The Woman in the American Family

by: Dagmar Hecher

Winter Term 2005/06

Table of contents

1) The “Blessing“ of Childbearing: Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) 1

2) A Life of one’s own: Kate Chopin The Story of an Hour (1894) 3

3) Rejection of a Lifestyle: Marianne Faithfull The Ballad of Lucy Jordan (1979) 6

4) Conclusion 7

Bibliography 8

1) The “Blessing“ of Childbearing: Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her short story The Yellow Wallpaper at a time when women’s destiny was to bear children and to enjoy the pleasures of motherhood. In a typical marriage of the time it was understood that the wife would give birth to a child within the first year and a half of the marriage¹. Furthermore, the total fertility rate of white women in 1890 was 3.87, and one even has to mention here that this number was a result of an already marked decrease of fertility during the preceding century². If one compares this number to the average of 1.3 to 1.4 children a modern woman these days gives birth to, it becomes clear that in 1892 there was still a tremendously strong focus on motherhood as a woman’s ultimate goal in life.

As a contradiction to the expectations of society then, pregnancy and childbearing then was not a blessing to many women, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but a frightening mystery which they totally lacked guidance through, as women were thought to be instinctively able to handle this new situation on their own³. “…as recently as the 1950s it was not considered polite for obviously pregnant women to appear in public places more than was absolutely necessary.” (Degler, 59) The fact that pregnant women were supposed to hide themselves from the environment as far as possible in order not to be considered indecent further increased the mystification and isolation going along with pregnancy and childbearing. Additionally, the doubled pressure of being wife and mother - with all the duties included – all of a sudden was too much for many women. The challenge of adaptation to this new stressful situation often led and still leads young mothers to the so called “post-natal depression”, which is a central theme in The Yellow Wallpaper. This special kind of depression can occur within the first year after having given birth to a child and usually goes along with deep sadness, fatigue, crying fits, insomnia, fear, panic attacks, indifferent feelings towards the child - “And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” (Gilman, 14) - and anankastic angst, depending of the severity of the depression⁴.

Nowadays, this depression can easily be cured, but in the nineteenth century doctors tended to diagnose such women with hysteria and prescribe total tranquility and silence. This is the case with the main protagonist in Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper. The woman suffers severely from post natal depression, the reason why her husband, who is a doctor, has forbidden her to do anything but rest and try to overcome her illness, which he does not take as serious as it is at all. The leading role of the husband in the marriage then is clearly depicted by his wife having to obey him, knowing that the prescribed tranquility will only make her even sicker. She is not allowed to follow her desire to write, which is why she has to hide her diary from the people surrounding her. John, her husband, ignores her claims about not feeling mentally better at all, but tells her to trust his skills as a doctor, “for [his] sake and for [their] child’s sake, as well as for [her] own” (Gilman, 24). He does not take his wife serious on any account, but treats her like a child, giving her pet-names or even calling her “little girl”. It becomes clear that John actually does not consider his wife to be sick at all when he says: “Bless her little heart! [S]he shall be as sick as she pleases.” (Gilman, 24).

The woman visibly breaks down under her own and her husband’s expectations, not being able to fulfill her duty as a mother, just not being capable of caring for her own child. The pressure and the lack of appropriate therapy lead to the depression getting worse and worse, finally resulting in a total mental break-down at the end of the novel, with the woman crawling around her room, desperately trying to rip off the ‘wallpaper of contention’ and free the woman she thinks is hiding behind it. Out of the woman’s view, the ending could be interpreted as a kind of liberation. She has finally managed to get rid of the paper and now creeps over her husband, who has fainted after his wife finally telling him that she has got out at last, out of his, out of any control, that she is free at last from his will.

The last sentence she says to her husband, “…I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (Gilman, 36), indicates that she perceives herself as having been behind the paper all the time. The woman she constantly saw moving behind it probably represented her own mind, captured by her husband’s paternalism. By ripping off the wallpaper and freeing the woman, she thus also liberated herself. Given the abovementioned social background of the time, it was pretty daring by Gilman to write this story, for which she received a lot of criticism.

2) A Life of one’s own: Kate Chopin The Story of an Hour (1894)

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1 Cf. Degler, 55

2 Cf. Smith in: Cott, 208

3 Cf. Degler, 55

4 Cf. “Depression” at: www.medizinfo.de