Yellow Wallpaper and X-Men

I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” while walking on the treadmill this morning. It took less than an hour to read, but it was time deliciously spent.

What a creepy tale! It’s a masterful account of a woman sinking into insanity under the care of her husband, a physician (and control freak). It’s Gilman’s commentary on treatment she herself underwent for “nervousness,” and it leaves little question that the cure is far worse than the illness if you’re a woman in the 1890’s.

The story opens with the narrator and her husband’s arrival at a rented colonial estate in the country. They’re there so that she can recover from her “temporary nervous depression.” “John is a physician,” she writes in her diary, “and perhaps–(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this dead paper is a great relief to my mind–) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick!” Diagnosing her problem as “a slight hysterical tendency,” he (with the full concurrence of her physician brother) prescribes rest, isolation, tonics, and “air.” She is absolutely forbidden to work, and only writes in her diary on the sly.

She is confined in the old house’s former nursery, in which the bed is nailed down, bars cover the windows, and the walls are covered–except where someone has tried to peel it off–with horrific yellow wallpaper. Slowly the wallpaper becomes the obsessive central concern of her diary. She believes it sees; its pattern is filled with violence and hidden meanings; gradually she becomes convinced that a woman is creeping behind its busy pattern. By the end of the story she has been reduced to crawling around the room herself.

I’m sure much criticism has probably been written about the enclosure as a mind symbol, as well as the story’s marital politics (the only power the narrator achieves is the subversive power of madness) and the subordination of women. But wow, was it provocative.

Here’s a thought: X-Men III. Jean Grey, the female character who’s the most powerful of the X-men and has telepathic powers and control over other minds, goes postal in the movie because she’s tired of being told she has to rein in and control and discipline her gifts. She believes she’s being managed and thwarted by others who feel threatened by her. I almost think she’s a modern-day sci-fi version of this narrator from ”The Yellow Wallpaper,” who wants to write, to visit friends, and to be involved in “congenial work.” But her husband refuses all these desires, keeping her contained and repressed until her imaginative side boils over into insanity.

It sounds strange to me to be saying this (because I’m not a “feminist.” I’m a stay-at-home, evangelical Christian, homeschooling mom!). But I’ve had that feeling of being kept in my place at times, especially in settings where those in authority fear the unpredictable. It can become pretty confusing. I’m not sure if its part of being female, or just part of being human, that it takes a long time in life to feel like you’re free to be firing on all cylinders. 

In any case, as neither a mutant nor a late nineteenth century invalid, I found this to be a gripping story–but not one I’ll want to reread any time soon. It almost had me checking the walls for unexplained shadows. Uggh.