A book that wholly represents how many of us felt during the Covid-19 pandemic is —The Yellow Wallpaper. The disturbing paranoia that haunted the walls of our houses in which we were all locked is still fresh in our minds. Like the protagonist I found myself feverish with delirium towards the end but oddly enough it was this feminist psychological classic that kept me sane.

First published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine, this 6000-word short story is a semi-autobiographical account of Gilman’s own experience with postpartum depression and the “rest cure” as suggested by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (the leading authority of women’s mental health at the time) who is also infamously mentioned in the story.

Synopsis

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is a collection of sporadic journal entries in the first-person perspective. It is narrated by an anonymous young woman whose physician husband, John, prescribes rest for her ‘temporary nervous depression’ following childbirth. The unnamed protagonist and her family spend the summer in a colonial mansion but she is confined to the upstairs nursery while the rest of the house is being renovated.

During her forced rest, she spends much time in this make-do bedroom, which is covered in vile yellow wallpaper. In curt sentences, her journal entries describe the wallpaper in such horrid detail that the reader can easily picture the lurid, garish colour and the damp smell that can only be described as “yellow” as well.

The narrator follows the wallpaper’s pattern with her eyes and as time passes, her paranoia increases. Soon she sees eyes in the wallpaper, then a hunched-over outline of a body until it becomes a “subdued, quiet” woman stuck behind the wallpaper. Classic to true horror, the narrator believes that this woman is haunting her until her psychosis goes so far that the narrator believes she is the woman from behind the wallpaper.

“I’ve got out at last… in spite of you… And I’ve pulled off most of the paper so you can’t put me back!”

Mental Health

This gritty, 19th-century gothic horror story explores the concurrent attitude towards women’s mental and physical health—particularly in relation to postpartum depression. The heroine is described to have a “slight hysterical tendency” before giving birth, which was exacerbated by motherhood.

Taken right from the pages of her own life, Gilman herself experienced a mental breakdown after the birth of her daughter. From her own experience as a patient of Silas Weir Mitchell and his harmful bed rest cure, Gilman wrote this story to protest the patriarchy’s professional and societal oppression of women.

Women’s rights advocates of the era believed the outbreak of mental insanity was the manifestation of their setbacks regarding their roles in male-dominated society. The Yellow Wallpaper was not written to “drive people crazy but to save people from being crazy and it worked.”

House of Horror

Its themes of isolation, madness and powerlessness have heralded ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ as an example of gothic literature whilst authors like H.P. Lovecraft has cited the short story as a work of the supernatural. The protagonist’s descent into madness likens itself to themes of psychological horror if it weren’t for the ghost-like creature hiding in the wallpaper.

The most horrifying note is how it hits so close to home to many women and how true the story is to Gilman’s own life and the lives of many other women who had to “creep” about unnoticed until it was too late.

“It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.”

The Future of Feminism

Many see this short story as a condemnation of the male-dominated healthcare system which dismissed women of the era as hysterical and unable to look after themselves. Men control the narrator’s life to the point of infantilism—even the child (who is never seen and rarely described) is cared for by a nanny. This emphasises the heroine’s isolation and descent into fantasy as she is imprisoned in the nursery further exemplifying her child-like helplessness and vulnerability.

The second-hand copy of this short story also contains an afterword by Elaine R. Hedges – an American feminist who pioneered women studies in the 1970s and advocated for a more diverse literature curriculum. She details the incredible effect Gilman and her work have had on the fight for equal rights – particularly in the medical industry. Unlike her heroine, Gilman fortunately transcended the same fate by writing this story and even went on to carve out a famous career as a feminist lecturer and writer who would even inspire the likes of Sylvia Plath (‘The Bell Jar’) and Alice Walker (‘The Colour Purple’).

Final Thoughts

My only wish with a story like this is that it was longer. I would read a 1000-page novel—if it were written with the same eloquence and attentiveness that Gilman has honed so spectacularly in this short story.

There are many unanswered questions and various interpretations of Gilman’s story and I encourage you to read it and find your own. This story will likely leave you feeling both unsettled and enlightened by its raw portrayal of women’s mental health struggles. It’s a mind-boggling story that sheds light on the struggles women faced historically, with lessons that can still resonate today.