Things to Stroke Your Beard to: A Feminist Review of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
We here at Beard Advisor love bringing interesting articles, unique perspectives, and original content to our readers. It is what motivates us! So, today in our section “Things to Stroke Your Beard to” we want to discuss feminism and how it played a role a sparked the short-story The Yellow Wallpaper by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman first published in 1892.
This is a well-known story popular with the feminist movement and feminist authors because it condemns the medical profession of the 19th-century for its practice of placing the masculine point of view at the center of its scope in both its medical culture and history. The women’s “needs” or “desires” are dismissed with language that stereotypes females as irrational and unqualified. Some feminist claim that by the narrator’s descent into insanity she is actually freed from the confinement of marriage in a male society, and as the husband faints the narrator has “risen above him” because she continues her pacing above him.
While this article in our section “Things to Stroke Your Beard to” is mostly about a feminist review and critique of the story The Yellow Wallpaper I do want to touch briefly on feminism and why it is still important, and relevant today.
When most people hear the word “feminism” they think of “men-haters,” “extremist” or that they are trying to establish a matriarchal society. This isn’t the case at all. Feminism is about equal rights for women, from opportunities in the workplace and fair pay to having control over their own lives and bodies.
There are different kinds of feminists but at the core they all want the same thing, equal rights. Anyone can be a feminist – women, men, gay, straight, asexual, etc., as long as you believe that women should be treated as equals then you are a feminist.
So the purpose of this article is not to try to convince you that men are evil or that feminists are trying to take things away from men, it is merely to critique the short-story through a feminist looking-glass and demonstrate 19th-century views towards women and the roles they played in society.
We will not discuss women’s rights over their own bodies and the abortion/contraceptive policies, nor will we discuss equal pay or the “glass ceiling,” nor abuse problems, husband/wife roles and marriage ideologies, we will simply discuss the short story The Yellow Wallpaper.
So come along, let’s read and understand 19th-century women’s healthcare and societal values together –
The story details the narrator’s descent into madness at the hand of her unsupportive, misguided, and misunderstanding, husband “John” who also is the narrator’s physician (crazy in and of itself).
The narrator is “prescribed bed rest cure” after she gives birth to her child and she is sent away to vacation in a mansion, forced to “rest” while holed up in the nursery at the top of the house.
There is “something queer” about the house, more specifically the nursery, and the worn and torn yellow wallpaper is missing in some spots, at which the narrator blames the previous occupants of the nursery, the children. There are bars over the windows, which symbolize her entrapment in the room, even though she is allowed moderate freedom to roam the house and yard.
The narrator is a writer, although she if forced to keep this fact from her husband because it will tire her out, she is not to “assert herself with thinking”, and she is supposed to lay in bed all day and rest; yet she keeps several diary entries that become increasingly focused more and more on the “yellow wallpaper” with it’s “smell,” missing patches, and odd coloration that leaves traces of its color on her hands and clothing. She continues to describe how “the longer [one] stays in the room” the more the “wallpaper appears to mutate,” especially at night. Because the narrator is forced to stay in the nursery and “rest” she becomes increasingly fixated and obsessed with the wallpaper and she begins to hallucinate that there is a woman who is creeping around the room on all fours, stuck within the nursery walls, and she (the narrator) must free her from her captivity. Thus she locks herself in the nursery and begins to tear the wallpaper from the walls, and when the husband returns with the key he faints at the sight of his wife (the narrator) “creeping” around the room touching the wallpaper and muttering “I’ve got it out at last…in spite of you and Jane…” as she continues pacing around the room.
Anyways, that is the basic setup of the short-story The Yellow Wallpaper. Now for the real substance to this article from our “Things to Stroke Your Beard to” section: A thesis of sort; “A Feminist Review of The Yellow Wallpaper to Attempt to Better Understand 19th-Century Male Suppression Over Females.”
Hold on to your beard, this is gonna be a doozie!
** Disclaimer: This article is intended for educational purposes and as a means to spark conversation and reflection. It is not meant as any sort of propaganda or argument, only as literature that presents one point of view. It is not intended to be offensive or seclude any readers. It is, as always, open to debate and discussion. **
The main character and narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was unfairly judged and restricted by men, not only by their presumed “knowing” of what was best for her and her health, but also by their restricting her work and freedom of thoughts; this suppression ultimately led to the narrator losing her health as well as her mind, which gave the men final power and control over her. When looking back on history one can see multiple examples of women being unfairly treated by men.
From an evolutionary standpoint, men’s suppression of women’s sexuality has an advantage. According to Roy F. Baumeister and Jean M. Twenge (2002) men stifle women’s sexuality so that they are more likely to keep her as their own. Men want to have offspring that they can be sure is theirs and will carry on their genes, making the control more about parental advantages than societal views. According to this argument, if a woman lacks the desire to have sex, she will more likely only reproduce with one male. This theory can be taken further by feminist theory.
In general, feminist analysis depicts social arrangements as reflecting victimization of females by males. Society is called patriarchy because it is made by and for males, and women are its victims. One of men’s top priorities is to keep women down and use them for the men’s own purposes. One line of feminist analysis would be that men regard women as men’s possessions and therefore seek to keep them to themselves. By suppressing female sexuality, men can keep women from wanting to have sex with other men. This analysis resembles the evolutionary argument on paternity certainty. (Baumeister & Twenge, 2002).
In the words of M. J. Sherfey, “female sexuality represents a potential threat to the orderly society that men want” (Sherfey, 1966). This argument is backed up by the example of using prehistoric humans or modern day chimps, whose females will breed “50 times per day …exhausting every available male partner” (Sherfey, 1966); and, as illustrated by Sherfey (1966), this behavior creates chaos in society. In the males it creates mental instability, and in order for a civilization to develop it is in fact imperative to control female sexuality, something men still do.
Looking back, there has been a trend of female suppression by male society.
The suppression of female sexuality can be regarded as one of the most remarkable psychological interventions in Western cultural history. From Sherfey’s (1966) respected statement of this view, the sex drive of the human female is naturally and innately stronger than that of the male, and it once posed a powerfully destabilizing threat to the possibility of social order. For civilized society to develop, it was allegedly necessary or at least helpful for female sexuality to be stifled. (Baumeister & Twenge, 2002).
This belief is remarkable since men were not held to the same standards as women – creating a double standard between the two sexes and assuming male dominance at an early stage.
The suppression of female sexuality and the male agenda of control over women evolved over time. If a woman was deemed “psychologically unstable” prescriptions of bed rest, warm baths, and isolation by doctors became famous cures (Friedan, 1994). As Diana Martin’s review of “The Yellow Wallpaper” discusses “the celebrated neurologist S. Weir Mitchell” and his book which led him to infamy – “Fat and Blood: And How to Make Them” (Martin, 2007). Mitchell’s book describes a “rest cure” for “neurasthenia” patients, which was prescribed to Charlotte Perkins Gilman (the author of The Yellow Wallpaper) herself and led to her inspiration for “The Yellow Wallpaper” (Mitchell, 1878). Perkins notes that she “came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over…I cast the noted specialist’s advice to the wind…[and] ultimately recover[ed with] some measure of power” (Gilman, 1913). This is an example of how men assume power and control over women in ways that are not always the most appropriate, more of just an assumption that they know what women need. Here we actually see Gilman herself showing that she knows what was truly best for her, and it may be argued that if she had not gone against the prescription then she would not have been able to write such an important work.
In the 1860’s doctors began to perform surgeries to treat “personality disorders” in women based off of a theory called “psychology of the ovary,” a theory focused towards “a women’s entire personality [as being] dominated by her reproductive organs” so it seemed logical to the male doctors to alter not only a women’s physical body, but also her resulting demeanor to better suit the “model” woman (Ehrenreich & English, 1973). These surgeries were a form of “female castration” used to “cure” personality disorders in women and “thousands of these operations were performed from 1860 to 1890” (Lynn, 2004).
In the 1850’s many doctors became known for their “home readers” for women as a way to help in the healing process (Lynn, 2004). It became “acceptable, even fashionable to retire to bed with ‘sick headaches,’ ‘nerves,’ and a host of other mysterious ailments” (Lynn, 2004). Males had used female suppression in society to make women to be not only “seen as sickly [but for] sickness to be seen as feminine” (Lynn, 2004). And the entire “mystique of female sickness – the house calls, the tonics…[was] to keep a great many women busy at the task of doing nothing,” a way to keep women controlled and under male influence (Ehrenreich & English, 1973).
As attested by Judith Butler – “sex, apart from the obvious anatomical differences, is a cultural construct [which allows critics] to assume that women are essentially different from men, and that women’s writing and reading are essentially different also” (Lynn, 2004). If one follows this theory, sexism contradicts itself. If sex is constructed by culture then men and women should be able to write equally. However until fairly recently this was not acknowledged as being true. Feminist criticism looks to deconstruct the sexist stereotypes as Elaine Hedge’s critical interpretation of “The Yellow Wallpaper” does. Hedge’s points to sexism as the main reason it received initial negative criticisms, not only in how long it took to be published, but also by making the point that her work contained “hints of…attack[s] on social mores – specifically on the ideal submissive wife” (Hedges, 2004). Since the main character is a woman who does not “stay in [her] place,” she was viewed as a problem, especially when she questions her husband and his orders for rest and her not to work (Hedges, 2004). Even “those who praised the story, [did so] for the accuracy…from a medical point of view…[with its] detailed account of incipient insanity,” focusing not on her work but some small minute detail men deemed important (Hedges, 2004).
One can see the metaphor of females being suppressed by their male counterparts throughout Feminist works. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the metaphor is apparent by the bedroom windows, which “are barred” (Gilman, 2004) to hold the narrator “in her place.” The bed bolted to the floorboards is a metaphor for suppressed sexual desires (Gilman, 2004). Since the bedroom is (supposedly) where sexual activities happen, by limiting the movement of the bed the narrator’s sexual freedom is also being limited. Furthermore, the narrator is “a little afraid of [her husband] John,” so much that she does not share a lot of her views with him because “he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away” (Gilman, 2004). The narrator is so suppressed by men that she is afraid to speak her mind, or even thinks herself not worthy or equal to them. This still goes on today. Up until the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920 women were not given the right to vote (www.archives.gov), something African American men were granted some fifty years previous with the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. Furthermore, societal norms and the roles women play is the United States government continues to reinforce these ideals on younger generations. Women only make-up 16.8% of the US House of Representatives and 17.0% of the U.S. Senate, but a 2013 U.S. Census states the ratio of males to females as being 1.05 males for every 1 female (catalyst.org). Society is divided almost down the middle but female suppression still continues to this day.
Not only was the narrator restricted and controlled but also talked down to. The husband’s use of silly pet names like “blessed little goose” (Gilman, 2004), and calling her “little girl” (Gilman, 2004) speaks of his perception of her mental capacity as being below his own. By the husband labeling her as having “nervous depression” he is able to control her, as well as relatives surrounding the narrator, and convince her that she does need help and cannot survive on her own. By portraying the dependence of women on men, primarily the need of the narrator’s husband, help solidify this notion that women need men. In fact it is not until the narrator expresses herself as no longer needing or wanting her husband (a dangerous and controversial notion for the time) that she starts to go “mad.”
The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is so restricted by the men of her society that it seems the only way to gain control for herself is to escape into madness. She is constantly being told to lie down and get some rest with the threat of going to see Dr. Weir Mitchell if she does not obey their orders. So, in a way, in order to escape the men who restrict her she must lose total control of her own self. All she wants to do is be alone with the wallpaper, and by going mad she is able to get her wish. “The Yellow Wallpaper” vividly portrays the satire of the suppression of women by men, not only during that time period, but as it is still prevalent today. Women were, and continue to be, held back by men and the “male agenda,” from the female sexuality through evolution, medical views towards women in the late 1800’s, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, to women’s roles in government women are still being held-back or censored.
Are we all still here? We know that was a lot to read and digest but thank you for reading it.
We here at Beard Advisor are all for women. Sure, it is popular these days for memes to pop-up claiming male dominance is in his beard and that our beards can have mind-control properties over women, but we think deep down that (most) men do not think that way.
After all what would we be without our women (or partners)? We would lead a sad and unfulfilled existence, or not even exist! Most men, if they care enough about their woman (or partner), and want to spend their life with her, will put their woman above all else, even their beards. We know we would.
So we hope everyone enjoyed our newest article for our section “Things to Stroke Your Beard to” and that you all learned something. And even if you didn’t learn, or even enjoy this article, we hope you got to experience a new perspective, thought, or are now open to more inward reflection. Or if not, hey, hopefully your beard enjoyed the thoughtful strokes as you read!
19th Amendment. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/19th-amendment
Baumeister, R. F. & Twenge, J. M. (2002). Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality, Review of General Psychology, 6(2), 166-203). Educational Publishing Foundation.
Women in Government. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women- government
The Constitution of The United States. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html
Diana, M. (2007). Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The American Journal of Psychiatry. 164(5), 736.
Ehrenreich, B. & English, D. (1973). Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness. New York, NY: The Feminist Press at The City University of New York.
Friedan, B. (1994). Afterward: feminism as a step in human evolution; a paradigm shift in values for women, men and society. American Behavioral Scientist. 37.8, 1138.
Gilman, C. P. (2004) The Yellow Wallpaper. In S. Lynn (Ed.), Literature: Reading and Writing with Creative Strategies (pp. 316-327). New York, NY: Pearson Education Inc.
Gilman, C. P. (1913). Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Forerunner, 4(10), 271.
Hedges, E. (2004). The Initial Appearance and Early Reception. In S. Lynn (Ed.), Literature: Reading and Writing with Creative Strategies (pp. 327-328). New York, NY: Pearson Education Inc.
Lynn, S. (2004). Literature: Reading and Writing with Creative Strategies. New York, NY: Pearson Education Inc.
Mitchell SW: Fat and Blood: And How to Make Them, 2nd ed. Philadelphia, JB Lippincott, 1878.
Sherfey, M. J. (1966). The evolution and nature of female sexuality in relation to psychoanalytic theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 14, 28–128.
United States Demographic Profile 2013 (2013). Retrieved from http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/demographics_profile.html
