Grace A. Poynter
Ms. Brandi Wallace
English 102
28 February 2019
What Century Is It Anyway?
A twelve-year-old girl wrote a suicide note last summer. Her dad being non-existent in her life, being bullied at school, and other contributing factors made her want to end her life completely. She has a sibling, a few nieces and nephews, along with a mother who adores her. However, she wrote a suicide note before planning to kill herself. Before I knew what happened last summer, I knew her as a sweet pre-teen who felt the need to make everyone laugh, including myself. But when there are broken hearts who commit suicide, their families’ and friends’ words are usually “I had no idea.” When I discovered what this twelve-year-old had attempted, I was crushed. I cursed myself with questions such as “why did I not see it?” and “what more should I have done?” I didn’t pay enough attention, just like most people that surround us today. Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes “The Yellow Wallpaper” from a severely depressed woman’s point-of-view, portraying the lack of support system and proper care near the turn of the twentieth-century. Though “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in a different era, its message still resonates with readers in modern-day society.
One way “The Yellow Wallpaper” resembles today’s issues is the struggle patients experience over controlling their own health. Gilman writes, “John is a physician, and […] perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?” (Gilman 237). The narrator’s care options are controlled by her husband John, who is also a physician, and he “assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 237). In our modern-day world, patients are still being told what is best for them, and are not given many other choices. Fortunately, we have evolved from “The Rest Cure,” which is the narrator’s treatment plan, into other forms of more useful therapy and psychology. However, doctors still write sometimes useless prescriptions to patients who may only want the advanced therapy that the twenty-first century provides. Though this story is written roughly one-hundred years before now, we still live in a “doctor knows best” kind of society, where humankind is hooked on prescriptions such as Xanax and other doctor-prescribed pills. Gilman suggests this idea when she writes, “John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. But I don’t want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!” (241). Not only is she proposing that Weir Mitchell, the actual doctor “who specialized in treating neurasthenic women” knows what’s supposedly best for her, but she is blaming John because he also suggests that he knows what’s best (240). John argues with the narrator about her health, and Gilman reiterates the idea of doctor’s flexing their power when she writes, “There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?” (243). After he says this, the narrator says no more (243). The narrator believes, “that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” and disagrees with her treatment (237). When the narrator begins creeping around the room on the floor in the end, this exposes that the doctors truly did not know what was best for her. Nonetheless, she was still being controlled by her doctor and husband to do as they say, just as many patients are controlled without options in our medically-advanced society.
Another resemblance modern-day society has with “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the struggle of women in a predominantly male-driven world. Not only does “doctor know best” in this story, but “man knows best” too. Gilman writes, “At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies. […]. ‘You know the place is doing you good,’ he said […]” (Gilman 239). The narrator says she would like to go downstairs because there are prettier rooms, but John takes her in his arms and calls her a “blessed little goose” (239). There is not much that’s more degrading than when a man decides to call a woman a silly name in a serious conversation. It shows that he still thinks he knows best but he’s going to give her a pet name and tell her “if you wish” to make her feel as though she has had a small victory. Though women are not as oppressed as they were when this story was written, they still receive the same attitude from men today. While getting an oil change for my truck one day, I was once drilled on almost every question imaginable about my vehicle. The man suspected, I suppose, because I am a short young woman, I did not know what size motor my truck has or almost every other specification about it. He asked question after question in a taunting voice, but the man in front of me ordered the same service with almost none of these questions. I am not an extreme feminist, but I do believe women don’t have as much of a voice as men do in this world. There have been times when I have been provoked by men because I drive a nice vehicle that I saved money for and bought for myself; times when I am not chosen over a man because I may not be able to perform as well. Gilman shows instances when John displays that he is somehow over the narrator, writing statements such as, “John would think it absurd” and “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (241, 239). The narrator also is not allowed to write because she is supposed to be resting and doesn’t want John to catch her (238). He even calls her “little girl” at one point, telling her not to walk around in the house because she’ll get cold (Gilman 242). Since the narrator and John are married, the reader should think they are a team. Instead, he treats her like a child and like he is ever-knowing just because he is the man, an aspect many women face in today’s world.
The depiction of control by doctors and men resemble today’s issues, but the shame and misunderstanding of mental health are also a major issue still. Gilman writes, “It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer” (236). The narrator wishes to be taken away from the house three weeks before their lease is up, because she is “not gaining here” (242). This displays not only that John feels she needs the rest in a summer home away from civilization, but also that he may be ashamed of her behavior and want to hide her away. The narrator is obviously a bit emotionally imbalanced, but John writes it off as nothing. Gilman writes the heartbreaking line, “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him” (238). He does not understand why she is this way, and really neither does the narrator. In his mind, if there is no reason to suffer, she clearly is not suffering. The narrator’s husband even laughs at her about the wallpaper, and she supposes he was never nervous in his life (238). The misunderstanding of depression was relatively common in this time. Now that science has progressed and people can understand it more, one would think this should not be an issue today. So often, mental illnesses continue to be misunderstood or be the center of jokes. Bipolar disorder is a punchline and “depressed” is a word in our daily vocabulary, when some of us may not know the actual meaning of depression.
Unfortunately, phrases such as “don’t be so sensitive,” “you just want attention,” and “she’s just a woman…she doesn’t know what she’s saying” are not words that I heard in the nineteenth-century when Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” because I obviously wasn’t alive then. These are words that I hear weekly from young teens to other young teens, mocking them for crying over something small. These are words I have heard men say about their wives and girlfriends when they are talking about an important matter. Gilman displays what can happen to someone when they are disallowed of the sympathy and compassion that they may need and replaced with “doctor or husband knows best.” A story written in 1899 should not resemble our present-day 2019 so well, but it does. The twelve-year-old girl who could have been gone from my life today should not be similar to the narrator in this story, but she is. Fortunately, the girl did not go through with it and her mother found out, and now she has a rare support system through her family who welcomes her to talk about what she is feeling. Our modern-day society needs to read Gilman’s story and study the parallel, terrifying picture she paints of mental illness and control.
Work Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature and the Writing Process, edited
by Elizabeth McMahan, et al., Pearson, 2017, pp. 236-47.
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