Stream Of Consciousness In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wall Paper” uses stream of consciousness from a patient’s point of view to describe the effects of the ‘rest cure.’ The narrator’s description and opinion of each character provides the audience with a base to interpret them for themselves. Each character reinforces the normalized domestic beliefs of the 19th century to an extent. In this story, the narrator represents women during the 1880s, therefore her husband represents men and their relative to her circumstances. “The Yellow Wall Paper” presents John as the embodiment of the socially accepted patriarchal authority permitted to dictate a woman’s life through the abuse of male authority in conjunction with his occupational authority, in …show more content…
As the head of the household, John acts as the voice of reason, meaning his opinions dictate what everyone in the household should do. Perhaps because of his position as a physician, John centers his reasoning on rationality, believing only what his mind can grasp. Due to this narrow-mindedness, John limits his wife in several ways. He defines her by her illness, though throughout he claims she is physically unafflicted. He criticizes her and claims she is imagining her illness, thus invalidating her opinions considering she is not in the same position he is. Instead of referring to her illness as what it is or even considering it could be a more complicated mental illness, John is more comfortable describing her ailment as “a slight hysterical tendency.” This is unprofessional since John is not examining his wife objectively, as he would any other patient. Instead, his bias towards social acceptability distorts his perception of reason. This contradicts his position as the ‘voice of reason’ since he is considering his own needs as he treats his wife. The most detrimental aspect of this is that his wife knows that as long as “he knows there is no reason to suffer,” he will consider the situation handled. Considering she views him as the voice of reason, she expresses herself relative to what her husband considers reasonable. This shows that the conventional ‘voice of …show more content…
Even when the narrator feels uncomfortable in the house, her husband invalidates her concerns. The narrator claims “if [she] had less opposition and more society and stimulus-,” in which she leaves the thought unfinished because the idea that her opinions are worth less than her husband’s is ingrained in her thought process. The importance behind this halt lies behind the fact that only the narrator knows this information on account of the fact that she is writing in secret on a paper that only she has access to. Since she feels compelled to abstain from including her solution in full, she demonstrates the authority her husband has on her even when absent. Clearly she views his judgment in higher respects than her own even though her health is in question. According to her husband, “the worst thing [she] can do is think about [her] condition.” The fact that John does not allow her to have a say regarding her own condition and treatment demonstrates the superiority with which he carries his intellect due to his social standing. He not only dismisses her ideas because his position as a physician gives him the authority to override her solutions, but because he does not view her on his same level. In addition, John transitions from treating his wife as a patient, though unprofessionally, to treating her like a child he does not believe capable of taking proper care of herself. Though