Notes from the Abyss

The musings of geographer, journalist, and author David M. Lawrence

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Oppression of Women

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (Sept. 22, 2023) — “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (known at the time of publication as Charlotte Perkins Stetson) captures a time when the oppression of women was widely assumed to both natural and appropriate. But, as we see in the story, this allegedly natural and appropriate treatment exacted a devastating toll on women psychologically and physically.

The Yellow Wall Paper
The Yellow Wall Paper

At the time the story was written—and for decades to come (and, if some have their way, yet to come)—the highest station women could expect to achieve was to become a wife and mother. Women often had little choice over whom they could marry as their families. Their identity was often erased by legal fiat as they were forced to assume the legal identity of their husbands, as in Mrs. John Doe. Women couldn’t vote, in many cases they could not own property or have bank accounts in their own names.

The protagonist in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” clearly suffers from the suffocating environment in which she lives. She is likely suffering from postpartum depression—a malady known since ancient times but poorly understood and even more poorly treated. In her case, the accepted treatment—one recommended by her physician husband, John, and her own brother—another physician—was isolation and enforced rest. No mentally stimulating activity, such as her favorite, writing, was allowed.

“It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work,” she writes in her journal. “When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now.” (Stetson 1892, p. 649)

The men in her life insisted on enforcing the dogma regarding her treatment and likewise insisted on ignoring the evidence that it was not working. Their female accomplice, John’s sister Jennie, helps enforce the confinement and “convalescence” of the narrator.

“There comes John’s sister,” the protagonist writes. “Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing.

“She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!” (Stetson 1892, p. 650)

It is not difficult to draw a line from Jennie’s attitudes toward women’s self-empowerment to those of the practitioners of female genital mutilation today, which is largely perpetrated by women against those in their own families. It is, of course, done to please the men—as was the protagonist’s confinement. The terror and sense of betrayal felt at being harmed by one’s fellow oppressed can only be disheartening as it was in the protagonist’s case.

In the end, I believe the hopelessness she felt from being so vigorously “protected” by those who allegedly loved her drove her to madness. While most women so “protected” don’t deteriorate to such extremes, they still suffer, often greatly, from being denied the fullness of experiences life has to offer.

Editors Note: This piece was originally written for an American literature class at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and submitted on Sept. 22, 2023.

References

Stetson, Charlotte Perkins. 1892. “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” The New England Magazine 11 (5): 647-656. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/theliteratureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/digitalDocs/The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf.

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