How 'The Yellow Wallpaper' Changed Women's Medicine
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- At the turn of the twentieth century, the ‘New Woman’ was shaking things up. She wore trousers! She rode bicycles! She wrote proto-feminist short stories! She angered the patriarchy and championed women’s rights.
But just as women began to seek control of their lives and bodies, there arose a medical vogue for diagnosing women with nervous disorders that helped to keep them in line. Funny that!
In response to this form of oppression, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, a tale of madness, medical abuse, sisterhood, and power. Come with me as we discover how Perkins Gilman, and other women writing at the turn of the twentieth century, fought back against the patriarchal establishment and brought about change that we’re still feeling the repercussions of today.
Watch more about what people thought of TB 250 years ago here: • Why people thought tub...
Written, presented, and edited by Rosie Whitcombe
@books_ncats
Directed, produced, and edited by Matty Phillips
@ma_ps_
mphotos.uk
Bibliography
Cameron, S. Brooke, ‘George Egerton’s Keynotes: Food and Feminism at the Fin-de-Siècle', Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 46 (2018) pp. 309-30
Lee, Grand, Perkins Gilman, Showalter, & Woolson in Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle, ed. by Elaine Showalter (London: Virago Press, 1993)
Endometriosis in the UK: Time for Change www.endometrio...
‘From Nerves to Neuroses’, Science Museum: Objects and Stories [www.sciencemus...]
Hedges, Elaine R., ‘Afterword’, The Yellow Wallpaper (New York: The Feminist Press, 1973)
Hughes, Kathryn, ‘House of horror: the poisonous power of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’’, The Guardian www.theguardia...
Ledger, Sally, and Luckhurst, Roger, ‘The New Woman’, The Fin-de-Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History c. 1880-1900 (Oxford: OUP, 2013) p. 76
Patmore, Coventry, ‘Canto IX: Sahara, The Wife's Tragedy’, The Angel in the House (London: George Bell and Son, 1885)
Showalter, Elaine, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980 (London: Virago Press, 1987)
Something that always stuck with me about the room in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is that the narrator's husband tells her it's a nursery, but there are these eerie little details that say otherwise. The barred windows, the wallpaper being stripped off in patches (likely from being scratched at), the rings on the wall, and the bed being nailed down all indicate that the room used to be a sanatorium. Something about the fact that John lies to his wife about the room she's in (specifically lies that she's in a nursery) has always unsettled me. The sense of imprisonment we get from the narrator isn't metaphorical by any means. This is what makes the ending so tragic to me--the narrator is almost certainly not the first person to be locked away in that room and be worse off because of it.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is essentially Charlotte Perkins Gilman's worst case scenario--what she feared would have happened to her if her friend hadn't intervened during her own "rest cure." I think the thing that really gets me is how, if someone would have just listened to the narrator, the ending could have been avoided entirely.
Nurseries having bars on the windows was a Thing, to stop children from accidentally falling out. Fair point about the other stuff though.
@@hjt091 I get what you mean, I meant in addition to everything else. The bars on the windows weren't the only detail.
I think it being a nursery is another reference to a postnatal psychiatric disorder.
She tears off the wallpaper herself.
Nursery in a sense, because the narrator is totally infantilized by the men and society around her.
Regarding “creeping,” I recall that being the contemporary term for the form of infant locomotion that we now refer to as crawling. I wish I remembered which author I’d been reading that consistently used it that way.
Ok this is really fascinating
Thanks for that info! I’ve always wondered about that
funnily enough that's how i've always envisioned the narrator "creeping" around anyway, which just gives me the chills, so it's interesting that it might be accurate and not just me projecting my intense discomfort building throughout the story. so, cool!
This feels like a really good high school English class type a read, lots of room for interpretation of different theories, as well as a meaningful discussion about the themes that it covers.
10/10 cat❣️
& I’ve always found the yellow wallpaper story fascinating, a story of isolation, worsened by post partum & Scheele’s green arsenic wallpaper.
I remain disturbed by the confusion within the story, losing someone’s mind (seemingly), as well as the passivity to her distress-from her husband (closest confidante.)
it feels akin to Metamorphosis (the classic Kafka story) as in, stories of a similar vein-with very different perspectives/experiences.
anyway thanks!
Hmm yeah that would make an interesting comparison! Thanks for commenting ❤️🐱
I had thought Gilman was English for a long time. Her use of the word ‘Sister’ made me think of English nursing sisters, and the story could be just as easily about an English as an American woman.
Someone said it already but i also think the ending is happy or at least empowering. Sometimes our mind is the biggest prison we can have, and being locked away makes that even worse, so our only escape is to loose our mind, aka, be freed from it. Ive definetly experienced a desire to just go completely mad and insane in the past because of how freeing it would be to have 0 societal expectations or anything in mind when doing things!!
Your cat is so cuuuute! I love its little frowning mouth.
I love the distinguished kitty ❤️
a cat named mouse has cured my depression
I'm also noticing the language used to describe the wallpaper is incredibly active while her husband is forcing passivity on to her. It's an interesting contrast.
So true! Thanks for this - Rosie
@@books_ncats my pleasure! Love the channel!
I hadn’t noticed this, but you are absolutely right! What an interesting contrast
As Mosley was quoted at the beginning- "as grass grows around a stone"
She is showing that even though her husband tries to restrain her physically, he can't restrain her greatest power of all...her mind.
(TW: suicide)
It’s been some time since I read The Yellow Wallpaper, but I do remember the ending made me feel pretty sick and worried about what the protagonist (Jane?) might have done to herself and the possible reason of John’s fainting: a bit earlier she mentions having been able to hide a length of rope in her room, so I always believed what John finds when he opens the door is her… well, either hung, or in the process of doing it.
I loved the story nonetheless, but I wish I had interpreted its ending like you did, it would’ve left a much more positive aftertaste.
That's a really interesting interpretation, I can see why you read it in that way. I think I'm in the minority when it comes to perceiving it as oddly empowering! But surely this is one of the marks of a good short story - inviting numerous interpretations. Thank you for watching! - Rosie
It left me feeling uncomfortable when I read it, years ago, as well.
I figured he fainted because he found his wife crawling around the edge of the room talking nonsense, after doing everything he could to help her (by the standards of the day).
Unfortunately, my interpretation is dark like yours too.
I got exactly the same feeling, and also assumed that’s what he saw.
I remember our final project for my freshman English class in college was on The Yellow Wallpaper. I forget what the prompt was, but I remember writing about how our narrator is extremely unreliable because of several details that go unexplained or glossed over in the text. And one interesting thing I found is that the room was described as having windows all around. Now, the house is described as a colonial house, which I argued wasn't an American Colonial style home because it doesn't really fit the definition of having a single upper level that could have windows on all sides as was described. Also, even if it did, it wouldn't make sense to give her all that room if she's supposed to be confined- American Colonial manors are largely just rectangular prisms, a single floor would probably be about 100 feet wide.
Instead, I said that it was a Victorian style house, a remnant of colonists who sided with the British and still followed their trends. Romantic and old-fashioned in a country that was developing its own style. Now, if you look at the type of architecture for this style of house, the attic also likely wouldn't have the described types of windows. This is because a popular feature of Victorian houses was having a tall tower attached to the side and that would certainly block the view. But you know where it would make sense? If she were in that tower. Detached from the rest of the house, detached from the rest of the world, only able to look out and see the far reaches of the estate and know exactly how far any external escape is.
Oh damn. That's incredibly interesting, and some amazing analysis
I read somewhere that the woman’s decent into madness and possibly her death in this story was precipitated by the fact that during that period, cyanide was commonly used to create yellow (and green) colours for wallpaper.
Oh wow, I didn’t know that, I’ll have to look it up. Thanks! - Rosie
I think it's actually arsenic not cyanide. Scheele's Green is one of the specific colors that was created with it and the amount of things that they put it in is frankly terrifying.
@@books_ncatsI reread a section a few minutes ago as a refresher and she makes an emphasis of the sister touching the wallpaper and complaining that it's staining their clothes. Considering all the time the protagonist spends following the patter and seemingly close enough for it to rub off onto clothing it would play quiet well with the theory that it was unintentional poisoning.
A tangential add-on to this theory, but it's also mentioned several times that the wallpaper was pulled away by children. On top of that it was mentioned that the nursery where she stays was gutted when they arrived, unlike the rest of the house, and that something had happened which caused the owners family conflict. While a bit of a stretch, in view of the idea of poisoning it's possible that the children that once lived in the nursery also became ill from handling the wallpaper and could have caused familial issues and for that room to be emptied in response.
Still however it's interpreted it's still a fantastic story with lots of interesting context surrounding it.
She already had psychological issues, probably post-partum depression. Poison wallpaper would have made it worse. Assuming Gilman even considered that angle.
I recently read that, more recently, the protagonist of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is believed to have been experiencing a form of Postpartum Psychosis.
The author, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, had given birth not long before drafting the story.
“Now why should that man have fainted but he did” absolutely took me out 💀 she ate him up there
the nonchalance and exasperation of "but he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that i had to creep over him every time!" made me giggle 😭
I think there are an unfortunate number of modern doctors that ought to read The Yellow Wallpaper.
Not listening to your patient does indeed seem to be an epidemic LOL
@MySerpentine I agree lol especially when trying to get tested or diagnosed for endometriosis and the like
God yes! And not necessarily male doctors either...
As a long time shut in, I really can't view it as empowering. When you are 'free' of societal expectations in that way, it is a lot more of just being more comfortable in the cage than outside of it. It's a very alluring trap. It feels very good to be isolated, and the longer you are, the more intolerable anything else is, and you can watch your mind crumble in live time all the while.
In some sense, I can appreciate the story more now with that perspective compared to my first reading before all this, and my second reading not making the connection as clearly
Thanks for sharing this, it’s really useful to read your interpretation of the story - Rosie
I understand that shut-in effect as well. I have spent months at a time in bed due to a chronic progressive condition. I've described my life as an ever-shrinking box that I'm stuck inside. Lying in bed all day, with the ability to read, write, and craft taken away, with my household maintenance duties piling up on the other side of the bedroom door, one becomes intimately acquainted with every aspect of the walls and ceiling.
At one point I became very involved in the life of a wolf spider that lived inside a wall socket across the room. I made her little plates of food that she wouldn't eat but guarded fiercely. She would get upset when the heat came on and blew air into her home, and would come out and wave her legs at me like I was causing the disturbance. (I never did evict her, and was really sad when she died after 18 months, although I read that actually meant she lived to be a very old wolf spider)
On forced bed rest, the temptation to completely let go of being present wars with the frustration and anxiety of knowing that life's responsibilities are mounting the longer one lies around.
One also loses the ability to tolerate noise and activity in the environment; at the same time, the search for something stimulating in the surrounding walls becomes more desperate. (Thank goodness for Melania, the spider in the outlet penthouse!)
If the protagonist's room was an attic used at one time as a nursery, the wallpaper was likely hung with less care, and may even have been made up from leftover swatches used in other rooms. The nursery and attics were where wealthy families usually put their older, worn-out furnishings. Attics were also used as servants' quarters, and any decoration would have been scavenged from castoffs.
I would go nuts in a room with badly hung wallpaper, especially if the patterns on the panels didn't match up or were reversed.
@@SouthCountyGal Wish I could say something to help your situation, truly. But it's funny, I definitely relate to the sounds becoming unbearable. I never had issues and suddenly I started being bothered by chewing, swallowing, breathing etc kinds of noises. It's wild how quickly the brain gets to rejecting sound specifically
@@ObsessedwithZelda2 Make sure you’re getting all your nutrients especially vitamin D. If you don’t go out you have to supplement. It’s vital for many processes in the body as well as mental capacity.
@@Christina.N. Thanks! I'm doing my best to keep up on my nutrients and improve my health in general these days
As someone who's spent a lot of time isolated and experienced some emotional abuse, there is definitely something very freeing and empowering about the idea of completely losing your mind. When you're crazy, you're beyond logic and the rules, and and you always have the upper hand on people just by being impossible to predict. It's like the Joker in Batman- his chaotic nature gives him power in every interaction, even when he's at an extreme disadvantage. Finally snapping and going nuts means that the rules of society and the people who impose them on you no longer have any authority, and the psychological pain you felt can simply fall away outside your understanding. The only thing you have to listen to is the impulse of madness. I'd be lying if I said I never daydreamed about going full funny-farm. Sometimes it can feel like your only way out.
Ugh you put it into words
This is exactly where I'm at.
God damn that's so spot on 😔🩷
Part of why I can't help liking the Joker despite him being the bad guy--there is no sanity clause!
I need to preface this with something of a disclaimer. I’m simply stating my experiences, and by no means a doctor. I have ADHD, Autism, and CPTSD, and have no idea how much of what plays into what I’m about to share.
I’ve actually slipped into a state close to it twice in my adult life. Part of me wanted to stay, as if it was a relief that my mind finally stopped with logic and reason to just… be. It was like I experienced sentience without being sapient briefly. Very hard to put into words what words cannot express. There was a… color? to the world in that state that saturated everything in this new experience, but the depression I had experienced was still there, just whispering. The first break I was loosing everything, and at that point my mind decided to loose itself too. I was laughing and crying and rolling around the floor. It was a laugh I had never heard from myself before, and I was just going to see where this new state of mind took me.
It was dream-like in a lucid way, but with a touch of nightmare because reality was there.
The second time it happened I was in a new location, in my own room with my cat. I was depressed again, and suicidal thoughts were getting the better of me but I was too tired to get up and act on them. So I began to laugh again in that odd way for another indeterminate period, and I knocked myself out with some Zzzquil and went to sleep hoping I wouldn’t wake up.
I’ve never shared this with a psychiatrist, but I was changed by them. The funny thing is I better see bs from people as the torture of the mind that it is. I’ve recovered from those states, but wish sometimes I could willfully go into that state so I can have a real break from reality.
Books help, but intermittent disassociation works in a pinch too if you can do it. They get really uncomfortable when you disconnect right in front of them and you parrot back their capitalistic vomit back at them. 😊
25:24 I imagine it’s like when you’re swimming and feel seaweed grabbing at your feet and you know it’s inanimate but it feels as though it’s alive 'the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase'
Your simple explanation at the beginning gave me literal chills and that crawly feeling down the spine, but then.. just as swiftly was saved by the complexity and unrelatability of quoted text.
Thank you for putting it in that particular order, it's 1am 😅
This story really creeped me out when I read it in High School. At this point, I interpret it as saying that one of the few places women can find any power in an oppressive society is in madness.
I know some very intelligent women in their 60's through 80's who have mental health issues and I'm convinced that part of the reason they have these issues is from coming up constantly against oppression.
absolutely true.
Yeah I'm not entiiiirely sure how I feel about this "empowering" narrative. I remember reading this in high-school and also finding this story rather horrifying and I saw it more as a warning to never treat people like this again. Buuuut I do have to say I do get what she says about certain aspects being empowering. I can't say I didn't also find it empowering when the narrator defies her husband when he dismisses her and tells her to go to sleep and she doesn't and just watches the wallpaper. I also see how a lot of the aspects at the end are empowering. Like I always loved how when John enters the room she just looks over her should real casual like and just keeps crawling. Like she couldn't be bothered to give him any more attention than a quick glance. I loved how she talks to him like a child and gently and patiently guides him with seeming clarity. The way he faints and she just continues to walk over him is wild. Amazing all of it but I have to say I just don't really care for the idea of a woman crawling around a room endlessly in complete and utter madness brought on my her oppressors as the vision for female empowerment ykwm 🤨 I do get how it is empowering it it's own right. When you have no other options, sometimes escapism is is all you have and that can be enpowering to someone with no power. I get that one could look at this from a a completely symbolic perspective and see strong female empowerment but I still can't get the vision of a desperate mad woman whos exhausted all pf her other options out of my mind. Just wouldn't be MY choice for representing female empowerment and the kinds of things women are capable of
We had the Leave it to Beaver life in the 50's and early 60's in contrast to the feminism of the 70's. Women (many our mothers) were going back to work due to grown children and the monetary need. We had both conservative domestic life and the promise of feminism. But, life brings the struggle between traditional married life and independence. It's the struggle that bends our minds. I know this from sad experience.
I'm 68yo and the double standard as well as the misogyny in the States is something no one should ever be forced to live with. I particularly take issue with adults of any age that call a male infant "little man" and at the same time will call women even older than myself "baby girl".
Women are naturally neurotic. So are men, but men usually grow out of it around the time of their first fight
i actually used to think the word "wallflower" referred to a person trapped in the wallpaper 😂
that's terrifying
I've read The Yellow Wallpaper and Gilman's essays on why she wrote it and how she parented her daughter, multiple times, and I still recommend it. Even without considering the pro-women's-rights perspective behind it, The Yellow Wallpaper is a *spectacular* piece of literature. I'd personally call it horror literature, but that's mostly because of having read Gilman's own reasoning behind it.
"Neurasthenia" sounds a lot like burnout, plus a few other mental health issues lumped under the same category due to lack of understanding - it's associated with an overload of stress and with overwork. That the rest "cure" would help some people suffering from "neurasthenia" makes some sense in that light - a removal of responsibilities and the stresses of daily life would indeed help with that kind of burnout. That it could significantly harm people also makes sense - constant low-grade distress (as opposed to acute eustress which is resolved shortly after it begins) is the main issue behind burnout, IIRC, and lack of socialisation (which would be classed as "mental stimulation" under the rest cure regime) is itself a stressor in humans. Indeed, lack of mental stimulation is used as a torture method - "white room" torture, where the victim is kept in a completely white padded room with a constant light level, fed white rice given in white bowls with no utensils (no way to make noises that could provide a point outside the monotony or to tear the padding on the walls to make a point of visual interest) and kept ignorant of outside occurrences - so the rest cure was essentially touting a form of torture as a therapeutic effort.
Not only is it 100% horror literature, Gilman is the originator (or at least an early adopter) of a lot of common horror elements that are still being used in media today. I used to teach American literature, and I always had my students compare a list of horror tropes with the story to help them get invested in it before discussing Gilman’s motivations for writing it in the first place.
Well I'm 70, and although birthing a child is in my past: I'm cool with that, having birthed 2, now grown sons... sexual sterility still hasn't found me. 😎
My eyebrows are arched, but still dont arch into space, damn!
Although no longer a svelte youth, choosing to retire to a very rural existence, chores have kept me from becoming 'stately' 🤣
I'm happily enjoying this life when women do have more choices.
brandy jean you are a treasure!!
something that lends to the idea of Jane being the protagonist is the very common use of Jane Doe for unidentified woman or woman who must remain anonymous. By using the name "Jane" it can be interpreted as a collective idea of what a woman "should be"
You know, going by the fact that the protagonist is tearing away the wallpaper and telling John that she won't go "back", I would read the ending as her becoming the woman who she earlier saw moving behind the wallpaper.
The wallpaper is obviously metaphorical for the confines of both the rest cure and societal expectations for women in general, but I do think that the protagonist has at this point also convinced herself that she came from the wallpaper and had always been behind it.
Possibly, that when she was observing the woman crawl behind the wallpaper and shaking the "bars", she was observing herself, imprisoned behind social barriers and trying to break through.
Of course, breaking through the wallpaper and then tearing it off the walls is also representative of her descent into madness because that's rather simply her way out.
Someone who is mad cannot be reasoned with, cannot be expected to respect anyone's authority or adhere to social customs.
In other words: They are not subject to the kind of control that kept the protagonist in her forced state of passivity. Someone who is merely suffering from a nervous disorder can be told to stay in a room and do nothing because it is for their best. Someone who is mad on the other hand doesn't have to accept such arguments, the only way to get them to follow suit is to stick them in a straight jacket and lock them into a padded cell.
Someone who is mad can also not be told that they aren't ill, forcing John to acknowledge that he completely misunderstood the condition of his wife, that he had been wrong all along and that it was his unwillingness to listen to her or change anything that really sent her over the edge.
A very dramatic way of saying "told you so" but certainly an effective one.
This is how I read it too.
I'll admit, the ending always made me a little sad. At the end of the story, the narrator's husband faints... *after* he opens the door. The door is open. The narrator could escape, and nobody would stop her. Instead, she continues to creep around the room, her shoulder brushing against the wall, and crawls over her husband during each round. The door is wide open, yet she does nothing. She's been so mentally broken, she doesn't want to leave her prison anymore. It's a little like that line from Stephen King's short story, '1408' (which, by the way, is way scarier than the movie): "Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room."
I recently read that, more recently, the protagonist of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is believed to possibly have been experiencing a form of Postpartum Psychosis.
The author, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, had given birth not long before drafting the story.
That was my impression when I read the story.
That was what I thought when we read it in high school! My teacher and class looked at me like I was crazy ;-;
This story, along with the horrifying play, "The Insanity of Mary Girard", had a profound impact on my 13 year old self a lifetime ago.
I love the idea of female autonomy. The fact that we must get to a point of shedding our own wallpaper. I love her sense of kinship with the other women. I go through cycles of shedding societal wallpaper, finding kinship, snubbing the patriarchy/and or societal "rules", and embracing my own brand of crazy/happiness. That is where I find the most stability actually 😂😂😂❤️
Well said. It would make sense that appears to be “crazy” from the patriarchy’s perspective is where we feel our best
The irony of course being that women are now more depressed and suicidal than during the black plague on Europe, just like men!
Much like also shedding the lining of our uterus each month.
Listening to Victorian men talk about women should make every single modern woman see red. What pompous empty peacocks.
Hahaha what an excellent way to describe them 😆🦚
they can trap my body, but my mind might wander
I was wondering when the servant class became human in literature. No one listens to the woman, and her husband is dismissive of the woman problems. How many servants were needed to keep the woman in her attic prison? If you were a member of the lower classes, mental illness meant a trip to asylum. How many gothic novels treat the underclass like ghost. Thing needed doing, and the people who did the work were treated like furniture. You could say that was then, but has it changed? All advance to enlightenment is built upon the have nots. To have freedom, and agency, one must have an underclass who have not. What did the pandemic teach us? The people who keep civilization running kept working. Those who could be completely eliminated entirely stayed home. One defends the injustice done to them, while stepping on the up turned faces of the underclass.
Servants have usually been the unseen props of upper- and middle-class life. Nobody pays real attention to them until things go wrong. They make sure the house is clean, the food ready on time, the grounds kept, and all the other tedious details the rest of us handle ourselves. When they are mentioned at all in fiction, it's either a bit of humor, or because it's necessary ('Did you notice anything suspicious?' the detective asked the gardener).
Fiction from the POV of the servants may be a later 20th-century innovation. The idea that their lives and stories are every bit as worthy and interesting as that of their employers seems recent.
Small yet big remark: If a job is digitized enough to be done in Home Office, it's quite unfair to call those workers completely eliminable. Additionally a lot of the 'underclass' lost their jobs and businesses and had to stay home too, since they often work in the service industry, which got closed down and they suffered greatly for it. I ask myself the same question regarding the working class in literature, but I think you need a lot more nuance in your opinions about the working class if you want to claim to truly care about workers in any capacity. (No offense meant, your sentiment just spits on the devastation of my poverty-struck colleagues suffering during the pandemic plus before and after).
@@julietfischer5056yea I can tell you neither have read nor know ANY of the history Of 19th century novels to make all these inane wrong claims. Wow.
@@6Haunted-Days- I have read them. That's how I know that servants were mostly invisible unless the plot demanded it.
@@6Haunted-DaysQuite literally during that time period servants were expected to be invisible.
This is back up by historians and you can just straight read the novels yourself.
Why the sudden hostility?
What an interesting analysis. I’ve always read the story as a depiction of a woman’s descent into madness caused by societal expectations. I have to say, I appreciate your analysis as her reclaiming her power. Certainly that’s less depressing.
I read it as post-partum psychosis. She had a baby and showed signs of psychological distress. In what was considered best practice in those days, doctors prescribed complete rest for her. Nothing physically or mentally taxing should disturb her until she was better. Her husband and ‘Sister’ (her sister or his?) were to handle everything while she convalesced.
What happened? Isolation and boredom, so that she became fixated on the wallpaper and also imagined things. Her psychosis worsened until she was completely divorced from sanity and reality.
@@julietfischer5056oh gods...
There was a popular bright green dye used for Victorian-era wallpaper, made from arsenic. One popular theory is that that's part of the inspiration behind this story.
The woman in the wallpaper was the narrator's own repressed ego.
I read the story as both descending into madness and reclaiming power: she projects the activity and agency she wishes she had on an inanimate thing, the wallpaper, while she, a human, has less power than the wallpaper. Because she mentions a rope s couple of times over, I thought the ending was her death, but the husband faints and doesn't get up again even though she crawls over him several times. Maybe she just got rid of the person who was ruining her life.
I havent read this story, but as a mentally ill and disabled woman who has to often be bed ridden it is somewhat of a horror story in these snippets. Its quite scary... being bed ridden is a profoundly depressing experience and the descriptions of the wallpaper are torturous, i can vividly imagine being sleep deprived, in pain as I have been before and hallucinating this stuff in this horrific wallpaper and tearing it off for relief until my mind snaps because nobody around me beleives me and allows me any reprieve from the horror. It was deeply distrubing to listen to.
Just my interpretation from my experiencr that I thought id share as it was very different from yours.
Thanks for sharing, it’s really good to hear your take on the story. I think the ending can be read as horrendous and/or empowering, and I agree it’s definitely a horror story - Rosie
Husband: Youre going to sit here and do nothing until youre better
Protagonist: Frick U *disassociates into the walls*
I loved the yellow wallpaper when I read it in high school. But it was the kinda love of a book that equally feels like pain and comfort. I remember most of all feeling a reflection of myself in the character and was happy in a bittersweet sense at the end. I think I felt it was a combination of the two interpretations you gave. I do feel as if she “went mad” or rather retreated into her own world but I think that I’m doing so she shakes off the expectation her husband and society have for her and her experience.
Sadly fitting that the magazine "Punch" named after an abusive puppet that clubbed his wife Judy for the amusement of others would disparage the "New Woman".
I'm a middle of the pack millennial, and its so ingrained from childhood, that all I could think was "sausages!" Rather than the disturbing stuff
Whenever I hear of Punch and Judy, I always think of George Herriman's early 1900's comic strip Krazy Kat. The submissive cat loves an abusive mouse, considering the hurts signs of devotion. Its an odd comic. A recent twist is that the cartoonist was part black, but went to extremes to pass for white, refusing to remove his hat even while indoors, etc.
I read this story many years ago in a university lit class and adored it. It's been so interesting hearing more background on when it was written and more interpretations of it. Thanks!
Thank you. Really pleased you found it informative. I adored the story, too - I'd be interested to hear your interpretations of it if you want to share!
@@books_ncats Sorry for the delay. I got a bit spooked by the creator of a video asking me a legit question on a reply lol. Social anxiety, so weird, right? But I came back to it. I didn't forget...
I remember reading this story and essentially mostly taking it for face value as a criticism of the practice and a woman going mad because of a practice that was meant to make one well. I remember thinking the woman looking out from the pattern of the wallpaper made me think of a cage or a cell. In the beginning, the lady looks in on the trapped, caged protagonist, like she's a spectacle or a prisoner, but eventually she gets 'in' to the wallpaper, on the other side of the pattern, and it's almost like instead of getting in, she actually got out of the original cage she was trapped in.
Haha sorry for contributing to your social anxiety! Thanks for replying ☺️ yeah, it’s interesting the ending, lots of different ways to interpret it. I like the idea of her escaping - like she’s finally found a way out of a cage she didn’t know she was in, perhaps..
I wonder if the women that the rest cure did work for were women with some form of chronic fatigue syndrome. As someone who has both experienced depression and is currently ill with CFS, the rest cure sounds absolutely awful for treating depression, and surprisingly helpful for CFS given there's no actual treatment for it yet. I could imagine some people recovering fully if they were relieved from daily duties for a while and forced into rest.
Nowadays, the prevailing idea is that exercise is good for almost everyone and while there's some truth to it, it's tragic how many people with chronic fatigue have been forced or bullied into overspending energy, against their own intuitions. It's a women's illness too, with I think 2/3 women vs men affected (perhaps it's an autoimmune issue and that's why, but we don't really know). I hear all the time that I need to move more, no matter how carefully I explain that exercise is unilaterally worsening my condition. It's caused me to give up all reliance on medical professionals and feel responsible for all my health decisions, because the only person who has to (painfully) live with the consequences is me, so the buck has to stop with me. I'm grateful to live in a society now that allows me the independence to make those decisions and not have someone else take away my autonomy.
I could also see it make sense for someone genuinely overworked; like a mother of several small children might benefit from saying, “gotta rest, doctor’s orders.” Often women have felt pressured to care for everyone but themselves, and rest might feel like a relief. But that would only help if she had control over her situation, and wasn’t forced into isolation or passivity.
I had just recovered from postpartum depression when I read this book. I felt that the ending was a triumph.
How so? - Rosie
@@books_ncats When her husband fainted I thought “Yes! He finally gets it.”
5:27 he looks so fucking grumpy I'm obsessed 😭
And the random bouts of almost violence from Jphn is definitely that condescending "my stern presence controls her."
i've always thought of it as empowering. like yah, she "lost her mind" in that she's crawling around like Gollum LoTR - but she's also finally free of the stifling, controlled environment she was trapped in. things aren't ending well for her, but it would have ended badly for regardless. if the treatment "worked" and she got "better" it would have only been in the ways her husband defined, not in a way that would have actually improved her mental health.
i also read the reveal that the wallpaper has multiple women behind it as a way of the story telling us Jane isn't the only one imprisoned. She's her husband's prisoner, both literally in the sense that he's trapped her - but also in the way that men had full control over their wife's life. She see's herself behind the "bars" of the wallpaper first, but eventually realizes that it's full of women, desperate to be free from the peeling, ugly facade.
also also, i can't revisit this story without creeping around myself. it's fun :3
The Yellow Wallpaper has always been one of my favorite short stories.
Vital Energy is the Victorian word for Spoons
The rest-cure sounds a lot like what it's like to have a bad CFS/ME flare up but with someone else inflicting it instead of the body. Honestly terrifying.
I have debilitating fibromyalgia, so bad it keeps me from working and keeps me at home and sometimes in bed some days. One of the first doctors I went to (who was world-renowned) didn't give me a diagnosis, instead he suggested that if I just got a boyfriend I would feel better. I asked if he could write a prescription for that.
(in my opinion) she's not reclaiming power. She's imagining power, where she has none. Also, that rope is intensely significant. It's her "escape". Her husband fainting? Well, she WAS jumping on the bed to reach the rafters. Where was the rope? AND, considering the extremes a person will go to when dealing with crushing despair, was she even dressed? She might have been naked and crawling on all fours....with that rope just waiting. And yes, arsenic in the wallpaper may have contributed to her madness.
Nobody has ever worried as much about any thing as old men do about the ability of young girls to have babies.
Get this: TWENTY-FIVE plus years to get a diagnosis of endometriosis via laparoscopic surgery! I had multiple doctors, male AND female dismiss my pleas. They droned the same tired recommendations: exercise, Tylenol, heating pads. Believe me, I had a feeling of vindication at my diagnosis and a LOT of anger to work through. Hysterectomy changed my life. ❤
Edited to add: Stage 3 endometriosis. My doctor said, “You’ve had this since you were a teenager.” I seriously considered sending letters with my diagnosis to prior doctors. I would include a sound scolding in it, of course. Time heals…….
Ooft that's completely insane! Sorry you had to wait so long, it's ridiculous - Rosie
@@books_ncats well, it’s been just about a decade since my surgery and my mental health is calming down. I have a daughter and told her if she ever has issues with a doctor dismissing her…. The lioness will come out!
I remember reading this story back in high school and it definitely stuck with me. If they ever made a new movie adaptation on this, I’d be a neat choice if they got the same guy who made Hereditary and Midsommer to direct it, because the whole time I was re-reading it last week kept giving me the same growing sense of tension and horror in those films.
Judging from your description, perhaps the only way for her to be free is the insanity? I wonder about her appearance to make him faint, too. What did she use to tear down the wallpaper? One would assume it wasn't peeling on its own . . .
I also imagine a modern film adaptation might go a more supernatural route and have her merge with the wall, somehow.
Snack for the algorithm 🍪
recently my mom pointed out that the root word “hysteria” and “hysterectomy” is the same, i never realized that “female hysteria,” the term invented by doctors to describe sexually unsatisfied women before female sexuality was culturally recognized, was actually the origin of the word. so yes, women are indeed hysterical, because the word refers specifically to women’s sexuality
I'm adding this to my headcanons about The King In Yellow. It's about a contagious form of madness typically spread to other minds in the form of a play, but it had to start somewhere, no? What better a place than in a room with no stimulation save for the horrendous yellow wallpaper, in which strange other women discordantly but freely creep and caper about?
I think all doctors, but especially male doctors should be given the experience of a "Period Pain Simulator" every few years. So when women say they are suffering from especially bad menstrual pain, the doctors will understand what that actually feels like. Though, telling my doctor that I almost fainted in a grocery store from pain helped get across the seriousness of it for my doctor. And I didn't have endometriosis, just really, really bad periods. I am doing well now.
Glad you're doing well. I hadn't actually heard of period pain simulators - are they a real thing?? - Rosie
The husband, this is still a far too common type of man in conservative US. Gatekeeping, sexism, manipulation, and everything that treats other people as inferior and needing them to be kept inferior. It’s traumatizing.
I feel like the form of empowerment she finds by the end is rather tragic, though. She can only find agency and empowerment through complete withdrawal from reality, essentially in a world of her own.
Have you sedated that cat? Mouse, blink once if you're being held against your will. 😂
I always thought "Jane" at the end of the yellow wall paper was either the baby or her no longer giving a damn about keeping her husbands relations in order. So much of marriage has been me failing to remember anything about second aunt so-and-so, who she is related to, and whether or not she gets a holiday card or is, in fact, quite dead.
Mouse is so adorable - I can't stand it!!! Oh, and your analysis of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' was amazing too. 😉 Seriously though, I love this short story and really enjoyed you discussing it. I think the story is both. That she found her power by going a bit mad. I would love to see you do a video or videos on the 'New Woman'.
I love your videos and you have inspired me to buy even more books (so, so many books).Love your insights and commentary! That being said, even if I didn't like your videos, I would still tune in to watch the expressions on your cat's face. There's a lot going on behind those green-gold eyes.😸
Thank you! ☺️ Mouse and I are very glad you enjoy our content - Rosie
I read the Yellow Wallpaper in college some 35 years ago. I was horrified and distanced myself from it, but I myself suffered auditory hallucinations and severe depression due to stress during that time. The story seemed to be a revenge fantasy - Here's what you get, you deserve this madness.
Jane had already been sacrificed to femininity; she then gathered herself in and sacrificed herself a second time, not by her own hand but instead by her own mind.
I dunno. I can kind of see where you’re coming from with your argument, but even if you go with the argument that her rejecting her husband’s authority through her obsession over the wallpaper is empowerment, I feel like it still circles straight back to tragedy that the only way she can achieve any kind of empowerment is through completely losing herself and her sanity. And as another commenter noted, the door is open at the end, she finally has the chance to leave her prison, but she doesn’t. She’s just traded one prison, her husband’s control, for another, the control of the room and the wallpaper.
No story has stayed with me more or longer that The Yellow Wallpaper. We read it junior year of high school and it has haunted me since, through the births of my three kids, I've thought about the protagonist of that story more than any other literary character.
“Pelvic power” is not a term I thought I’d ever hear in my lifetime. 😂
Read this story a long time ago, but now I want to reread. Your videos are great, by the way. I'll go ahead and subscribe because I suppose I'll never get tired of media analysis videos.
Thank you! It’s a great story, well worth a re-read. Glad you enjoy our videos, and thanks for subscribing.
this is something super small, but i noticed that the way the protagonist goes from being unsettled by the woman to slowly being more comfortable with her to be similar to "the coming of lilith" by judith plaskow. it doesnt do much but reinforce the idea of sisterhood, but i found it interesting!
As someone with a mental health background, I fail to find the ending empowering. I understand your point, but as someone who has seem the result of a descent in psychotic depression, it's anything but empowering. If it was meant to be read as empowering, the author had no idea how it is like. I hate the romanticization of madness as a defiance of societal rules, bc people who are mentally ill are anything but in control of themselves
Thanks for this, that’s a really good point. I think it can be read both ways, but I know what you mean about the problems inherent in romanticising madness. Thanks for commenting - Rosie
Yes, and it's not a victory for her to infantilize her husband, they still aren't connecting and depriving him of his agency isn't "winning". She has become a crazed parody of him. It's the tragic and inevitable consequence of his treatment of her, it's meant to feel horrifying, not satisfying. She expresses satisfaction but I don't think the reader is meant to feel any.
I see the ending of "The Yellow Wallpaper" as being very similar to the ending of the movie "Brazil." In both cases, the protagonists escape the physical and/or psychological torture placed on them by their respective societies by retreating into worlds present only in their own brains. This is the only kind of freedom they can have from the severe social restrictions that hem them in on every side. Like a snared animal chewing off a leg to escape, they have jettisoned their sanity in order to be free.
The disgusting description of the wallpaper reminds me so much of the original 4-Chan post about the backrooms. The "madness of mono-yellow" mentioned to describe the liminal space where you can accidentally "noclip" out of reality is so eerily similar to the haunting yellow wallpaper where the unnamed protagonist seemingly falls out of the reality that has been imposed upon her by Victorian society. I never noticed this parallel before watching your video but now I'm interested to see if anyone else ever noticed this similarity! What is it about odd shades of yellow that seem to illicit an uncomfortable sense of madness?
Also, Mouse is a baby angel
I'm currently reading a strange book called 2120 by George Wylesol. Its about a repairman who gets trapped in a strange building that resembles the Backrooms a bit. He complains specifically about the obnoxious yellow lighting. Its choose your own path style, and my only complaint is that I thought the ebook would be easier because of commands to go to exact page numbers. Unfortunately, the ebook counts the empty pages at the beginning as well, so all page numbers don't match what the book says the page is. I have to do math every time I go to a new page and its slows me down as I get tired.
While I was reading this, I was reminded of my own experiences and thought that it would make sense if she saw herself in the wallpaper. What I mean is, since she was confined, maybe she started processing her thoughts and emotions through her interpretation of the wallpaper.
Since she stayed awake at night while her husband was asleep, and thus he was unable to stop her, it would make sense that the woman behind the wallpaper would move around more too.
And when they both started tearing the wallpaper together, it kind of felt to me like a joining of the two somewhat.
I personally have experience of being confined and left without any friends (+ emotional abuse) and I tend to imagine other people being with me or being in another world altogether. I also am struggling with my sleep schedule because my family is awake during the day and I can avoid them at night. I guess I can kind of relate to this story a little bit.
Having been through the same visual disturbances during psychosis I can clearly see her descent into madness. I have seen wallpaper patterns move, faces in wooden boards, patterns become other things, "seen ghosts" - this story scares me. It's heartbreaking to hear she went through that, but amazing her story changed her Drs treatment back then. Sadly I don't think I could ever read this story, I would love as I can feel so many things with your descriptions of her journey but I don't think I could ever mentally look back like that, but it hits so close to home, it is haunting.
That makes total sense, it's a hard-hitting story and definitely potentially triggering if you've been in a similar situation. Thanks for sharing - Rosie
I expected a historical analysis of the advancement of medicine after this shortstory was published and was highly disappointed and frustrated. This seems accidental but the title of the video is misleading and I'm upset that I was misled
Same
Those bloopers at the end 😂
Think I'll pick up some vegan Revolutionnaise next time I'm at the shop
A theme in this seems to be the freedom of the mind, even when her physicality is constrained to a room, or just to living in a misogynistic world, the fact that she is analyzing the wallpaper at all shows her taking control of her life in the only way she can, whether it's for better or worse, by the end she finds she no longer needs anything in the physical world at all to define her identity, that no matter what she has the ability to construct an identity from within her own mind. Detachment from physical reality IS a form of insanity, but it also provides a sort of freedom to become the master of your own universe. Maybe a question posed by The Yellow Wallpaper is whether it's better to be insane or imprisoned, can you really blame somebody for detaching from a reality that is hurting them?
I vote for both a descent into madness and an escape from her captivity in the rest cure.
When the solution to any problem ever no matter what that might be was just laying in bed and doing nothing.
One size fits all solution.
It could never go wrong!😂
I remember reading the Yellow Wallpaper in highschool English class. I still remember it now 22 years later. It is such a powerful story.
Ironically if there was a scenario where a woman of that time was shredding her wallpaper the arsenic that paper contained would have poisoned her and driven her mad.
It’s been awhile since I read this, but I remember thinking Jane was the baby, and the “in spite of you and Jane” line referred to her breaking free of the role of wife and mother. Also, can we just talk about how after he faints, she says she has to crawl over him “every time”?? That to me implies that he died (maybe hit his head in just the wrong way) and she just kept crawling over his corpse
That need for control, that sense of empowerment, Is the reason why many mental health issues develop. A person has, or feels they have, no actual power or control over their situation so they find some. That's what makes some conditions so terrifying, because they're preferable.
Lol your cat's face is priceless. Only about 3 mins in so thats all I have to comment so far xD
I love mouse. Mouse is the best
Agreed, wholeheartedly - Rosie
In m writing I made conscious decision to only use adjective “hystericaly” only in connection with male characters
Oh they had us read the Yellow Wallpaper in school
I have no words for it
It was presented as the story of a woman with postpartum depression who subjected to the treatment of the time went completely insane.
I think it was supposed to be a "look how much we've improved since the past!" kind of thing, which was the general narrative always at school, that all the problems of the past are completely cured and don't exist anymore, and all changes over time have been for the better... although I don't think psychological treatment has really improved so much
I also remember they weren't sure what she meant at the end by "in spite of you and Jane" because none of the characters were named Jane
I think you could compare the escapism in Tolkien's lecture "On Fairy Stories" to the escapism of "The Yellow Wallpaper".
"The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter." - J.R.R. Tolkien
It seems to me she is describing her husband and her relationship to him, when talk8ng about the wallpaper.
the narrator is imprisoned in that room, only able to stare out the windows (which are barred) at the outside world. (and no nursery would be locked and barred and in the attic) her husband has imprisoned her for a rest cure and she slowly descends into madness (if she wasnt already a bit mad to begin with).
there was a horror story based somewhat on this story, where a woman saw faces in any pattern, and was terrified of them). and in the end? she was kidnapped behind the walls, and one of the faces possessed her body.
that is the Yellow Wallpaper... one of the women behind the wallpaper has gotten out, she is no longer "jane" but the woman from behind the wallpaper.
she has in fact escaped, but by going mad and thinking she is not herself, but the "woman behind the bars of the walls"
it was an utterly horrifying story when i first read it, and worse now, as she became more "cage bound" like a zoo animal that is refusing to move into the better enclosure because they have only known a small cage.
mad, seeing herself now as an escapee from the other side of the wall, who only creeps along the edges.
Why aren’t we reading THIS in high school AP English class? The Yellow Wallpaper sounds great!
The moral of the story is that if you put women in a prison, they will find a way to escape... even if that way is into madness.
I am adverse to this term hysteria. Himsteria is more accurate. I refuse to advance, repeat misogynistic tropes.
The story "can" be read as female empowerment, the same way that "Every Step You Take" can be seen as a good wedding song.
I remember reading this short story in high school. I thought you analyzed it very well!
So I came for the awesome cats and stayed for the urbane commentary.
I call that a win 😂
Just found this, from the trial notes for Mary Ann Cotton, who murdered 21 people including 5 husbands and at least 12 of her children in the 1860s😮
"Mary Ann’s defense attorney, Mr. Thomas Campbell Foster, argued at the time that Charles Cotton had died from inhaling arsenic that had been used as a dye found in the green wallpaper at the family home."
I assumed that Jane was the name of her daughter. The other person binding her to housewife mother roles
This is my first video of yours - Mouse is iconic!
I’ve just been made aware of The Yellow Wallpaper, I find it fascinating
She IS iconic 🐱🐱🐱
The word hysterical actually comes from the greek word for womb. Lovely isn’t it.
I’m amazed/relieved to learn that this story caused CPG’s doctor to change his treatment approach away from the rest cure. It’s so important for doctors to listen to their patients and truly take their feedback into account, and it’s still an issue today, especially in the treatment of women and minorities.
Also, I love Mouse’s disapproving expression during the discussion of Victorian middle-class ideals!