At first glance, we see the story as a woman married to a doctor and living in a colonial mansion which really doesn’t seem like the worst life to live. But the story also begins by talking about her health and how the male physicians in her life- particularly her husband- laugh at her and pass off her unwellness as “temporary nervous depression.” From the first page, it is already obvious that the woman struggles with her mental health. But then we discover that she is a prisoner of not only her own mental health, but also neglect from her husband/physician, and ultimately a room lined with horrifying yellow wallpaper in which she finds patterns and women trapped. While her husband belittles her mental health, she is clearly aware that he is wrong. (And when your wife is on a mental break, it definitely won’t drive her further into madness if you trap her in a room alone. What a good idea, that should definitely heal her). We find out that she recently gave birth which signals postpartum depression to modern health knowledge and standards.

Her descriptions of the wallpaper in the room she is confined to are bleak and dreadful (“repellent”, “revolting”, “unclean”). I found this pretty spooky but I was super intrigued to keep reading. Her claiming that the wallpaper is the worst color she’s ever seen, I think, signals her extreme discontent with her current situation, and the references to suicide support this idea. When she says “I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one” in the wallpaper, I’m not sure whether or not she is scared of them, envies them, or sympathizes with/for them. 

I had never read this before and I actually really enjoyed it. But this story wasn’t “just entertainment,” as Dr. Bezio points out that nothing is ever “just entertainment” in the podcast. I got into thinking what this story symbolizes or seeks to teach us. Definitely the need to take mental illness seriously, but I also think it had to do a lot with gender roles, female oppression, and feminism. After listening to the podcast, I was glad I interpreted part of it correctly.

The most interesting thing to me after reading the story and then listening to the podcast is the context Dr. Bezio put The Yellow Wallpaper in. The story hits on underlying themes about the oppression of women and the reality of mental health problems, and Gilman is advocating for women’s rights in writing this. It sounds good, but then when Dr. Bezio put the story in its context alongside the way Gilman (and others) aimed to advance the rights of white women at the expense of people of color, it puts the story and Gilman in a different light. I don’t think this takes away from her credibility or her advocacy for women’s rights and the work she did, but it does make you think how much you don’t know about certain things and what is kept hidden. And, in going back to our discussion about pop culture yesterday, these contexts matter and they determine how important or influential certain people and things are.

I also think it’s important to talk about the reader response theory, and the bonus question we must ask when we read closely, which is “why is this relevant to me?” This is something we should all consider when we read, hear, or see anything — we need to truly understand the importance it plays in our own life. Especially when it comes to feeling angry about something. If something upsets us, we of course have the right to feel upset, but in order to make that anger or sadness mean something, we must understand why it matters to us specifically. I find that a lot of the time people will perceive something they see/hear/read from the perspective of someone else, and although it is vital to put ourselves in others shoes, we should always make an effort to be fully aware about what those things mean to us specifically before understanding what it means to someone else. I think this is the best way to make change.

In the Podcast, Dr. Bezio discussed the idea that there is no such thing as “just entertainment”. By this, she meant that all forms of entertainment, whether it be books, movies, music, art, etc. have some sort of message that it is trying to convey, and it does this through how it is drawn, the words used in writings, etc. I think this idea is interesting as it could be applied to our last conversation about the importance of pop culture. In the forms of entertainment as espoused by pop cultures, such as through its music, movies, writings, etc, there are messages, for as forms of entertainment, they carry messages. I think having The Yellow Wallpaper as an additional reading with this podcast is interesting. In this story, the aspect I found most interesting was the narrator’s constant return to describing the wallpaper and saying how it is ugly and peeling and disgusting. To me personally, I interpreted the wallpaper as being a reflection of the state of the woman, for in between her descriptions of the wallpaper, she describes how her husband has diagnosed her with “nervousness”, and the acts of him to dismiss her potential illness and instead take her to the house and spend time there. It is in this reflection that I see the wallpaper as like the woman; both are starting to wither away, neither is being helped, and instead of being ignored and left alone to themselves. Thus, in the entertainment of this writing in describing the wallpaper and telling the story, the author creates the message of the dismissal of woman, and in the case of this woman, the falling apart of herself. This story shows how descriptions, which seem on the surface simply for entertainment, carry a strong message in the words, with their meaning and descriptions.

For almost the entire time she is stuck in the room in The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator expresses a dislike of the wallpaper, but otherwise seems to be working to keep a positive attitude. Obviously, there are naive comments, like “He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.” (Stetson 652), or “John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious!” (Stetson 649). These thoughts implicitly criticize the treatment of women as helpless and below men during the 1800s. We see the isolation treatment through the woman’s eyes, which helps the audience understand the narratives that were being told to women at the time. Society saw women as second class, and wanted them to see themselves that way too. The woman describes herself as a “burden” (Stetson 649), and explains how she gets “unreasonably angry with John sometimes” (Stetson 648). She has been conditioned to believe in her husband’s authority, even though he clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

What strikes me about The Yellow Wallpaper is how fast the narration turns from upbeat and somewhat rational to the opposite. The woman decides that there is another woman in the walls, and she states it casually and moves on. The last couple of pages are devoted to this delusion. I think that her quick descent into madness is an effective shock tactic, as it illustrates how the isolation treatment is not only ineffective, but can only be maintained for so long until a person cracks. Twenty first century audiences can easily understand how keeping someone in a room and having them not think or do anything for days on end is ridiculous. I am not surprised, however, that this story was effective in opening the eyes of people at the time, who actually believed in and prescribed the treatment.

I read the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman before listening to the podcast because I wanted to see my first impressions of the story without context. After listening to the podcast, I was pleased to find that several of my first impressions were correct, though I read a much darker tone into the short story than I might have. From the very first two pages, I saw indicators that this was horror, with words like the horror of superstition, dead paper, ghostliness, artistic sin, suicide, plunge, and destroy. Since I picked up on these indicators of tone early, I was bracing myself for something horrible to happen and expected some form of death or suicide before the end of the story. There is no literal death at the close of the story, however, I think that there is an implied or at least figurative death. The narrator’s perspective shifts from watching the woman in the wallpaper to being a woman in the wallpaper. Combined with the references to suicide on pages 655 and 656, and the language of being freed and released, I think that she committed suicide as a way to escape her life, but that her soul or ghost remains in the wallpaper. The husband faints at the sight of her dead body or ghost. This reading is still open to feminist interpretation on the oppressive nature of marriage as an institution and the sphere of domesticity but is also far more nihilistic and darker.

In an article I read, professor Gail Marshall adds a racial element to the Yellow Wallpaper. We know with historical context that Charlotte Gilman was not necessarily racially conscious or making a point about colonialism or slavery, but that does not necessarily mean that this reading is invalid. She points to the colonial mansion leftover from a slaveholding America and the shackles in the nursery room as clues that lend themselves towards a reading of The Yellow Wallpaper as an interpretation of the violent enslaving of Black people, especially Black women, in the antebellum era. In combining the feminist and anti-racist readings of the Yellow Wallpaper, the short story would not seem misplaced in a collection of Southern Gothic tales, despite Gilman’s northern roots.

I remember reading this short story back in high school. I remember at the time reading the story and feeling quite disturbed. The slow mental deterioration of the women being trapped in the room was described so vividly it shows the extreme conditions she was subjugated to. To people who read this story when it was published, to them, it was just a psychological horror story. We now know that this story was a critique of the position of women in marriage.

From the beginning of the story, we can see the establishment of gender roles between the man and the woman. The man, a doctor, constantly proscribed treatments to his wife of how to cure her illness. In this case, he prescribed her to stay indoors and do absolutely nothing. The wife is shut down immediately when she voices her concerns about the treatment and argues its ineffectiveness. The belittlement of the man towards his wife forces the woman to journal her independent thoughts into a journal, which she ends up hiding from her husband. The progression of suppressing her independent thoughts and her physical confinments deteriorates her mental health even more and she ends up going insane. Overall, this seems like an exaggerated short story of the institution of marriage. But, abusive relationships in marriage are still prevalent. Divorce rates, although not solely caused by abusive relationships, are higher than that have either been. The lack of respect, historically between the man towards his wife, is a huge factor, not only in this short story but has played a huge impact on the institution of marriage as a whole.

At the beginning of the podcast, Dr. B stated that entertainment has never been just entertainment. This struck me because I knew that but have never fully admitted the phrase. I am someone who does say to my friends that entertainment is entertainment meaning that it is not always real. I am someone who will add some perspective of the fact that it is just used to add some excitement to our lives or distract us from our own problems for the moment but also do not provide much benefit to our lives. Now benefits or particular roles that literature and overall entertainment play is more than just entertainment. Dr. B mentions that there are lessons  that come from them whether they are complex or not varies, but there are lessons that are conveyed through narrative form or through some kind of median. The morals taught do not have to come from just one story. There can be multiple perspectives taken that convey the same moral or lesson.  It is interesting to think how we can learn so much from various literature and that I can learn the same lesson as someone else even if we read different stories as the root of the lesson remains the same. The literature I read may be different than what my children will read but that does not mean we will be learning completely different things.

As Dr. B started to discuss symbols, it made me think about how interpretations can change depending on the persons own understanding of a word or the symbol itself. As symbols are put together, the order matters. Order can change the whole meaning of the narrative whether it is intentional or not which makes a difference. I wonder how current literature could have shaped our world differently if the slightest words were flipped or changed. How could our lessons have changed? How different would out perspective of the world be?

I am thoroughly confused by Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s short story, of course, I understood what was going on in terms of Charlottes bed rest, but I did not understand what was going on with the paper. Was she going delusional because she was being forced to stay in bed or was there mold in the walls? I’m glad that Dr. Bezio told us that this short story affected at least one women’s life as an individual and that it affected her doctor’s prescription of such tactics. Regardless of understanding the story the first time I read I did find it interesting; I think if I went back and close read it, I would get a lot out of it. Even without a close reading of it, I found her writing to be very eloquent and full of particularly interesting adjectives. I also on a surface level found potential parallels between Charlotte Perkins Stetson growing up without a father and her relationship with her husband John. Many of these moments both reflected the absence of a father in her life as well as how husbands treated their wives as children, and how because she was troubled, she must be treated as a child. All of which deturbed me. I am intrigued by how this story preempts her leaving, of course, the “creeping” is a sign she wishes to do things she is not supposed to do when John cannot see her. But beyond that, the story does not (at least as far as I have read into it) indicate the desire to really leave her husband and even more so does not really show us a great connection between her and her child. But again, I did not close read this story and would surely get much more out of it if I did so. I do want to draw one more parallel to the last class before I wrap up this blog post. This short story shows a great deal of leadership as it had a profound effect on whether or not to use these “rest cures.”

The beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is really frustrating to read (most of it is frustrating to read as a woman, but I figured I’d start at the beginning). When Stetson first comes down with her “nerves” she writes off her own ability to do what is best for her and how she actually feels. She says that she disagrees with their ideas, “that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do [her] good,” but what is she to do (648)? Stetson is expected to blindly trust that her husband and brother know more about what she needs than she does. Furthermore, if she did not trust the men in her life and value their opinions she would feel “ungrateful not to value it more” (648). It is obvious that she, like many women throughout history as we know, was taught to stifle her own opinion even when, if not especially when, it came to her body.

The yellow wallpaper as a symbol for her disintegrating mental state is super interesting. Like everyone’s mental health, the wallpaper just hovered and watched over Stetson for weeks impeding on her life and her “rest”. Instead of being allowed to manage her mental health with people’s company, or her hobbies, or anything at all, Stetson was overcome by the complexity of her mental health. This story served as a warning to many females and doctors that the “rest-cure treatment” was not actually helpful at all. I think in today’s context this story would serve as a prime example of the importance of proactively taking care of your mental health and seeking the right kind of help. In a modern context, we no longer practice “rest-cures” on “nervous” women with extreme frequency, but we do still belittle women’s pain and experiences with health issues. “The Yellow Wallpaper” can still be a lesson to show that women really do know best when it comes to their health and the only outcome of doubting they know best is making matters worse for everyone– especially the women. 

I read the story before I listened to the podcast, and I assumed that Charlotte Perkins Gilman was using a fictional story of a woman being locked in a nursery to make a commentary on domesticity and a sense of being controlled by a mother’s societal role and expectations.  Although these things are true for the story, I was really surprised that Gilman was actually writing about her lived experience of being forced into solitude and a life of domesticity to “heal” from a mental illness. My initial analysis of the story aligns with Professor Bezio’s bonus step for close reading: I attached a new meaning onto Gilman’s writing that mattered and made sense to me. Reading this story from the context of 2021, when mental health is no longer treated as being crazy, especially for women, I was able to look at The Yellow Wallpaper through a different lens. However, as the podcast explained, in the context of the 19th century, women who read The Yelllow Wallpaper understood Gilman’s experience, and those in similar positions were able to use the lessons they got out of it to enhance their own lives. One woman who was in solitude for a medical condition even faked being crazy, like the woman in the story, to break free from her bed rest and, unsurprisingly, was able to live a normal life outside of her bondage.