Task:
Compare the methods used by writers of two short stories you have studied, to show relationships within a family.
In ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ and ‘Five-Twenty’, Gilman and White set out on a mission to exploit the oppression of women using dark symbolism and conventions of psychological horror gothic tales to horrify the readers and warn them of the consequences of corrosive, damaging abuse of authority in certain families, especially from overbearing, selfish and dominating male figures and to critique the position of women within the institution of marriage and society.
Firstly, in both stories, the two female protagonists are represented as repressed and restricted from freedom by their patronizing, overbearing husbands who dictate their lives. In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, John, the character’s husband, has forbidden his wife from writing, ‘hat[ing] to have [her] write a word’ - acting as if it is a manifestation of her supposed illness - even though it is clear she enjoys it as it is ‘a great relief to [her] mind’- and using his status as a physician to dismiss her ‘silly fancies’ and insist his methods are the right way to ‘heal’ her. Furthermore Royal, Ella’s husband, tramples Ella’s own desires (to have a baby) into the dust to make way for his self-centred career ambitions and selfish ‘ideas of his own for becoming rich and important’. He also never satisfies her own sexual intimate desires – although she gives him everything he wants- complaining of her ‘wet kisses’ and leading her to automatically feel ‘disgusted with herself’ when aggressively fantasising about stroking and kissing his nose. Both women’s individualities are repressed and their roles restricted – Ella subserviently following her husband and his selfish ambitions all her life and John’s wife being forced to listen and obey him. Their thoughts are clear: they must follow their husbands’ wishes. Feminist writer Gilman uses the pattern of the yellow wallpaper as a symbol of the patriarchy system in which women are caged and repressed – the protagonist identifying herself with the woman trapped behind the ‘bars’ of the pattern – and personifies the. White also relies on symbolism – the continuous ‘jammed solid’ traffic jam reverberates with Ella’s repressed desires. The husbands’ treatment of their wives in these stories effectively mirrors the repression faced by women in in the old-fashioned institute of marriage; they are entrapped and were forced to repress certain desires in order to please their husband and observe strict social decorum.
In addition, both writers explore how family members, especially those who with authoritarian positions in a family, can abuse their power and be damaging to one another. Jennie, John’s sister in ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ is described as being ‘so careful of [the protagonist]’ and the narrator also suspects she thinks the writing is causing the protagonist’s illness. This and the fact that the narrator is always afraid to have Jennie catch her writing (the short sentence ‘There's sister on the stairs!’ and the dramatic exclamation mark builds up tension and makes the reader feel tense at the sister’s arrival) shows that Jennie shares her brother’s opinion that the protagonist’s ‘imaginative power and habit of story-making’ is detrimental for her health and leads to all sorts of ‘excited fancies’. We can imagine how alone and pressured the protagonist feels with all her family members pressuring her to stop writing and acting disapproving towards her. Described as a ‘perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper [who] hopes for no better profession’ and who ‘sees to everything’ leaving the narrator without a thing to do, it could be argued that Jennie is a symbol of the ideal female in society – the servant-like humble and hard-working housekeeper- that the protagonist feels pressured to be like and perhaps feel inferior to. The condescending treatment from John – acting as the calm voice of reason and rationality, calling his adult wife ‘little girl’ ‘blessed little goose’ and laughing at her ideas and dismissing them as ‘silly fancies’ further illustrates the toxic relationships the protagonist is faced with, which eventually drive her to insanity. In ‘Five Twenty’, Ella’s mother calls her a ‘plain little thing’ but boasts of her ‘cheerful and willing’ attitude and ability to ‘wash and bake’ and her husband, Royal, is always bitterly telling her she is ‘supposed to be the practical one’ and dismissing her ideas. Ella is reduced to meeting all these expectations people have of her and devoting herself to her undeserving, belligerent and insensitive husband. Royal, whose unusual name hints at his spoilt childhood when he was treated like ‘his mother’s little king’, is painted as a deeply unpleasant brutal man: ridiculing the man in the pink Holden for his ‘half squashed’ ‘silly-lookun’ deformed head and effeminate car and always shouting at Ella from his wheelchair about trivial matters. With this unpleasant figure in the story, the reader is left to wonder at Ella’s inherent goodness and feels sympathy for this selfless woman– how is she so kind and subservient all the time despite this ill treatment? The writers are both suggesting authority can easily be abused, especially when it comes to ‘weaker’ women, and through the negative profiles of the two protagonists’ families, make us feel sympathy for those who are victims of their families’ bossy dictating of their lives and disapproval of their personal desires (which are to write and to love here).
Finally, the writers convey a similar message that unhealthy, unbalanced relationships will always end in tragedy. Both women, finding themselves being domineered over by their families and unable to express their individuality and desires, take refuge in two things – one in a strange fascination with the yellow wallpaper and the reflection of her own caged life she sees in it and Ella in the time ‘five-twenty’ and the man who passes her house in a ‘pink Holden’ at that exact time, who she finds attractive. The terrifying imagery of the caged woman and the ‘strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths’ in the wallpaper John’s wife finds herself hallucinating over show the horrendous depth of her insanity but yet, she is even happier in her insanity, believing it is freedom and proudly saying to her husband ‘I’ve got out at last (…) in spite of you and Jennie’. The irony of this further exploits the misery of the woman – the unhealthy methods her family have pushed on her have made so lonely and miserable she now finds insanity a freer, happier place where she is free to say and do whatever she wants. Just as Gilman details the woman’s descent into madness very carefully, White details the deeply tragic death of the deformed man, which leaves Ella still without the love she so deeply craves and blaming herself for killing him by ‘loving [him] too deeply, and too adulterously’. Her innocent fascination with sex is shown through the sexual imagery of the phallic-shaped ‘spired’ cineraria, the vaginal garden tunnel and the symbolism of the paradise-like garden, which, as an object of Nature, represents freedom and fertility. White suggests Ella’s desire for love is far more than the desire for mere sensual gratification or sexual fulfilment – she wants to love freely and it saddens the reader that this innocent love was never fulfilled. Ella’s kisses in the mock mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of the final scene symbolize her desperate attempt to love both men back to life. Her effort to save the dying man is a last effort to save a chance to love the way she wants and to preserve her own momentary wholeness on which her inherent goodness rests. Her only chance to be happy is gone and she is left alone with only her unfulfilled desires. By painting these two sad portraits of these women having been so emotionally abused they are left in equally unpleasant situations (insanity and loneliness), it is possible that these two writers are saying –victims of abuse, unbalanced relationships and subordination of individual will often turn to find freedom and happiness in ephemeral, damaging things which will only hurt them further. This makes the reader feel wary and angry towards the perpetrators – Royal, Jennie, John and the other family members – who have destroyed these women emotionally and led them to these situations.
In conclusion, while White relies on sexual imagery to explore Ella’s innocent and curious desires, Gilman details a woman’s horrific descent into madness using eerie personification of the wallpaper ‘look[ing at her] as if it knew the vicious influence it had’ and psychological horror conventions to paint a dark, depressing portrait that reflects the consequences of unequal status of women in marriage, the prevention of women expressing their creativity, intelligence and desires, toxic family relationships and unrealistic standards for women in society. Gilman’s tale, however, is more forward-looking – it leaves a final glimmer of hope through the ripping-up of the wallpaper and the protagonist’s cry of triumph that she has finally escaped the patriarchal world of oppression against women despite her husband and his sister – here the reader is encouraged that women can break through although the consequences could be great but it can be done!
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