Is That Feminism in the Wallpaper?

Throughout the year we’ve examined literature dealing with women’s roles, and I must say, watching the transition from domestic literature to controversial stories with feminist undertones. The Yellow Wallpaper is the perfect story to begin talking about the feminist awakening in literature because, at least in my opinion, the narrator’s journey to find meaning in the wallpaper coincides with the nineteenth century’s feminist writers journey to immerge from oppression.

In our course, the first glimpse of literature’s “woman in the wall paper” came in the Wide, Wide World. In this purely domestic novel, a literal guidebook on how to be a good girl, we saw Ellen Montgomery poke the fire. In this act she defied her society and gave period readers shivers of excitement—this was controversy. We moved on and on, encountering example upon example of girls putting their toes across the social boundaries. Eventually we were cross-dressing. And only weeks before the end of our studies we encountered the advent of Gothic literature as a feminist weapon. (This is what I would equate the narrator’s acceptance of the creeping woman, essentially the full extent of her insanity.) In both A Whisper in the Dark and The Yellow Wallpaper, the universally creepy elements of Gothic Literature force the reader, whether male or female, into the shoes of the persecuted woman. And in this, the writers win. They fully subvert early nineteenth century and hail in a new age.

Boys Will Be Boys

Let’s talk about the difference between growing up the city and growing up in the country as a young boy in the nineteenth century. So far we’ve had a two stories concerning boyhood: Ragged Dick and Tom Sawyer. Both Dick and Tom are used in their respective stories as images of the future of America: bright, sunny, intelligent, warlike, etc. But as one story is set in the south and the other is set in the north, they represent two distinctly different societies; two societies that had spent the last half a decade ripping at each others throats. Judging by this, one might hypothesize that these boys would be entirely different; separate visions for two completely different cultures. However, whether by plan or by chance, Ragged Dick and Tom Sawyer are essentially the same character set in two different worlds, the city and the country. Though they both are bright and shining sons of liberty nonetheless.

I suppose the basic idea behind it all calls back to our favorite little adage, “childhood is the only unique human experience.” What we find when we read these stories are two completely different boys in completely different environments still being boys. They’re going to get “ragged and dirty,” they’re clever, superbly smart, but they may not always be “honest injun.” The point is even boys who grow up in vastly different situations still experience boyhood, whether they are wealthy in the country, or living out of a box in the city. This common thread, childhood, can tie even the most bitter enemies together. So here’s the plan: make everyone feel like a child again.