I remember reading this as part of my English class in high school, and it never left me. I was depressed at the time, but no one acknowledged it or thought anything needed to be done about it. I should have been medicated and in therapy for almost all of my youth, and it's only in adulthood that I've been able to rectify that. A smaller example of my worries about what was going on with me being dismissed.
I was formally diagnosed with EDS last year, and I think part of the reason that I was able to get such a quick diagnosis (only a year after from when I started inquiries) was because 1) my care team was entirely female and 2) there was no way to explain away the extreme hypermobility of my joints. There was something physically wrong with my body that could not be ignored. So with that in hand, it was easy to get the referrals, the appointments, etc. I do wonder how much longer it would have taken if I didn't have doctors that were supportive of my journey in this way.
I've always had a tendency to find animals, cartoon and mythic figures, and faces in the swirls in marble, wallpaper, and fabric, and in inanimate objects. I usually think of them whimsically, but I'm sure if I were kept in solitary confinement I'd find monsters in the stains and cracks of my cell. For this reason, I've identified with plight of this character since I first read this story decades ago in high school. It is frightening to think that the author based the story somewhat on personal experience. A "maddening reading experience" for sure. That the horrific scenario in this story is based on real life experience is a timely reminder to fight like heck to retain our rights for ourselves and our daughters.
Oh Haley, how I appreciate the way you closed this post with your experience and how it made me realize that I too have gone through a similar situation. How many of us have not at this point? Even today? I remember being a teenager, suffering from bouts of maddening headaches that would make me see stars, and being told again and again by doctors that it wasn't anything other than regular headaches--and how lucky I was that my mom would not let it go and together we found a doctor who, within minutes of listening to me describing my sensations and my mom describing what she observed, got me diagnosed! It wasn't anything life-threatening or debilitating, and the headaches have subsided in the years since, but *knowing* makes a world of difference, and I had not realized that so too in the case of the protagonist-narrator of The Yellow Wall-Paper!
What I found interesting in reading the story was that I was really drawn to the setting first and foremost, and by that I mean the clues to the material world formed around the narrator. There's something quite eerie there that reminded me a lot of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House, in the sense that so much of the elements of the/a domestic environments seem to hold clues to the psychic nature of the internal life of the character.
And, having recently come out of A Room of One's Own, how interesting to find her remark that "I did write for a while spite of them [husband and brother]; but it does exhaust me a good deal-having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition"!
One last thing: I think I read the fainting sequel five or six times upon finishing the story, and I have to say I absolutely love the fact that she kept "creeping over him" not once but "every time." It feels like such a strangely triumphant ending in a way!
A few months ago I read "Hidden Valley Road" by Robert Kolker and it has both affected the way I think about my own experience with mental illness and the way I analyze fiction, from Jane Eyre (which I just finished and boy do I have opinions) to Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky would be THRILLED to see me dismiss all his morality concerns and focus on societal isolation and rejection). I'm adding The Yellow Wallpaper to the list today, and you were right Haley, I did underline and highlight almost everything, with a story so short every word counts. Here's some themes that stood out with me:
– Infantilization. John has a way to talk and act with his wife as if she were a child, he calls her "silly goose" and "little girl", he says "bless her little heart", he carries her to bed and reads her bedtime stories etc. He puts her in a nursery! (It's a nice subversion in the end when she calls him "young man" with all the scorn in the world.)
– Shame. The woman is encouraged to feel shame for what should be real, concerning issues. She feels guilty and ashamed about not being able to "snap out of it", being too emotional and a burden, causing trouble to others, failing as a wife and mother. She shrinks and makes herself small in apology, her cage is both psychological and physical. She sees a metaphorical crowd of eyes in the wallpaper watching her, mocking and judging her and the many women hiding behind bars like her.
– Violent language. But only when it concerns the room and especially the wallpaper; in everyday life she's sweet and accommodating and apologetic, all the anger and turmoil inside her are poured into the wallpaper. I kept underling the scariest adjectives, I got irritating, infuriating, lurid, atrocious, revolting, horrid, vicious, grotesque, hideous. And hate, hate, hate, hate, repeated over and over.
– Daylight and moonlight. That's another binary that I kept noticing, it's subtle at first, she's attracted to the ghostliness of the moon and John shuts that down quick. The moon then becomes its own character and a personification of the woman in the wall, following her from every window. She can "creep" around in moonlight, very carefully so she doesn't wake John up. She has to creep because there is no other way she can express herself, every time she tries to communicate she's silenced, she has to do it silently and in the dark. "It's the same woman, I know, for she's always creeping, and most women don't creep in daylight." "I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!" She yearns to stop hiding her illness, her otherness. But during the day, she can only sleep and deceive.
– The MOLD. I actually wrote THE MOLD!!! five times in however many pages. There are so many hints, the "yellow smell" overpowering everything, the fungi she sees in the walls, stained clothes, John and Jennie starting to get affected too. The children that used to live in the nursery biting and scratching things, and how relieved the woman is at the baby being spared living in the room! But I love that it works both ways, the toxicity of the room might be physical or metaphysical (likely a mixture of both), what matters is that the woman detected it and tried to tell her husband, and she was dismissed, dismissed, dismissed.
– Suicide (guys, DON'T READ this next part if it's a triggering subject!) But I wonder about that one, it's mentioned quite a lot. "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." "There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down." That's right out of a horror story, as if the woman in the wall hanged herself and is dangling above the bed, staring at her from upside down. Later she has a "secret rope" that she wants to tie the woman with, she tries to reach the ceiling but the bed is bolted and won't move. She even contemplates jumping out the window but the bars are too strong, and also killing herself would be like creeping in daylight, people would talk and judge. I really wonder, what did she look like when John got into the room and fainted? Was there any self-harm? Did she finally get to externalize the pain she was carrying inside?
And I could go on and on, there's SO MUCH to unpack her. Thank you for introducing me to this story Haley, I can foresee myself coming back to it a lot in the future.
Yikes-the mold. I've never picked up on that. Wonderful insights here. Thanks for sharing. And I for one would love to hear your opinions on Jane Eyre some day.
Jane Eyre is in Haley's fall reading list but I don't know if there will be a separate post about it. I definitely want to write something down, I'll see if I can post it here or somewhere else. Thank you!
Oh, there will definitely be a Jane Eyre post (coming in November!)
Ellie: I loved reading all of your themes and tracks in the story. I had also never noticed the mold before—this story is so ripe for a reading of "air," isn't it? I am thinking about the very premise of the story: that a husband removes his wife from the city proper (polluted air, noise, stifling heat) for the relative comforts of the country (clean air, lack of noise, less heat) and instead, she ends up stuck in a stuffy attic, breathing in those yellow spores.
I would LOVE to see someone do a deeper literary reading and analysis of the novel from that angle! Wow!
I hadn't read this story since high school, but I've been wanting to stretch my close reading muscles and I'm so glad I ran across your work!
One theme that stuck out to me was her desire for intellectual stimulation, both creative AND rational. Her imagination and creativity are discussed, but so too is her striving for scientific insight:
"It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis,--that perhaps it is the paper!"
"I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like."
In a society that values "masculine" reason over "feminine" unreason, she's not allowed to have either, and you see her struggling against both restrictions. I got the sense that if she were just allowed the space to think, she would be able to organize her thoughts and start to relieve the pressure on her psyche.
I loved reading through this piece and the comments, and looking forward to more!
I remember reading this as part of my English class in high school, and it never left me. I was depressed at the time, but no one acknowledged it or thought anything needed to be done about it. I should have been medicated and in therapy for almost all of my youth, and it's only in adulthood that I've been able to rectify that. A smaller example of my worries about what was going on with me being dismissed.
I was formally diagnosed with EDS last year, and I think part of the reason that I was able to get such a quick diagnosis (only a year after from when I started inquiries) was because 1) my care team was entirely female and 2) there was no way to explain away the extreme hypermobility of my joints. There was something physically wrong with my body that could not be ignored. So with that in hand, it was easy to get the referrals, the appointments, etc. I do wonder how much longer it would have taken if I didn't have doctors that were supportive of my journey in this way.
I've always had a tendency to find animals, cartoon and mythic figures, and faces in the swirls in marble, wallpaper, and fabric, and in inanimate objects. I usually think of them whimsically, but I'm sure if I were kept in solitary confinement I'd find monsters in the stains and cracks of my cell. For this reason, I've identified with plight of this character since I first read this story decades ago in high school. It is frightening to think that the author based the story somewhat on personal experience. A "maddening reading experience" for sure. That the horrific scenario in this story is based on real life experience is a timely reminder to fight like heck to retain our rights for ourselves and our daughters.
Oh Haley, how I appreciate the way you closed this post with your experience and how it made me realize that I too have gone through a similar situation. How many of us have not at this point? Even today? I remember being a teenager, suffering from bouts of maddening headaches that would make me see stars, and being told again and again by doctors that it wasn't anything other than regular headaches--and how lucky I was that my mom would not let it go and together we found a doctor who, within minutes of listening to me describing my sensations and my mom describing what she observed, got me diagnosed! It wasn't anything life-threatening or debilitating, and the headaches have subsided in the years since, but *knowing* makes a world of difference, and I had not realized that so too in the case of the protagonist-narrator of The Yellow Wall-Paper!
What I found interesting in reading the story was that I was really drawn to the setting first and foremost, and by that I mean the clues to the material world formed around the narrator. There's something quite eerie there that reminded me a lot of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House, in the sense that so much of the elements of the/a domestic environments seem to hold clues to the psychic nature of the internal life of the character.
And, having recently come out of A Room of One's Own, how interesting to find her remark that "I did write for a while spite of them [husband and brother]; but it does exhaust me a good deal-having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition"!
One last thing: I think I read the fainting sequel five or six times upon finishing the story, and I have to say I absolutely love the fact that she kept "creeping over him" not once but "every time." It feels like such a strangely triumphant ending in a way!
A few months ago I read "Hidden Valley Road" by Robert Kolker and it has both affected the way I think about my own experience with mental illness and the way I analyze fiction, from Jane Eyre (which I just finished and boy do I have opinions) to Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky would be THRILLED to see me dismiss all his morality concerns and focus on societal isolation and rejection). I'm adding The Yellow Wallpaper to the list today, and you were right Haley, I did underline and highlight almost everything, with a story so short every word counts. Here's some themes that stood out with me:
– Infantilization. John has a way to talk and act with his wife as if she were a child, he calls her "silly goose" and "little girl", he says "bless her little heart", he carries her to bed and reads her bedtime stories etc. He puts her in a nursery! (It's a nice subversion in the end when she calls him "young man" with all the scorn in the world.)
– Shame. The woman is encouraged to feel shame for what should be real, concerning issues. She feels guilty and ashamed about not being able to "snap out of it", being too emotional and a burden, causing trouble to others, failing as a wife and mother. She shrinks and makes herself small in apology, her cage is both psychological and physical. She sees a metaphorical crowd of eyes in the wallpaper watching her, mocking and judging her and the many women hiding behind bars like her.
– Violent language. But only when it concerns the room and especially the wallpaper; in everyday life she's sweet and accommodating and apologetic, all the anger and turmoil inside her are poured into the wallpaper. I kept underling the scariest adjectives, I got irritating, infuriating, lurid, atrocious, revolting, horrid, vicious, grotesque, hideous. And hate, hate, hate, hate, repeated over and over.
– Daylight and moonlight. That's another binary that I kept noticing, it's subtle at first, she's attracted to the ghostliness of the moon and John shuts that down quick. The moon then becomes its own character and a personification of the woman in the wall, following her from every window. She can "creep" around in moonlight, very carefully so she doesn't wake John up. She has to creep because there is no other way she can express herself, every time she tries to communicate she's silenced, she has to do it silently and in the dark. "It's the same woman, I know, for she's always creeping, and most women don't creep in daylight." "I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!" She yearns to stop hiding her illness, her otherness. But during the day, she can only sleep and deceive.
– The MOLD. I actually wrote THE MOLD!!! five times in however many pages. There are so many hints, the "yellow smell" overpowering everything, the fungi she sees in the walls, stained clothes, John and Jennie starting to get affected too. The children that used to live in the nursery biting and scratching things, and how relieved the woman is at the baby being spared living in the room! But I love that it works both ways, the toxicity of the room might be physical or metaphysical (likely a mixture of both), what matters is that the woman detected it and tried to tell her husband, and she was dismissed, dismissed, dismissed.
– Suicide (guys, DON'T READ this next part if it's a triggering subject!) But I wonder about that one, it's mentioned quite a lot. "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." "There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down." That's right out of a horror story, as if the woman in the wall hanged herself and is dangling above the bed, staring at her from upside down. Later she has a "secret rope" that she wants to tie the woman with, she tries to reach the ceiling but the bed is bolted and won't move. She even contemplates jumping out the window but the bars are too strong, and also killing herself would be like creeping in daylight, people would talk and judge. I really wonder, what did she look like when John got into the room and fainted? Was there any self-harm? Did she finally get to externalize the pain she was carrying inside?
And I could go on and on, there's SO MUCH to unpack her. Thank you for introducing me to this story Haley, I can foresee myself coming back to it a lot in the future.
Yikes-the mold. I've never picked up on that. Wonderful insights here. Thanks for sharing. And I for one would love to hear your opinions on Jane Eyre some day.
Jane Eyre is in Haley's fall reading list but I don't know if there will be a separate post about it. I definitely want to write something down, I'll see if I can post it here or somewhere else. Thank you!
Oh, there will definitely be a Jane Eyre post (coming in November!)
Ellie: I loved reading all of your themes and tracks in the story. I had also never noticed the mold before—this story is so ripe for a reading of "air," isn't it? I am thinking about the very premise of the story: that a husband removes his wife from the city proper (polluted air, noise, stifling heat) for the relative comforts of the country (clean air, lack of noise, less heat) and instead, she ends up stuck in a stuffy attic, breathing in those yellow spores.
I would LOVE to see someone do a deeper literary reading and analysis of the novel from that angle! Wow!
I hadn't read this story since high school, but I've been wanting to stretch my close reading muscles and I'm so glad I ran across your work!
One theme that stuck out to me was her desire for intellectual stimulation, both creative AND rational. Her imagination and creativity are discussed, but so too is her striving for scientific insight:
"It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis,--that perhaps it is the paper!"
"I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like."
In a society that values "masculine" reason over "feminine" unreason, she's not allowed to have either, and you see her struggling against both restrictions. I got the sense that if she were just allowed the space to think, she would be able to organize her thoughts and start to relieve the pressure on her psyche.
I loved reading through this piece and the comments, and looking forward to more!
Amazing read! Didn’t know about this story but love your step by step approach to it. Thanks for the close reading!