The Yellow Wallpaper

I read a short story today. It is part of my reading for my Creative Writing course. The story is called The Yellow Wallpaper and it was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and first published in 1892. I had no idea the effect this story would have on me.

The unnamed protagonist is experiencing post natal depression and the piece is an exploration of her experiences in an isolated homestead, forbidden to get "excited" or do anything resembling work as this was considered counter productive to her "nervous condition". Her husband is a jerk, telling her that the way she feels is all in her head and treating her like a small child. By the end of the story she is almost insane. In the commentary that followed the story Charlotte Gilman said she had experienced depression periodically in her life, and after her child was born. She went to see a "noted specialist in nervous disease, the best in the country" who said there was nothing really wrong with her, but she should "live a domestic life as far as possible", "have but two hours intellectual life a day" and "never touch a brush, pen, or pencil again" as long as she lived. She said she did this for 3 months and almost went insane.

This makes me angry on so many different levels. How DARE men of that time and place - barely a hundred years ago - explain away how a woman feels as being all in her head. How DARE he suggest that any kind of creative expression was counter productive to "getting over it"? How many women did this doctor, and others like him, cut off from creative expression and treat like baby making machines with the brains of vegetables? 2000 years of human history and a hundred years ago this fucking idiot doctor was strapping women to beds, feeding them massive amounts of cream and prescribing no intellectual stimulation. What the hell was he thinking?

I dislike the medical profession intensely. I do not believe all they tell me. I don't follow their prescriptions and tests if I don't agree with them. I won't let their statements remain unchallenged. Their power base has been far too big for far too long. I won't help them maintain unwarranted control over my life, or the lives of others.

As for the descent into madness experienced by the lead character in The Yellow Wallpaper, I feel uncomfortable reading her words. I read The Bell Jar for the first time a year or so ago. I was in equal measures repulsed and attracted by the story. I remember telling a woman on my writing retreat in Guatemala that I felt like I could see myself in Plath's words and she said "Yes, I think that was the disturbing thing about that novel. We could all see ourselves in her".

So now I am uncomfortable and filled with righteous indignation at the treatment of women by the medical profession.