"Feminist Victory" in The Yellow Wallpaper
Ⓒ Mark Mantho
The ending of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper provides, at best, an
ambivalent answer to the question of whether or not the narrator achieves a "feminist victory" or
demonstrates the "impossibility of escaping society's concepts of proper gender roles." The story's
main protagonist undergoes a radical transformation which can be viewed as breaking free of
rigidly circumscribed gender behavior, but at the cost of her sanity. Hence she may have won a
particular battle. It seems to me, however, that ultimately she lost the war.
Greg Johnson, in his article "Gilman's Gothic Allegory: Rage And Redemption In 'The Yellow
Wallpaper,' " argues that the narrator's descent into madness is, in fact, merely a temporary stage
along the path toward feminist empowerment and self-actualization: "Gilman's heroine identifies
wholly with the raging 'madness' of the double she discovers locked within the tortured arabesques
of the wallpaper. Her experience should be finally be viewed not as a final catastrophe but as a
terrifying, necessary stage in her progress toward self-identity and personal achievement." (Johnson,
523) If the narrator does indeed "identify wholly" with the woman she believes is trapped inside the
wallpaper, why then does she write, very nearly at story's end, that "I've got a rope up here that
even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!" (692, italics
added) Though shortly she goes on to write that she will resist any attempt to "put me back" inside
the wallpaper, thereby identifying her struggle for freedom with that of the woman she imagines is
trying to escape from behind its pattern, it appears nonetheless that the narrator continues to have
conflicting feelings about exactly where she (or, by extension, any woman) belongs -- behind the
fixed bars of Victorian gender roles or in a more liberated world beyond them.
These conflicting feelings can be found in the way the narrator describes her predicament.
She writes that "personally I disagree with (John's) methods (of treatment). I believe work and
congenial company would do me good." (680) Yet she essentially accepts John's diagnosis, or is at
least unable to assert her own reservations about it as she goes on to write, "when one's husband is a
physician and of high standing, what can one do?" Throughout the story she consistently displays
deference to the patriarchal system represented by husband John. When he ridicules her desire to
leave the house, she meekly accepts his opinion that doing so would be a waste of money. When he
refers to her as "little girl" or remarks that she's being "silly," the narrator voices no objections
whatsoever. When, on several occasions, the narrator attempts to explain how she feels and is
ignored, she never demands to be heard. Such incidents suggest that the narrator does not possess
an incipient feminist consciousness that eventually "wins out" in the story's final scene. They
suggest instead that from start to finish, the narrator buys into the dominant paradigm of
patriarchy.
Johnson equates the narrator's initial discovery of the subpattern which seems to contain a
woman's form with her "inchoate, slowly emerging selfhood" (Johnson, 524) and contends that the
point at which she complains that "the effort (of writing) is getting to be greater than the relief"
actually signals a transistion "from conscious struggle against the daylight world to her immersion
in the nocturnal world of the unconscious -- or, in other terms, from idle fancy to empowering
imagination." (Johnson, 525)
It's true that as the story progresses Gilman's protagonist becomes increasingly focused on
indulging her imaginative tendencies (while simultaneously losing touch with reality), though it is
difficult to see how this practice leads to eventual empowerment, given the way The Yellow
Wallpaper ends. As the story concludes, the narrator's imagination has not produced a coherent
feminist alternative to John's rationalistic worldview. Rather, the narrator's allows her imagination
to run riot over her reason -- which is not, I would argue, a fundamentally "male" attribute -- and
becomes lost inside the vortex of her own madness. She imagines that there is a woman trying to
escape from behind the wallpaper, and determines to help her, then confuses herself with the
woman in the wallpaper ("I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night,
and that is hard!") and then writes of her intent to capture the woman. Instead of using her
imagination to construct a sane and sensible feminist vision of life, the narrator becomes
overwhelmed and confused by it.
Similarly, Johnson asserts that it is the narrator's inscription of her own "text" upon the
wallpaper (i.e. her projection of the woman attempting to escape the subpattern of bars, etc.) which
represents the character's triumph, "and not the ghastly, merely rhetorical gloating of the final
scene." (Johnson, 527) "The more confused she becomes," he declares, "the clearer her vision of an
emerging subtext (becomes)." (Johnson, 529) This new vision and emerging subtext is a rejection of
patriarchy and will, evidently, lead to a better and more "true" feminist approach to life. Yet, once
again, it is difficult to understand how the narrator's profound confusion of reality and fantasy leads
to anything other than her own self-destruction. She may see a woman trying to escape from behind
the wallpaper's pattern, or believe that she is actually the woman, but it does not follow that the
narrator also believes she has created a new text through which she can view her cultural
surroundings. Nor does it follow that any text has been created at all, regardless of what the
narrator (or critic Johnson) believes. All that can be said with authority is that as The Yellow
Wallpaper ends, the narrator has lost her mind. Her "new vision," it seems, can scarcely be called a
triumph.
Turning at last to the final scene of the story, Johnson strains his argument past the point of
credulity by reminding readers that "as we witness the narrator creeping along the floor, we might
recall once again that her bedroom is actually a nursery. The fact that she is crawling on all fours -as opposed to lying still and docile under her husband's 'rest cure' -- suggests not only temporary
derangement but also a frantic, insistent growth into a new stage of being. From the helpless infant,
supine on her immovable bed, she has become a crawling, 'creeping' child, insistent upon her own
needs and explorations." (Johnson, 529) Johnson argues plausibly enough that the narrator has
undergone a radical process of liberation, from repressed adult female to, essentially, free-roaming,
uninhibited child. What he fails to highlight is that this metamorphosis concludes not with the selfactualization of an emancipated adult woman -- presumably the measure by which it would be
adjudged a success -- but rather in her complete psychological disintegration. If another section
depicting the narrator's eventual triumph over both patriarchy and the "liberating madness" it
brought about was somehow magically tacked onto the ending of The Yellow Wallpaper, I could see
Johnson's point. As it is, we are left with the ending Charlotte Gilman actually furnishes, and on
that basis the maxim Johnson places between the title and text of his article -- "Much Madness is
divinest Sense -- To a discerning Eye" -- seems a dubious proposition indeed.
In her article "Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper': A Symptomatic Reading,"
critic Lisa Kasmer deconstructs what she terms the "revisionary reading" of the story's ending by
feminist critics and echoes many of my own thoughts regarding revisionist critical readings of The
Yellow Wallpaper. Such critics, Kasmer observes, seek to make a case for the narrator's "feminist
victory" by pointing out that through using her imagination (to attribute a particular smell or nonlinear pattern to the wallpaper, for instance), the main character succeeds in creating a nonpatriarchal "discourse" -- a new, distinctly female way of viewing and relating to the world. Yet "this
assessment fails," writes Kasmer, "since it becomes clear within the story that the narrator is
trapped in patriarchal discourse. She, therefore, cannot consciously understand her situation; her
madness can only be a parodic form of liberation." (Kasmer, 3, italics added) I completely agree with
this appraisal of the narrator's behavior and state of mind. As noted earlier, the narrator accepts the
dictates of patriarchal discourse in her dealings with John, by allowing him to get away with lines
like "bless her little heart!" or ignoring her attempts at honest communication. She cannot break
free of the dominant male paradigm and, on an intellectual level, create a feminine discourse of her
own. Instead she goes mad. Thus, at the end of the story, her "creeping" over John's body does not
represent a feminist victory. Her behavior is that of a lunatic who remains entrapped within the
patriarchal system, enacting a kind of parodic, "symbolic victory" that is meaningless precisely
because she never truly sought, understood, or found that victory while still sane. If readers wish
further proof that the narrator remains a victim of patriarchal Victorian society, all they have to do
is imagine the fate that will likely befall her after this episode: John revives, Jennie calls the cops,
and our feminist heroine is carted off to the nut house.
Kasmer also points to the analysis of another critic (Janice Haney-Peritz), who feels that
since the narrator is unconsciously acting out her husband's desires, her attempt to break free of the
"patriarchal discourse" (symbolized by husband John's role as physician/father/authority figure and
sister-in-law Jennie's "perfect housekeeper" routine) is doomed. The entire story, then, is simply a
repetition of this truth, and Kasmer quotes Haney-Peritz as asserting that "in reading The Yellow
Wallpaper, we are reading the story of John's demands and desires, rather than something
distinctively female. If so, then the assurance that the identification [of the feminine in the text] as
liberating becomes highly problematic...." (Kasmer, 4)
Kasmer defines feminine discourse as "those moments in the text that disrupt the male
desire." Using this criteria, Kasmer discovers evidence that the narrator receives at least a glimpse
of a new kind of (feminine) discourse. The critic notes that after the narrator is prevented for the last
time from expressing doubts as to whether her health is improving under the "rest cure" regimen,
she finally turns to the wallpaper. "It is through the wallpaper that (the narrator) attempts to
understand her situation," writes Kasmer. By describing the wallpaper in seemingly "nonsensical,"
"logic-free" language ("... and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they
suddenly commit suicide -- plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of
contradictions") the narrator begins to define her own subjective discourse, one that is distinct from
the objective-logical (i.e. "phalocentric") discourse exemplified by John and Jennie. Kasmer does not
mention one salient fact about the narrator's attempt to "understand" the wallpaper; initially, at
least, she tries to analyze it using the rationalistic criteria of masculine discourse: "the outside
pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an
interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions -- why, that is
something like it." (687) Yet this passage supports the argument that the narrator is unwittingly
trapped within, and acquiescent to, the parameters of masculine discourse -- a discourse she never
escapes.
Kasmer argues that when the narrator moves from simply writing about the wallpaper to
actually touching it, "the bodily contact with the wallpaper symbolizes the narrator's inscribing the
wallpaper with her desire by allowing her to surpass the words of her husband and release her
desire directly." (Kasmer, 9) Kasmer writes that most important, as the narrator becomes
increasingly obsessed with the wallpaper and what it "means," she utilizes her imagination and way
with words to express long-dormant but volcanic emotions such as violence, resentment, and what
might be called "existential rage." Describing the wallpaper, the main character uses words like
"irritate," "provoke," "suicide," "destroy," "hideous," "infuriating," and "torturing." Kasmer states
that these words, along with increasingly bizarre descriptions of a female figure frantically seeking
to escape from behind the pattern of the wallpaper, mirror the narrator's escalating sense of
desperation relative to her relationship with John, and represent the birth of a feminine discourse -a discourse that could conceivably lead to an alternative worldview and the "feminine victory" some
critics wish to read into The Yellow Wallpaper.
The contention that by actually touching the wallpaper, the narrator bypasses masculine
discourse and finds another way to understand and evaluate it is an intriguing point, but must be
weighed against the knowledge that the narrator's use of her imaginative powers eventually leads to
her demise (confusing herself with the woman she sees in the wallpaper, then expressing a desire to
capture her, etc.). And too, though the narrator may use her imaginative descriptions of the
wallpaper to express buried feelings of rage and bitterness toward John in her writing, she never
confronts him verbally with those words. Her employment of them on paper is useful to a sense of
personal growth, but only up to a point.
It is debatable whether the narrator ever consciously identifies herself with the "woman
stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern." She may find a symbolic representation of
her situation and recognize this intuitively, but again, she cannot make the conscious, psychological
connections which could potentially free her. As Kasmer correctly indicates, as soon as the narrator
grasps the meaning of this symbolism, "she begins to repress any connection of this symbol to
herself. Instead" -- and here is Kasmer's crucial point -- "the narrator begins to see the symbols not
as abstractions, but as reality (italics added). Therefore, she shifts from the symbolic realm to what
(Jacques) Lacan calls the imaginary. She begins to view the woman behind the wallpaper as real
(e.g. "I pulled [the wallpaper] and she shook, she shook and I pulled" [691] ).... The narrator has
regressed to the position of a child...." (Kasmer, 12)
If we recall the quote from critic Janet Haney-Peritz included in Kasmer's article, in which
Haney-Peritz contends that throughout The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator merely responds to the
beliefs and attitudes of her oppressively patronizing husband -- rather than inaugurating a new,
liberating form of female discourse -- then we can see her reversion to childlike status as another
confirmation of the power patriarchy possesses over her. Critic Johnson asserts that this devolution
to childhood represents the narrator's new-found insistence on undertaking "explorations" and
meeting her needs. Yet if this is so, there is no assurance that the narrator's demands will ever be
actualized, given the society she lives in. More to the point, since the narrator is unable to
incorporate the sense of freedom she feels from acting like a child into a larger, more thoughtfully
considered rebuttal to patriarchy, and is probably unaware of her regression to begin with, it is
unlikely in the extreme that she will ever make practical use of the experience.
Unable to fully articulate a mode of thought that steps outside of, and moves beyond, the
either/or logic of the phalocentric worldview, the narrator fails to distinguish between what is real
what is not, and ignores a golden opportunity to view the images she detects in the wallpaper as
symbolic abstractions that can be profitably applied toward the establishment of a sane and
workable "feminine discourse": "Upon entering the imaginary realm and leaving the symbolic realm
completely," writes Kasmer, "the narrator believes that the woman behind the wallpaper is literally
trapped (italics added), and she rips down the paper. In tearing down the paper, she has destroyed
her only access to symbol, through which she can consciously understand her own thoughts (italics
added). Once she has destroyed this access, she takes on the symbols of her oppression with the only
medium she has left -- her body." (Kasmer, 12) It may not have been necessary for the narrator to
avoid tearing down the wallpaper in order to maintain her access to the symbolic realm,
differentiate between it and the "real" world, and extract a valuable metaphor (i.e. a woman
imprisoned behind the wallpaper's pattern) that could be used toward the creation of a genuine
feminine discourse. What's important is that the idea of doing any of these things simply doesn't
occur to the narrator, for the obvious reason that by this stage in the story, she's mad as a hatter.
Hence, Kasmer argues -- and I heartily concur -- that contrary to revisionist feminist
readings of the final scene, the narrator does not triumph over her husband or the system of
patriarchy. Rather, she "loses the ability to communicate and surmount her situation. In effect, the
final image of her is that of (a) creeping child, having to move over the husband who has fainted in
her path." (Kasmer, 12) Had she been able to employ a more symbolic reading of the wallpaper's
meaning -- whether through continued writing on the motif or by finding a way to ease it into
conversation (a formidable task, I admit) -- it's possible that the narrator might have effected
positive changes in her relationship with John, and, perhaps, with the outside world as well. At the
very least she would have had a symbolic understanding of her circumstances, a way to put them in
perspective and communicate her feelings. She may have finally stood up to John, or inspired
female readers to recognize and then subvert the patriarchal system.
Of course, we'll never know, since the narrator was plainly incapable of separating fantasy
from reality. The end of the story makes this abundantly clear, at least as I read it. There seems,
therefore, precious little evidence to support the claim that the final scene of The Yellow Wallpaper
amounts to anything resembling a clear-cut "feminist victory." If revisionist critics want to call the
transformation the narrator goes through a victory, even a limited, symbolic victory, they must
reconcile this contention with the fact that she ultimately succumbs to insanity. Gilman's short story
is a feminist manifesto; yet it's strength derives not from any supposed victory or growth achieved by
the narrator, but rather from the inescapable conclusion that it is the system of patriarchy itself
which has driven her to madness. This to me is the crucial point of the story, and the reason why it
is such a wonderfully subversive piece of literature. What better way to indict the seemingly benign
and "logical" system of patriarchy than by illustrating how it eventually destroys not only the
narrator's self-respect and ability to communicate but her very sanity as well? Read this way, The
Yellow Wallpaper is a chilling critique of the patriarchal system, and one that contains a powerfully
feminist point of view -- not on the surface, in the narrator's words, but rather behind the pattern,
where the author's voice is loud and clear.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed.
R.V. Cassill. 5th ed. Norton. 1995. 679-693.
Johnson, Greg. "Gilman's Gothic Allegory: Rage And Redemption In 'The Yellow Wallpaper.' "
Studies In Short Fiction. 26 (1989) 521-30.
Kasmer, Lisa. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper': A Symptomatic Reading."
Literature In Psychology. 36 (1990) 1-15.