Victim and Perpetrator
The Yellow Wallpaper is a crazy tale of losing one's mind. What if the person who made the main character loose her mind,was the main character? For the sake of brevity and the part in the end, where the author possibly mentions the main characters name, I will call the main character Jane.
John, Jane’s husband, is a doctor. The story does not say what kind of doctor he is, but he says his wife is not sick. Right in the beginning Jane says, “…he does not believe I am sick.” (p1) Medical practice of the mind is tricky, but John is not the only one who feels this way. Jane’s brother who is also a doctor thinks that Jane is not ill. Perhaps these men are too close to the patient to be objective or perhaps they both specialize in skin care. Still, we have the account of two people who are close to Jane who claim that she is not ill, both know Jane intimately and say that she is fine. Jane knows this and it must be a lot to deal with.
Jane wants the house to be haunted and she states just that. It is made clear that John does not believe in ghosts, Jane says, “John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience in Faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt or put down in figures.” (p1) Why would there be a need to have a haunted house. This is Jane projecting her beliefs onto an inanimate object. It is like when she was young and used to pretend her furniture was alive. It is not hard to imagine a jump from living furniture to a wallpaper that is possibly possessed.
Jane is bored. If stuck in a room for days, weeks, months on end with nothing to aid in entertainment a person will create their own entertainment. Her responsibilities have been passed on to the maid, her husband has told her to do nothing and she wants to please him. Acting as if there is something more to the wallpaper is just like what Jane did when she was a child by pretending inanimate objects were alive. The whole short story is a writing by Jane possibly, at least the beginning. Jane comments on her writing and how it tires her. As the reader goes on, Jane's entries in the diary become more spread out. As time goes on, Jane becomes further engrossed in the wallpaper using it as her main source of entertainment. The focus on the wallpaper without any other means of distraction is what slowly causes Jane's psyche to fracture. At any time she could have stopped the torture by simply getting out of that room.
The idea of a room growing on you or an idea growing in you is a mainstay for horror. Shirley Jackson in the Haunting of Hill House uses it, as does Stephen King in various works; my list could go on. Humans feel the need to be in control and we have a way of thinking we till are even when it is apparent from the outside we are not. Jane was stuck the moment she saw something in the wallpaper. She had to stay in that room to solve the puzzle of who was on the other side, or where the wallpaper patterns went. If her husband or Marry had pulled Jane out earlier Jane would not have strayed so far off the path of sanity.
Jane has a lot of pressure on her to get “better.” “John said we came here here solely on my account.”(p2) The whole thing, the renting of an estate, a quarter of year, a move, a maid and a lot of other changes are solely focused around Jane. There is a sense of excitement that comes with change, they is a lot to deal with especially knowing it was done for one reason, for Jane to get better. As the deadline to get better approaches Jane must have been more and more anxious trying to display a way to her husband that she is better. This adds to her mental issue that at the beginning wasn't really real.
This subtle or not so subtle pressure on Jane to get better could lead her to be an untrustworthy narrator. Oh yes, it has been said, Jane could be hiding a true mental illness. The whole time she disagrees with what her husband assesses to be her problem. Perhaps that Jane knows that she has a problem, but doesn't know how to speak out about it. This makes her culpable at the same time it makes her a victim.
The theme of Jane being a victim of her own inability to speak out or represent herself is very present in the first half of the book. As the the end gets closer and closer she loses the ability to speak up for her self if even meekly. Many of times it is said that it was her decision to stay in the room. She asks again to leave with only three weeks left, but her husband shoots the idea down. If She were firm about the decision he would have taken her away. Again shows that she wants to leave, but by not avocation for herself she gets stuck there for the remainder. John gives her the choice kind of. John will say that he wants Jane to be happy and she can have anything or any room, but when Jane speaks up John pressures her into the attic room. Even when John is gone Jane does not leave the room to sleep in another. It is as if she feels John will not be pleased if she subverts him. This leads to Jane staying in the room just as firmly as if she were locked in.
Again Jane tells her husband she wants to change something, this time it is the wallpaper and he seems to placate her by saying he would do anything for her, but that is just too costly. Again the reader was not there, John may have said “sure thing” and Jane was like “no, I changed my mind.” It is a pattern that the story follows, minor complaint, then pacification or justification to stay. Advocating for herself would have changed Jane's eventual outcome.
There are times when Jane does have entertainment. The two renting the estate, John and Jane, put on parties. This is just a little release from the room. The parties could even be doing more damage than good for Jane's psyche. There is a lot of preparation and anticipation, but Jane does not get the release of preparing physically. That is what the maid is for. All Jane gets to do is attend the party and go back to her room. The parties themselves must be a huge drain. After sitting for weeks alone it must be hard to move to a very social scene and then back to nothing. Without practice people forget how to act socially. Without cues from others people do not act in a way that is socially acceptable. This could also help to account for Jane's break with reality. Without the much needed socialization she forgot how to act and gives in to her inner desire. As time goes on she has very few places to focus that desire, one can only please themselves so much. Therefor her focus goes to an exterior location, the wallpaper.
The wallpaper itself could be seen as a mirror in this short story. Jane says she thinks there is someone trapped on the other side of the wallpaper. Jane herself is trapped on one side of the wallpaper, why not the other side. We all hear things when we are alone, the wind, the house settling and so on, but without a stable facet in reality our imagination could run rampant. That is the base for some of the best horror stories, and Jane is is such a predicament. The thing that makes stories like this even scarier is when there is an option to leave, when there is a clear exit, but it is not taken. We all have yelled at teens in horror movies to “just leave”, or “don't do it.” The idea of someone choosing a bad path even though they have been offered redemption makes for a better and more chilling story.
In the end Jane does “get out at last.” (p15) She has torn down the wallpaper and finally emerged. This is her big mental break, what she has been working up to the whole story. This is the time she actually speaks to John so he listens by getting the key from under a leaf. Then Jane does something so shocking that John faints. Perhaps it it is the sight of her “creeping” around the room that makes John faint, but it may a different but equally sinister ending.
What if Jane hung herself? She says “But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope.” (p14) It is possibly that she crafted and hid a rope. This is not the only mention or hint of suicide, Jane mentions the word at least two other times in the story. Then after her break with reality she found a way to hang herself. In this way her death would be a kind of freedom. With the idea of suicide in mind, it still leaves Jane as the main offender in her life.
Jane is a victim and it makes the reader feel sympathy for her. The story is not unheard even today. Not with the locking people up in a room, but someone not being able to represent clearly what their needs are. Jane does try to get her husband to listen but doesn't make him do so until the end when she proves in a big way that the room was not up to par. This still makes Jane the victim of her own device.
Citations
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Other Stories. Dover Publications, 1997.