Wallpaper is a rich and intensive
  feminist analysis of the
• norms of a patriarchal culture.
• The story is a superb dramatization and
  relentless indictment of the oppressions imposed
  on women by a patriarchal culture.
• The Yellow Wallpaper is a presentation of how
  a woman undergoes mental deterioration and
  finally loses her reason in the course of a rest
  cure, prescribed for her depression.
• Feminists now see the story as an unapologetic
  protest against societys subjugation of women
  and praise its thematic depth.

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• IV. Whos behind the Bars?A Deconstructive
  Reading of The Yellow Wallpaper

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• Introduction
• 1. Sanity and Insanity
• 2. Freedom and Bondage
• 3. Male and Female
• Conclusion

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• Introduction
• One of Jacques Derridas major
  strategies in invalidating logocentrism is to
  subvert the numerous binary oppositionslike
  truth/error, speech/ writing, and
  male/femalewhich are essential structural
  elements in logocentric language. Such
  oppositions constitute a tacit hierarchy, in
  which the first term functions as privileged and
  superior and the second term as derivative and
  inferior. By subverting this hierarchy, Derrida
  refutes what he calls an ultimate referenta
  self-certifying and self-sufficient ground,
  available to us totally outside the play of
  language itself, that is directly present to our
  awareness and centers the structure of the
  linguistic system, and as a result suffices to
  guarantee the coherence and determinate meanings
  of any spoken and written utterance within that
  system.

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• Thesis statement
• The Yellow Wallpaper, by a play of
  internal counter-forces, disseminates into a
  range of self-conflicting significations and its
  meaning is not so determinate as to justify an
  unequivocal feminist reading.

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• 1. Sanity and Insanity
• 1) The narrator may be insane in the first
  place
• A. She is not able to know her sickness
• B. She feels the old mansion haunted and
  hateful
• C. She begins to see illusions from the very
  start.
• 2) The narrator may remain sane throughout
• A. She keeps her diaries in neat order
• B. Her acts on the last day are well planned
  and strategic
• Conclusion for Part 1 the distinction between
  the narrators sanity and insanity is not so
  clear as most readings have tried to reveal.

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• 2. Freedom and Bondage
• 1) The story dramatizes the theme of women being
  suppressed and struggling for freedom
• A. The narrator sees underneath the
  wallpaper a woman behind bars
• B. She sets the woman free by stripping off
  the wallpaper.
• 2) The story is not a celebration of womens
  liberation
• A. The narrator enjoys considerable freedom
  at first
• B. She is not really free ultimately.
• Conclusion for Part 2 Freedom and bondage are
  relative and intertwined in the story, there
  being no marked boundaries between them.

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• 3. Male and Female
• 1) Gender differences give rise to the tension
  between the couple
• A. John is a physician, works in town, and
  occasionally assumes supremacy over his wife
• B. The narrator has to stay at home and
  accept the rest cure.
• 2) Gender roles are not fixedly delineated and
  allow of change
• A. Jennie performs Johns function in his
  absence
• B. John behaves as a woman by fainting and
  collapsing onto the floor.
• Conclusion for Part 3 The frontier between
  genders is not easy to pin down and it may be
  transgressed.

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• Conclusion
• The warring forces of signification
  within The Yellow Wallpaper make almost
  impossible a convenient and correct reading of
  it rather, it is capable of various
  interpretations. The texts treatment of the
  three pairs of binary oppositions may suggest,
  among others, that the very demarcation between
  sanity and insanity is arbitrary and all humans
  are sane and insane at once, that freedom and
  bondage are inseparable and absolute freedom is
  unavailable to mankind, and that gender tensions
  are not so difficult to ease and erase as those
  between people at large. Viewed in this respect,
  the story is more of a presentation of humanitys
  dilemma than a feminist one and the woman the
  narrator sees behind the bars may as well be any
  other human being.