Having been raised for centuries on the go, the issue of family relations in terms of hierarchical organization and distribution of authority is acquiring importance in modern society as well. Following the feministic booms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there came an understanding that a woman is still a special constituent of the institute of family and that her role is complex and intricate. At different times, the scales of powers inclined alternately to the husband and to the wife, ascribing different functions, responsibilities and rights to them. And yet, the issue of who should be the leading party and whether it is for the husband to enjoy complete and inseparable authority is still unresolved. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper on the example of John the reader can observe an image of an unsuccessful husband, whose overprotection and excessive caution which might have been based on good intention nevertheless lead to the crushing of a woman’s inner world and her mental disorder as a result.
At first sight, it is standardly known that according to a deep-rooted family tradition the husband is supposed to take utmost care of his wife and to provide all the protection he can give to her in order to guard her against the dangers of the outer world. Being the brain and the intellectual reason of the family, the husband wisely guides the ship of his matrimonial unit through all the possible mishaps and traps and takes the necessary precautions in order to avoid the foreseeable evil. Supposedly possessing the adequate knowledge for resolving any situation, he becomes the herald of the absolute truth which cannot be dared to be opposed by the female party of the family. All the vital decisions originate from the husband, as he is endowed with unlimited powers and authority.
Notwithstanding a grain of truth in such considerations, one can nevertheless observe a situation when the husband, guided by such family code turns into a kind of domestic tyrant, taking individual decisions and not allowing for any intrusion into them or any suggestion made as for their appropriateness. All spheres of the private and public life of the family conform to his opinion and pitiable is the wife of that man for there is nothing left to her but silently and gratefully agree to anything her sovereign commands. In worst cases, the husband’s rule stretches even to such petty but important to the woman’s individuality areas as her thoughts, ideas, transient fantasies and small joys of the day. Being guided by the best intentions of preserving family harmony and the idea of husband and wife being an inseparable whole, by imposing on the wife the lifestyle and style of thought that may seem the only appropriate ones to the husband, he limits her personal space and deprives her of ways of self-expression that as a result may lead to an emotional and even mental breakdown. Such a case is observed in The Yellow Wallpaper, as John by his attitude eventually annihilates the personality of his wife.
Starting from the first pages and throughout the whole story, one cannot overlook the recurrent phrases that mark the narrative: “John says”, “John knows”, “John is right”, etc. (Gilman 1, 2, 3, 6). That cannot be ignored, as it marks the whole situation of male authority and dominance in the family and designates the way the wife worships and fully relies on her husband’s opinion. John’s decisions are those that constitute all the course of her life, from the way she should spend her days — he “hardly lets me stir without special direction” — to the choice of the room in accordance not with the emotional inclinations of his wife, but with the rational considerations of his own (Gilman 2). The wife describes John as being totally rational and “practical in the extreme” (Gilman 1). She sees him as a god who is eternally “wise” and cannot ever be mistaken, even if his opinion totally contradicts the natural urges and needs of his wife (Gilman 5). Significantly, the wife in the story is nameless: she is nobody, a life governed by someone else and thus representing no value of its own.
However rational John’s outlook and view of his wife maybe, in fact, she opens up in her (forbidden by his common sense!) writings as a truly striking personality with her own ideas, considerations, and pains that never find a response with her husband. The very beginning of the story already reveals the whole essence of their marital relationship; as soon as the wife starts having some fantasies or ideas about the world around her, she becomes John’s laughing stock: “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage”; and moreover, he “scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures (Gilbert 1). Being deprived of any possible means of self-expression, the wife has to resort to the last possibility of self-actualization by secretly writing an account of her ideas. The idea of taking up an occupation as a means of distracting from daily loneliness which she suffers as a result of John’s busy career is not even discussed. The living environment is limited to the yellow-papered nursery and short walks in the garden, and even occasional fantasies, the only retreat of a bored mind, is suppressed immediately under the pretext of causing nervous weakness to the wife, and so she silently obeys:
“I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.” (Gilbert 3).
While the wife’s emotional life is the flesh and blood of the story, John is represented from a purely practical side, as a skilled physician, a professional of his trade whose opinion is prevailing in matters of settling his wife’s discomfort. Being in the course of the period’s medical trends, he resorts to the only recommended way of treating mental disorders — that of full rest and inactivity. Concentrating on the outward symptoms of the illness, which he at first tries to overlook and does not acknowledge as any serious malfunction, John fails to understand that the ultimate reason for all the nervous distress lays in the scary emptiness that characterizes his wife’s existence. Even her baby is taken away from her, which she courageously accepts as the better way of things. Having nobody understanding to talk to, she is thrust into an abyss of oblivion as a personality, which eventually leads to mental catastrophe.
From the situation described in The Yellow Wallpaper, it is important to understand that however, undisputedly important the husband’s role in the family might be, it is still a unit of two people, two personalities. Abuse of one’s powers, even under the pretext of aiming for the greater good, inevitably leads to suppression and tragic destruction of the weaker side’s personality; thus, an extremely careful balancing of powers and rights is a must to be practiced by every family in all the times
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte P. The Yellow Wallpaper. Boston, MA: Small & Maynard, 1899. Web. 2009.